Chapter 10 - by Intikhab Amir

“Superstition”

“If vision and good sense didn’t combine to make us pay attention, what then was the meaning of anything? Grandmama would have understood perfectly: signs and portents were her lifeblood. She had always said to her friend Mrs. Lim, “You only need to pay attention.”

Even after living in Canada for years Grandmother could not alter the way she thinks. She continues to believe in superfluous and false notions. Her strong beliefs in superstition leave sharp imprints on the minds of other family members. Among all, Sek hampers from the false notions the most. His close attachment with Poh-Poh leaves him with strong beliefs in ghosts and superstition. “My actually seeing Grandmama (after her death) on our staircase and in the hallway became the subject of debate in the family. No one wanted to believe me, though, no one really wanted to doubt me either, for the world of Chinatown was the world of what if…”

Sek’s family is not unique. Other Chinese families living in Vancouver’s Chinatown are imbued with superfluous notions and superstition: educated, young and old.

“Why is he (Sek) wheezing so much?” Father asked (from a herbalist). “Too much damp these days,” herbalist said, as if it were obvious. “Some children breathe like this until they grow up.” I was given an extract of powdered lotus leaf and eucalyptus oil, mixed with a honey base, to coat my throat. When Father asked about my seeing the Old One, the herbalist shrugged. “Is the boy hurting anyone?”

When she was alive, Grandmama had taught Sek that spirits and ghosts were everywhere because the Chinese were such an ancient people; so many Chinese people had died that there ten thousand million ghosts in Old China inhabited “the ways of the Han people.” Whether one was a peasant or royalty, Grandmama said, Old China people took it for granted that these ghosts lived constantly alongside them. They were mischievous spirits and frightening demons, these good and bad ghosts. They could upset, or bring into harmony, the yin and yang forces – the fung-suih, the wind-water elements that helped to balance our “hot” and “cold” natures.

The host culture cannot protect itself from the penetration of such false notions amidst persistent adherence to superstitious practices.