金斯顿五剑客的寻偶之旅

This Mr. Lee — Lee Yam-yin, Norman Lee — has a story much like Howard Lee’s. He too is from Taishan in Guangdong, born in 1930, now ninety-six and in remarkable health, with a clear and sharp mind. He too left his hometown for Hong Kong during the turbulent years around 1949, by which time he had already finished junior high; in 1952 he emigrated from Hong Kong to Canada, sponsored by his father, who was by then already living here.

But he came to North America by plane — unlike Howard, who endured more than twenty days tossing about on the open sea. Air tickets were said to be very expensive at the time, some eight hundred dollars. He too came straight to Kingston, since his father had already settled in town.

English Classes at Victoria School

Back then he could not speak English either. Fortunately he had the chance to attend a public school — Victoria School, which stood on the site that later became Kingston’s well-known KCVI. He studied English there for about a year and a bit. In his class of twenty-odd students there were five Chinese, all newly arrived Chinese immigrants, and that gave him a foundation — enough, at least, to communicate with people.

Afterwards he worked at the Royal York restaurant, which we mentioned last time. In those years Kingston’s restaurant trade was not yet well developed; there were perhaps eight or nine Chinese restaurants, and no other kind of Asian eatery existed at all. Norman worked as a waiter for many years, then went into partnership with a few others to open a restaurant, toiling all the while in the food business; opening a restaurant of course meant taking out loans and borrowing money, but hard work paid off in the end — frugal and diligent, helping one another along, the Chinese always managed to find a way to get by.

The Five Musketeers Go Back to Hong Kong for Wives

In those days most of the Chinese immigrants who came to Canada like him were single men. So in 1957 the five of them organized a trip back to Hong Kong together to look for spouses, and fortunately Kingston’s “Five Musketeers” all succeeded in finding their other halves in Hong Kong. Norman’s new bride was also from Taishan (sadly she has since passed away).

About a year later this wife-seeking expedition lived up to expectations and came home with their wives, and these Chinese families began to put down roots in the auspicious soil of Kingston — marrying, raising families, branching out, and settling in for good.

Forty Years at the Sun Restaurant

Norman ran restaurants in Kingston throughout his life. In the Kingston of that time (the fifties and sixties), apart from Chinese and Western fare there were very few other kinds of restaurants, and none of the chain fast-food outlets that now make up half the food business. The trade was not as cut-throat as it is today, but it was still very hard work — back then the Chinese restaurants served everything from breakfast to dinner, and most of it was a mix of Chinese and Western dishes.

Running a restaurant in those days was exhausting. As he recalls, incomes in the trade were very low; tips were about twenty-five cents or seventy-five cents, and in a week one might earn around twenty-five to thirty-five dollars.

Later he opened a place of his own, the Sun Restaurant — now the Sun Flower restaurant. His restaurant had no liquor licence and sold no alcohol, and it rarely took on large catering orders such as birthday parties or wedding banquets. The income was modest but enough to live on. He and his wife ran it together, kept at it for forty years, seldom hired anyone, and the restaurant had no holidays.

Of course prices in general were also very low back then, and people’s incomes were low too, so by comparison it was still fairly easy to make a living in the food trade. What is more, the broader environment in Kingston and across Canada was good, and society was orderly — although the Chinese had little dealing with the government, the government did not oppress its people, and social services were always reasonably available. After the 1970s, when the multiculturalism policy came in, immigrant communities were increasingly encouraged both to keep their own traditions and to take an active part in Canadian society. But because his restaurant kept him so busy, Norman rarely joined in community activities, and had no time even for gatherings of the Chinese community.

A Single Heir for Three Generations

His son was born in 1967, and later became an electronics engineer with the federal government. The Lee family is an interesting one — going back to his father’s generation, they have had a single heir for three generations, without the large families of many children and grandchildren that so many Chinese immigrants had; happily, his son has a six-year-old boy (Norman’s grandson) to bring him joy in his later years.

A Lifetime in Kingston

What is striking is that most of these older Chinese immigrants made their living in the service trade, and were extremely diligent and frugal. Take an elderly man like Norman: in decades he never once changed jobs, his social circle stayed fixed, he took no holidays, and he had no hobbies — no sports, no pastimes such as mahjong. He hardly ever travelled, and never went back to Hong Kong or the mainland, living his whole life in Kingston. In his working years he put in at least six days a week, more than ten hours a day, and had no other interests beyond watching Cantonese television programs.

But his health is excellent — at ninety-six he still gets about with ease. He says he never expected to live so long, since so many of his friends have already gone on to heaven. Yet he still lives quite independently.

Mr. Lee keeps to very traditional habits. He uses cash for almost everything, does not use credit cards, and has no smartphone; his son once bought him a mobile phone, but his friends are either gone or there is no one for him to call, so the phone is of no use to him. Norman does not drive — he gets around mostly by bicycle, and even after retiring in his eighties he still cycled out to collect his rents, for he has four rental properties.

It should be said that it is not as though he never had other opportunities, but he simply never wished to choose a different way of life. That generation of Chinese lived very frugally — the money they scraped together through their hard labour went mostly into buying real estate, such as houses.

A Witness to Historical Change

Mr. Lee’s children took little part in his restaurant work, but they can speak Cantonese and are now very devoted to him — not only caring for him but sometimes taking him out for a change of scene, which is probably one of the more satisfying things about his later years. Mr. Lee lives simply, has no bad habits, and enjoys a long and healthy life; though he is not especially talkative, his mind is very clear — for instance, his memory of how the “Five Musketeers” went back to Hong Kong together to look for partners, those five men he remembers perfectly clearly.

And of course, in the Kingston of the fifties and sixties the Chinese were very few in number, so they all knew one another. A city like Kingston had long been predominantly of white European descent, with a very small Asian population; as he recalls, not only were the Chinese few, but Japanese, Korean, and Filipino people were fewer still.

Kingston’s old demographic setting is almost completely unlike the makeup of its population today — and from the perspective of Chinese immigration, Norman Lee is a witness to Kingston’s historical change.