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“Hi, my name is Andrew Kwong. I’m reading from my recently finished work “Snake Business”. A memoir of surviving Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
It all began in the summer of 1955, when I was leaving home for the first time in my life. Like the previous few summers that I can remember, it was hot. The unrelenting sun bore down overhead, baking everything in its reach, sucking up the water from the vast Pearl River delta where we lived, and turning it into muggy dampness to compensate for the rising heat. I reached out and grabbed a handful of fine moisture in my palm and squeezed out little droplets; and marvelled at the magic that life could bring.
‘Ah, the life juice of our universe,’ my father would say with a sigh. ‘Fortunately we are blessed with plenty of it since time began.’ A spark of hope flickered in his eyes but I could also feel his concern as how the family could carry on in a revolution that continued to take its toll.
Typhoons brought in heavy rains from the South China Sea along with high tides. The rivers swelled with the melting snow far, far away inland where many rivers originated in our country. Floods raged through our town yet again, submerging the low-lying landscape for weeks, transforming it into a colossal sea of muddy yellow waters. Then the floods would retreat and life would go on as before. The smell of mud hung in the air for days at a time. Rustic and earthy, some people said, accepting the inevitable turn of seasons and at the same time trying to find reasons for their changed fortunes under the new government. We felt close to the bosom of nature and its rhythms of life, but helpless in facing the many revolutionary campaigns.
Seasons came and went, with songs of the big river nearby pulsating through our life like lifeblood pumping from the heart of a continent exhausted from decades of fighting and hardship, yet refusing to give in.”
ABOUT ANDREW Y M KWONG:
Andrew was born in China and has called Australia home since 1969, after surviving Mao’s Great Leap Forward, Great Famine and the Red Guards chaos. He lives and practises as a family physician on the central coast of NSW.
“I recently finished my major writing project of ten years, Snake Business, a memoir of surviving Mao’s Great Leap Forward. This would not have been possible until I spent a Professional Development Week at Varuna in 2010 where I found my voice to tell my story effectively with the help of Carol Major; and a subsequent Varuna Writing Retreat Fellowship in February this year with Peter Bishop who reassured me that a good story takes a long time to write. The magic of Varuna lingers.” Andrew Y M Kwong
PUBLICATION:
• A short story, “Snake Business”, in an anthology, Fear Factor Terror Incognito by Picador India 2009 and Picador Australia 2010
• Seven short stories in Medical Observer, a weekly medical publication, and
• Two short stories and a Haiku in Peacock Mosaic, an Internet literary publication.
• “Snake Business” under a different title (“Another Kind of Struggle”) was short-listed in this year’s Penguin Varuna Development Scholarship competition.
• Short story “Rose Petal Path” accepted for the Indian-Australian anthology Alien Shores. Scheduled for publication by Brass Monkey Books in Australia in May 2012.
CONTACT:
drakwong@gmail.com
041 226 5590
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I love the suggestion of things unmentionable below the facade of everyday life and its cycles.
I looking forward to reading your book.
Thank you Marita. I am delighted that you feel the undercurrent and the images that are to unfold, a leaf at a time like a lotus flower, into the river of life.
Andrew Kwong
This story gripped me by the throat. Images of survival and love. Young boys fly kites and dream of dragon boat races while fathers sell their bodies so that their families may eat. A mother cuts her son’s image from a family photo to paste onto a document that will allow him to flee. She will not be able to follow.
Such a generous tale of what it was like to survive Mao’s Great Leap Forward through taking a leap yourself. The boy is only 12 years old. As a man he looks back on these years but is not bitter. He seeks to understand.
Thank you Carol for helping me find my voice to tell my story effectively without bitterness, anger and hatred; in that sense, I have made my own great leap forward to embrace life and humanity.
This is a beautiful piece and can’t wait to read the book when it is published – and it will be.
Captivatingly descriptive and so emotive! I feel like I’m standing next to you on the Pearl River delta, experiencing the oppressive heat first hand.
Thank you for sharing this reading, Andrew. I am privileged to have read your manuscript and I am longing to recommend your published memoir to friends. The unpredictable forces and cycles of nature are captured here in all of its inevitable power, beauty and oppression. Beating beneath the natural forces are the artificial forces of ignorance, power and corruption that are far more deadly and evil. In this piece it is barely perceivable, but there is underlying menace. Or why would you be leaving? At six years old? And despite being utterly disempowered, the resilience and inventiveness within compel that little boy to trust and leave without question.
I understand without any doubt why under-aged asylum seekers are heading our shores today. Thank you Wendy for the heartfelt comments.
It has been a privilege to read your story of your family’s courage and hope in the face of senseless, horrific hardship and persecution. The love and sacrifice that shines through is a testament to the best of human nature from a family dealing with some of the worst. To take such searing personal experience and turn it into a compelling narrative is a tremendous achievement. A book that I sincerely hope will be widely read.
Andrew,
Congratulations. Great beginning and introduction to a very moving story of one family’s struggles and triumphs. I am honored to have been your friend from the beginning and to have share some of your early adventures in China and Hong Kong. I can’t wait to read the entire book.
Sammy “The Flea” Ng
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