With a skip, I follow my brothers and sister down the dirt driveway and see small, squat one-room houses with walls made of mud bricks and tile roofs. Where are the paved streets? Where are all the people?
I learn that the “village” is just a hodgepodge of twenty-five or so buildings, a couple of two-story “modern” tiled houses where the more well-off villagers live, a few ancient fishermen’s houses like ours, and a row of one-room mud shacks with tar-paper roofs. There are no roads, so each house sits where the owner chose to put it generations ago and is connected to other village houses by dirt paths formed by foot traffic over the years.
There is no zoning, street planning, building codes, or even title deeds. More than a hundred years ago (there are no records), the Chinese fishermen or pirates (depending on your point of view) built their huts on this patch of neglected land with narrow three-foot-wide paths to and between the houses. Their late-twentieth-century descendants live much the same way, happy to be ignored by the outside world. The village doesn’t have city water, electricity, sewage, or garbage collection. Most villagers scavenge electricity by running illegal wires through the jungle to power lines on the main road to Coloane Village, the only town on Coloane Island. Our nearest small shop is at Hac Sa beach, a ten-minute walk down the dirt road.
Unlike our village, Coloane Village, which is a fifteen-minute bus ride from Hac Sa beach, is a real town with streets, a small government doctor’s office, and a market with stalls and tiny shops on a lane too narrow for cars. A Portuguese Catholic church holding a finger bone relic of Saint Xavier sits on a cobblestone square lined by Chinese restaurants. A large primary and high school and Macau’s prison are only a few blocks away.
We trail my father like ducklings around our new neighborhood. I see a few gnarled, elderly villagers staring at us suspiciously and hear men and women alike scream at each other between their houses in true fishwife tradition. Cantonese doesn’t have the smooth melody of Mandarin, which is considered the language of the emperors. It is the harsh language of Southern China—high, low, sharp, guttural, squeaky. Every other word is a swear word, which my brothers are gobbling up with glee.
Some of the larger houses have three generations residing together, so there are some Chinese kids for us to wave shyly at, but unlike us, they attend school in Coloane during the day. There are few young adults. Any young person with a lick of ambition or love of creature comforts moves to Macau.
I spot leafy bok choy in rows and bean vines tied to sticks in small, scattered vegetable patches behind the houses. Weeds grow wild—big elephant ears, long stalks of dandelions and others I don’t recognize line the dirt paths.
But among all the vibrant, lush flora, there is trash everywhere. No matter where I look: Coke cans, candy wrappers, shreds of plastic bags, Styrofoam lunch boxes, decomposing cardboard boxes, rusted nails, twisted wires. A mountain of this garbage sits in an open space in front of the houses where the dirt path enters the village.
“There is no garbage collection here,” I hear my father saying. “The people just throw their garbage out the windows or onto that big dump in the field. Praise the Lord, we will clean it up and show them a good sample of cleanliness.” Grandpa teaches that we must always be good examples of Bible virtues even as we preach them. My father seems excited to have such a challenging place to prove himself.
I overhear Mommy Esther nervously whisper to him, “There aren’t really pirates still here in these outer villages, are there?”
“Of course not. I’m sure that’s just a rumor. But Centurion did once tell me that the police won’t come out here for fear their cars will be smashed by the villagers, who don’t want any outsiders interfering.”
Centurion is our code name for our friend Alfonso, who is the chief of the Portuguese police force in Macau. He is nicknamed after the centurion in the Bible, a Roman official who was friendly to Jesus. Family members are encouraged to befriend local authorities and powerful people who can provide protection when persecution inevitably comes, and evil people lie about us to stop God’s work. My parents have made many friends in the few years we have been here, several high up in the government. We often give them code names for security reasons, so they cannot be identified by an eavesdropper listening to a casual conversation. We want to protect those who protect us.
My father lowers his voice so we kids won’t hear. I lean closer to Mommy Ruthie, pretending to ignore them but listening intently. “Apparently, there was a bloody fight a few years back between the police and some villagers, and some people were killed. So the government, in typical laid-back Portuguese style, just ignores them. Of course, that means they have no municipal services like water or garbage collection. Hac Sa is the most isolated village on Coloane,” my father crows, very pleased with himself for discovering it. “No outsiders ever come here, not even Chinese. It’s a perfect place for us to lay low. Praise the Lord!”
Our extreme secrecy, it turns out, is less about my father’s fear of bad publicity and more about not wanting reporters or people from the Catholic Church making our acceptance harder by spreading lies about weird sexual practices or drugs, like they usually do.
My father’s legs bounce like bedsprings as he pulls me down the red dirt path by my hand, my short legs running to keep up. “Praise the Lord! God has provided, and He will protect us. We just need to be a good sample of God’s love!” he repeats, then casts a look over his shoulder to Esther and the boys. His attention is drawn like a missile to trouble, his eyes narrowing on Josh and Bones, who are squabbling. “Boys!” The sharp bark freezes them mid-sentence. Then the threatening grimace splits into a grin as one of our new neighbors passes. Offering a cheery wave, he calls out, “Jo san!” in Cantonese. “Faithy, smile and wave!” He pinches my shoulder, and I reflexively obey.
The man pauses in his slow shamble to stare. Thin legs and arms stick out from his graying shorts and singlet. Sun-browned skin grips his bones like the wizened bark of a manzanita tree. After a long stare, he gives an imperceptible nod and moves on.
Ever positive, my parents are buoyed by this slight sign of recognition, but the road to acceptance is long and bumpier than a bike on cobblestones.
2
Watch Out for Snakes