Book of the Dead

Occasionally, my father took me to the electronics factory where he worked (and co-owned with a couple business partners) on weekend, when I was about eight or ten. I hated it. I never told him, but my grumpy early morning was partly redeemed by the ferry ride. I enjoyed the cool sea breeze in an otherwise suffocating city; I liked the sights, sounds, and smell of the fishmongers, snack stalls, newsstand, booksellers at the North Point Ferry Pier; I found the scenery and weather at that time of the day very pleasant, and I loved the breakfast he always ordered for me, and sometimes for himself too: an overcooked rubbery fried egg on top of equally overcooked generic ramen noodle—so badly done that the noodle become quite soggy when served—in a white Styrofoam bowl. It was the vessel floating on the sea that made the noodle floating on the soup interesting. It is perhaps Proustian nostalgia that motivated me to tell you all these. Even if there are still ferries crisscrossing that part of the harbor, and there is definitely no more food served on the lower deck, and my father has also become a thing of the past. I have moved on, and my memories of him have faded precipitously.

The ferry ride was the high point of the day, and everything went downhill once I stepped foot on the Kowloon side. I loved reading when I was young, and of course, the Japanese anime on television, such as Galaxy Express 999 銀河鉄道 999 and the Mysterious Cities of Gold 太陽の子エステバン, and good old fashioned goofing off covered the bulk of my day, since I only went to school half a day. I was upset with my father because I did not understand what was the point of “helping out” at the production line. As he usually asked me to do very easy tasks, such as feeding the circuit boards to the machine rinsing them with various chemicals, or counting and wrapping the finished boards, my help was just a drop in a bucket. The day monotonous, the facility dusty and filthy, and worst of all, the work noxious and exhausting. I was also old enough to understand how capitalism worked. If my dad co-owned the plant, didn’t that mean his responsibilities were to hire and supervise the wage laborers, and make sure the production line run smoothly? In other words, how could he, I wondered, discharge his duties while working as a laborer himself, and why didn’t he just hire more workers to do the job? Also, I was the underage laborer all but in name only. Why couldn’t I just stay home and read, which I happened to like?

I do not remember how many times I wish my father were a teacher or a college professor, so also I needed to do was to read, and, if he let me, watch cartoons on an adventure trip either to a faraway galaxy or the mysterious cities of the Inca Empire. What was the point of doing this pointless manual labor, I thought. All this capitalism business is about not doing the labor when you have the capital. While I think I was rather analytically astute, as far as an eight year old goes, to raise these questions and resent being put in such situation, I entirely missed “the point.” It was not even about my father wanting to teach me a certain work ethics through hands-on experience. He might, or might not, and I will never know. Only now I understand he made me spend the day in the factory because he wanted to spend more time with me.

An eight year old could not do much. But my father, in charge of the production line, would have been remiss if the production was not on schedule, or led to cost overruns. Hong Kong’s economy was booming at a breakneck rate in most of the years I grew up as a kid or teenager, and it was difficult to find dependable worker to fill the positions even I learned to hate. The factory was definitely under capacity, and if he assigned more shifts he could have violate a handful of labor laws. Who would want an unpleasant blue collar job, when the service industry paid as much, if not more, money. He would not miss family day or a day of rest if he did not have to, and, who would be stupid enough to work when all the work would be completed early and below cost? When he had to be there to do what he could have hired someone to do it, he took me along to bring the “family day” to his workplace. I reminded him what he was working for.

I am willing to trade anything to relive another Sunday of factory work. I would wake up in the early morning, and rush that unsavory ramen noodle into my mouth as the ferry begins to berth, with you by my side. I miss you, dad. Rest in peace.

Book of the Dead, originally uploaded by Taekwonweirdo.

Galaxy Express 999:

The Mysterious Cities of Gold: