Kerry Young - Pao

We have the party up in the house in Ocho Rios and in truth I don’t think Gloria is celebrating the baby at all. I think she celebrating a new life. A new life for me and her. Maybe the life we should have had all along.

Everybody come up to the coast. Finley and his wife, Hampton and Ethyl, Clifton, Merleen Chin and John Morrison, George and Margaret, Milton, Marcia and the two other girls from Gloria’s East Kingston house. Even Margy Lopez show up with some woman we none of us ever see before. And then we have the guests of honour, Esther, Rajinder and baby Sunita. It was family.

I stand on the veranda and look out at the calm, blue Caribbean and I think how glad I was that I manage to sort out that wharf thing with DeFreitas and how only last week I tell Gloria ’bout the arrangements I make for her and Esther if anything should happen to me, and she just laugh and slap me on the arm and say, ‘What going happen to you?’

And then I realise that I wouldn’t complain if I happen to drop down dead right there. I start picture the whole thing, how they take me to the hospital and start go through my pockets. A pocket-knife with two blades and a bottle opener, a cigar packet with three Flor de Farach Farachitos, two wads of notes – Jamaican dollars and US dollars – some wooden toothpicks in a silver container, and a black leather photo wallet with the figure of a crane under a pine tree engrave on it, and inside a photograph of Mui in her barrister wig and gown and opposite it one of me sitting down holding baby Mui, and Xiuquan standing next to the chair.

I think about my life and how hard I tried to find something to believe in. Something that would mean something to me, like how Zhang had his stories of China and the masses throwing out the foreigners and making a life of their own. Like how Mr Manley say, Jamaicans had to make an identity, and dignity and destiny for ourselves. But it wasn’t the same for everybody. Like Gloria was always telling me, not everybody had their sights set on building a nation. Some people just wanted to put food on the table. And I suppose that was me as well because even though I talk Zhang’s high ideals I was still busy just making money and fixing any problem that anybody wanted to bring to me. I try hard to believe that out of many we could be one people, but when the shooting start I couldn’t make up my mind to go get myself killed over it. Not like my father did in China.

But like Zhang was always telling me, everything got consequences. Everything you do or don’t do is connected to everything else. So any time you do something you making another thing that will be waiting for you ’round the corner. And then I start wonder if Michael is right ’bout God and all of that, and how the Almighty is fixing to punish me for all the things I done.

Gloria come out on the veranda and stand next to me and we listen to the gentle lap of the Caribbean on the shore. She got a smile of contentment on her face. And then she reach out and take my hand and look off into the distance where she tell me, on a clear day, she can see Cuba. I think well, out of the many Sunita is the one so maybe I make a contribution after all. I can hear a commotion inside and Michael’s voice greeting everybody.

And then I think ’bout Mui coming home after this long time. And I think if I drop down dead right now that is the only thing it would grieve me to miss. And then I think no, I would miss that I never find a way to have nothing with Karl even though him and me exchange a few lines from time to time. And I would miss the possibility that me and Fay ever cross paths again.

That is when I realise that I not dead yet, so maybe it not all lost. And I remember how Zhang rest his palm flat on my chest one time and say to me, ‘Everything is in your own heart.’

Han Suyin once wrote that we Chinese are history-minded. And as the world knows, we Jamaicans are politics-minded. Perhaps it is no surprise, therefore, that this book, my first work of fiction, should turn out to be a political history. Not only because every story has a context, but also because context creates the possibilities of what might be, fashioning the circumstances of people’s lives so that they decide to do one thing rather than another, making their story unfold in this way rather than that.

So whilst Pao’s story is completely fictional, I have tried my best to get the context right. This has involved a huge amount of research including books, films, the internet, as well as several trips to Jamaica and endless questions and queries to my mother and other members of my family. The key documentary sources are listed on page 275.

In the end though, in true Taoist style, Pao is a book about Jamaica’s history, and it is not a book about Jamaica’s history. It is a book about Jamaican people and it is not a book about Jamaican people. What it is, is a book about the world, and the universe and the ten thousand things.

Kerry Young, June 2010

When this book was submitted to Bloomsbury, Helen Garnons-Williams remarked that it had the potential to be truly wonderful. If it has achieved that potential, it is because of her. Thanks also to Sarah-Jane Forder for her meticulous and sensitive work. I had no idea copy-editing would be so much fun. Erica Jarnes for taking charge of the things I found scary and for keeping me on track through the process. My agent, Susan Yearwood, without whom Pao would not have found his way to Helen. And to Amanda and Charlie, and all those who helped to make the impossible possible, and who cheered me on over the years, thank you.

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Pao

by Kerry Young

These discussion questions are designed to enhance your group’s conversation about Pao , a sweeping historical saga about a young Chinese man in Jamaica who rises to become the “godfather” of Kingston’s Chinatown.

About this book

Pao is about to marry the wrong woman. Seven years after he immigrates to Jamaica from China, he meets Gloria, a beautiful Jamaican prostitute who steals his heart. But Pao’s beloved mentor, Zhang, from whom he inherited the Chinatown “family business,” does not approve of Gloria. So Pao decides to marry Fay Wong, the elegant daughter of one of Kingston’s richest Chinese men. Suddenly Pao is running not only the Chinatown underworld, but also many legitimate businesses too, thanks to his profitable marriage.