六十年，弹指一挥间

                                                     郴维鳞 

 

  我的家乡在中国浙江省，在我还很的小时候我们家就搬到上海，所以我对上海很熟悉，可以说是半个上海人，其实我基本上把上海当作老家。

 

  当我还是十六、七岁的时候，就参加了那时候的国民党军队，成为一位当时十分有名的将领的部下。由于所在的部队走南闯北，我因而到过不少地方。抗日战争时期，我们到了广西、云南一带。后来部队要挑选一小队人到反法西斯盟军设在南亚的一个军事机械培训班去学习，我也被派去了。我们学的是军车、坦克的修理技术。那时候坦克在中国的军队中还不多见，故可以说，我们是最早被派到国外去接触坦克修理这一撬门的一批中国人。以后，我便成为坦克机械技术员，并在上世纪三十年代下旬经南亚来到了英国；后来又从军人恢复为平民身份。当时，要想在英国寻找一份修理机械的工作是极不容易的，更何况刚出来时我连一句英语也不会说。那时旅居在英国的中国人并不多。为了生存，我只好打杂谋生：先是做饭堂的厨工，后到东伦敦的船坞当搬运工人。那时位于伦敦‘狗岛’区的船坞码头十分繁忙，远洋轮船进进出出。做搬运的工作是十分繁重，但那时我还年轻，气力还不错，搬运这玩意儿还是吃得消的。尽管如此我还是遇到很多这样那样的困难，首先不懂英语就无法与人沟通。所以开头几年我活得极不如意。既然在英的华人不多，女的就更是风毛麟角。我经几番周折好不容易才终于找到一位本地姑娘，与她成亲数年后我们有了两个孩子。人们都说好景不长，果真我们终于还是分了手。这次分手使我感到很苦恼，我曾经极力维持这段婚姻，对方却不依，非要一刀两断不可。

 

几年后，我又一次成了家，而且也不止一次地转行，到过好几个城镇打工。但转来转去，大都是一些粗重的活儿。后来慢慢地我有了一些积储，便开始搞了一个小小的饭馆。那时的中式饭馆很单调，不像现在的那么堂皇，菜谱更是单调得可怜。不过在本地人当中，真正吃过中国菜的毕竟不多，没几个人味道上提出什么样的质问。另一方面，那时根本很少见到新鲜的中国蔬菜，厨房用的都是罐头，即使你有好厨艺，好的菜还是不易做。好妇难为无米之炊嘛。其实搞饭馆生意也不是等闲的，风险很大。由于生意冷淡，我曾经被迫关闭过饭馆去替人打工，一段日子后又搬迁到新的地方去，从新开张做生意。这样跑炮停停的，生活就像接力赛一样。我先后在英格兰的西北、中部的城镇呆过，活得非很自在。在英国的数十年中，我很少到别的国家去。二十年前我退休后，才有机会到外边去走走。自九十年代起，只要条件许可，我便回中国去看看，探访那边的亲朋戚友。我从小离家，一转眼几十年，家乡有的亲人还把我当作为富翁，头几次回家他们都向我要钱。其实我两袖清风，至今每天两顿饭还得靠政府的退休金。

 

我的两个孩子现都成了中年人了，各自有自己的家室，而且他们住在英格兰中部，我们并没有经常来往。逢年遇节，我的女儿或许给我挂个电话问安。他们不懂中文，他们的孩子更不用说了。在台湾，我还有一个弟弟，他是四十年代末期到那边去的。象我一样，他在那边挨了一辈子，到现在还是一无所有。我们自几十年前分手后至今一直未曾见面重逢，有几次夜深人静时他给我打来电话，两个老人百感交集，互相听得见对方抽泣的声音。

 

我近来身体大不如前，走起路来腿很容易生痛。前些时每逢天气暖和时，我便会自个儿公园里去溜达，现在连这样的基本享受也不是经常做得到。伦敦的华人社区大多数人说广东话，而我只会说英语、上海话和普通话，跟那里的老人们沟通也不容易。所以我也没有经常参加社区的活动，心里头倒是很闷，很孤独。有时我想，不如回老家去度过剩下的日子吧。但一想所需要的经费，又不得不取消这种念头。

 

Sixty Years in A Dream

 

 My real hometown is in Zhejiang Province, China. But we moved to Shanghai when I was small. For this reason I know Shanghai quite well; so I like to think myself as half a native Shanghai. Indeed I more or less see Shanghai as my hometown.

 

When I was about 15 or16 years old, I joined the Guomingdang army, and became a soldier under the wings of a then very well known general. Because our battalion kept moving around all the time, I got the chance to travel to lots of places. During the war against the Japanese invasion, we moved to the Guangxi, Yunnan region. Later because a small team of soldiers had to be sent for tank mechanics training in a field training camp set up by the Allied Forces in South Asia, I was chosen as one of the trainees as well. During those days, tanks were not actually very common in Chinese armies. So in a way we were the first Chinese soldiers to be trained abroad for this kind of skills. As a result, I became a tank mechanic, and later in the late1930s found myself landed in England where I was a migrant of sort. At that time, in England, finding work that allowed me to use my newly acquired skills was not easy at all, let alone I did not speak English when I first arrived. But then at the time there weren’t many Chinese around either. In order to survive, I had to work as a labourer, a kitchen worker, and then a porter in East London’s docklands. London’s East Docklands were a very busy port then, lots of big ships coming in and out all the time. My job as a porter was a hard one too. Luckily, I was young and quite strong, able to cope with all the hardship that came along. But still I had lots of problems: First since I did not speak English very well, I was not able to communicate easily with people around me. So for me the first few years here were not entirely a happy experience. Since there weren’t many Chinese anyway, finding a Chinese girl was almost impossible. After some setbacks I was able wed a local girl; and the marriage later brought us two children after some years. But good things don’t always last. Before long we separated. The separation caused me lots of headaches. I had done all I could to save the marriage but failed. Objection came from the other side.

 

I few years later I married again. I swapped between jobs and worked in a number of different places. But even so my work was always manual. Later I started a small catering business, thanks to the savings I had previously accumulated from my wages. Chinese restaurants then were very basic, very different from what you see today, and what was known as menu was even more basic. But since few people had ever had authentic Chinese food, we did not always have lots of people complaining about the tastes. What’s more, since there weren’t many Chinese vegetables then, we had to use tinned food for the dishes. Basically it is always impossible to prepare an authentic cuisine, regardless of the cook’s skill, if you haven’t got the stuff for it. Having said that, running a restaurant isn’t a plain-sailing business, there are always risks to take. Time and again I had to close down because of poor business, and then moved to some other place to start things from scratch. It was on and off like this that I survived through the years, a bit like a relay race. I have lived in various places in northwest England and the Midlands, but always in a hurry and facing some difficulty. I had lived in the UK for many years yet hardly had time to visit the European Continent. It was only until my retirement over 20 years ago that I began to take a break. Since the late 1980s, I began to visit my friends and relatives back in China whenever I had the means to do so. Since I left my hometown at a very young age, and since it had been such a long time ever since, some of my relatives back home like to think that I have money. So every time I visit them they would expect me to bring them something. What they never realize is that I don’t lots of savings. In fact I reply on my pensions for survival.

 

My two children are now middle-aged and each has their own family. They live in the north of England so we don’t get together very much. Occasionally during festival seasons my daughter would give me a call to check if I am alright. They don’t speak Chinese, let alone their children. I also have a younger brother in Taiwan, who moved there in the late 1940s. Like me, he remains basically a poor guy, after all these years. We have never met since parting decades ago. On a number of occasions, in the dead of night, he called me by phone. As we picked up the phone, all sorts of feelings welled in our hearts, and we both heard sobbing at the other end of the line.

 

My health is getting worse those days. I feel pain in my legs when I walk. Not long ago whenever the weather was fine, I would take a walk in the park, but now it has become difficulty as the result of the worsening situation. And since most older people in the Chinese community centres speak Cantonese, whereas I speak only English, Mandarin and the Shanghai dialect, communication with them can be a problem. So I don’t always join them there. As a result I feel rather lonely these days. Sometimes I would say to myself: Why not spend the rest of my life in Shanghai with my relatives. But when I realize that I must have lots of money to do this, I would quickly abandon the idea altogether.

 

                                                 (Wei Lin Chen)