A dissatisfactory yearend V

On hearing “Hey, Nia,” street gambling bosses knew something was wrong. Although they were sure the police tacitly allowed them to open roadside gambling joints temporarily during the New Year holiday, they had to be careful. They and the people who crowded to play for money fled in a stampede before the advancing police officer. The commotion, on the other hand, made Zha Daren suspect that a crime was being committed in the vicinity. But when he came nearer, the crowds had already dispersed. There was no one there except a couple of kids who were eyeing enviously all the coins and implements of gambling left by the gamblers and gambling bosses as they had fled in haste. So Zha Daren got hold of a boy and asked jokingly, “Hey, ginna, who was gambling?”**

Zha Daren's stentorian voice could have a baby crying at night stop crying. Of course, the kid he took hold of was scared. Everybody knew the only one way a scared boy expressed his emotion. He cried, cried, and cried. Unfortunately, however, the sobbing boy came across a Zha Daren who hated a crying kid in particular. He used to say crying is a call for help by the weak, a prayer by a good-for-nothing, or a meanest act on the part of anybody that insults humanity, truly a loss of face by the first class people (like the Japanese).*** The police officer slapped the sobbing kid in an attempt to educate him, commanding “Be silent! I forbid you to cry!” “Who were gambling?” the cop then asked the boy, who stopped crying the moment he had been slapped. Surreptitiously, the child touched his a-little-swollen lips with the back of a hand.

*Nia (你仔) is a derogatory name of a Han Chinese while the Japanese ruled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. Hosei (保正) was the head of a group of about 100 households to help the police maintain law and order during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. The head of the group was chosen from among its senior members, but the choice was subject to approval by the Japanese county officials and the police. The system worked well in a society where reverence for the head of a patriarchal family had traditionally been the basis of social morality and order. If there occurred criminal offenses in a neighborhood, all the members of the group would be held jointly responsible. This system was instrumental in ferreting out criminals, in performing various police functions, and in implementing communal tasks.

**Ginna (囝仔) is a Hoklo word for “boy.” Japanese police officers were taught a few Hoklo key words to perform their duties.

***Japan considered the Han Chinese in Taiwan their nationals, who were theoretically first class people like their Japanese colonial masters but in fact remained less than the second rate citizens like the Rykyuans in the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa. The Chinese in Taiwan, however, were treated a little better than the Koreans, who were Japanese subjects from 1910 to 1945.

The Lai He Fiction serialization, sponsored by the Council for Hakka Affairs, is provided by the Central News Agency.

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