for head prefect before my departure.
Being able to express yourself in your native tongue imparts a confidence that you can’t appreciate until you have been parachuted into a place where you barely understand a word. Back in Hong Kong I had it all together—fearlessly ready to conquer the world each day. Each morning I’d show up early for school in my neatly ironed uniform, proudly displaying my prefect patch on my lapel. I was like a little hall monitor, and I wasn’t afraid to confront troublemakers, even ones from a higher grade. Although there was the odd person who didn’t like me that much, they still had to show me some respect because of my title. Generally I was liked by my fellow students, and, I have to admit, between the popularity and the fact that I was an only child on whom my parents doted, I had a bit of a swollen head. My parents tended to heap praise on me for my every achievement, which eventually turned me into an overconfident brat.
But that world came to a rapid demise after we moved to Vancouver. I was now a victim of culture shock, just another one of thousands of clueless Asian kids trying to figure out how to be in a place that had an entirely different set of rules. Despite the fact that there were lots of kids in my situation, I felt totally alone. My support network had bid me a final farewell at Hong Kong International Airport. In this new land, nobody knew who I was, and no one particularly cared.
As I mentioned, the language barrier was a big blow to the precocious Poon ego. Nothing that I said would come out smoothly, and every English-speaking listener would ask me to repeat it three or four times. It was completely debilitating—all of this social isolation was simply because my first language was Cantonese. The part that quietly irritated me the most was that my teachers would treat me like a kindergartener and give me Walt Disney books for homework—all this in front of the class. The other kids would snicker while I died the same thousand deaths many other Asian immigrant kids had died before me. Only, I did not know any of my fellow martyrs, so I just swam around in my tears and felt pity for myself.
Even choosing my clothes was a big deal. In Hong Kong I wore a uniform, but in Canada I had to pick my own outfits five days a week. Even this small task intimidated me. Bosco Poon, former grade six socialite, graduates to the status of mute loner. Even though eventually I strived to maintain really good marks in school, I still couldn’t completely adapt to the Western culture. I was desperately homesick for my former life.
_______
Everything changed the day I met Blade in the English as a Second Language (ESL) class in senior high. He was about my height (which is kinda short) and came from Hong Kong, just like I did. He was built like a tank and had a big black dragon tattoo on his right arm. Against the backdrop of quiet, demur, studious-looking Asian immigrants, Blade really stood out. I watched him interact with his friends. They were all pretty cool looking: stylish clothes, edgy haircuts, and boisterous confidence.
Even though Blade had a strong Cantonese accent, like I did, the Caucasian kids didn’t laugh at him. They actually seemed to respect him. Wherever he walked, he was flanked by at least two guys—like a pair of bodyguards but without the earpieces and billy clubs. Blade exuded authority. It seemed to me that Blade had all the elements of the formula–and whatever he had, I wanted it! Quietly, over the course of a few weeks, Blade became my role model.
Despite all the social turmoil, my grades were good, and I was actually excelling in school. In fact, I was on the honour roll and remained there from Grade 9 up until the second semester of Grade 11. That was the point when Blade and his friends fully brought me under their wings. In addition to the cool factor, Blade offered me something very practical: protection from the bullies. I got to take advantage of the bodyguard types.
One of the many reasons for my intrinsic trust of him is that we both spoke Cantonese—I knew he understood all the things that I had gone through during the prior three years. This created a special bond between us. I started to hang out with him and his friends at the smoke pit, and then after school we would go to the arcade. Recognizing that I lacked a certain je ne sais quoi in the fashion department, they dyed my hair blond—well, that kinda orangey blond that dark-haired people get when they use peroxide. Then they took me to the mall for their impromptu version of What Not to Wear. They were systematically purging me of my nerdiness like some kind of upside-down version of My Fair Lady. House parties, rave parties, hip-hop, cigarettes, booze, weed, and ecstasy.
Twelve months later, the old Boz was gone, and the new Boz was suddenly surrounded by friends of all nationalities. And, at long last, girls finally started to show an interest, and just about everyone at school was treating me like someone who mattered. I was no longer an immigrant geek. The formula had worked. Though it had taken longer than I anticipated, I had successful engineered my social life back to something I was happy with, with the help of Blade and his friends.
While my social life was soaring, what with all the partying and dating, my marks were really tanking. Not surprisingly, my parents, being Asian parents, were doing the usual Asian-parent-flip-out about getting into university and becoming a professional. Professional was a secret code word for any one of the following: doctor, lawyer, accountant, businessman—in order of relative importance.
They warned me over and over about my friends, who were never going to amount to anything, and begged me to get serious about my studies. “Son, birds of a feather flock together. You are who you hang around with. Those friends of yours are no-good company. Look at your marks, and look at your hair! You’ve changed for the worse! Wake up, please. Don’t waste your time on useless things.” My mom cried every time I headed outside to party.
“Blah blah blah. Whatever, Mom. I know my future ain’t becoming a boring nerdy accountant like you always wanted me to become. I hold my own future, not you, not Dad, not anyone else! I’m heading to my future right now as I speak: to live LIFE!” I would slam the front door as I stormed out of my house in anger.
Naturally, I ignored them and proceeded to spend every weekend partying and getting high with friends from all over the city. Popularity was no longer a problem. When it came to the decision to pursue my grades or my social life, I always chose the latter. I kept hanging out with the same gang of guys, and I was very content to do so. But as time passed, I understood more and more that it was not just a gang of guys; it was actually a gang.
That fall, Blade revealed to me that he was a member of an Asian gang called the Cat-Walk, a branch of a well-known local organization called the Lotus. For reasons inscrutable to me at the time, he made a decision to introduce me to his boss, Fury, a local underground Chinese boxer. He was one of the very few Asians who could hold their own in the underground boxing tournaments that went on in British Columbia. The tournaments were really just an excuse for illegal gambling—like dog fights or cock fights. Fury’s followers were bidding high money on him every time he was in a match. At the time I figured Blade just wanted to show me how much he trusted me.
It never gets terribly cold in the fall in Vancouver. It’s not like other parts of Canada. Most of the trees here are evergreens, so we don’t have the beautiful fall colours of the east. But in the city parks, isolated stands of deciduous trees create the familiar sound of dry leaves crackling in the breeze before they are shaken free and drift to the ground, blanketing walking trails and filling them with the scent of their gradual return to the earth.
It was a typical fall day, an overcast Friday afternoon, when Blade decided to fill me in on the details of his extracurricular activities.
The car speakers were blasting hip-hop. I was crammed into the back seat of a white two-door Mustang GT. Blade was in the front passenger seat, having a cigarette, flicking the ashes out the window intermittently, as another friend drove us down Barnet Highway. We were on our way to the headquarters of Lotus. Gradually the scenery of the North Shore mountains was swallowed by the concrete of Vancouver’s east end, the griminess of the downtown east side, and eventually Chinatown. We parked on
