The China Coin Read online

  Puffin Books

  THE CHINA COIN

  ‘Leah shook her head … No, she wasn’t going home. She was just ducking into a strange and probably hostile country to finish what Dad had started …

  As Leah steps into China with her mother Joan, loaded with her father’s obsession about the blackened fragment of an ancient coin, Leah finds a vast and bewildering land. Everything is shifting. It’s a country of adventure, surprise and change. But it’s also 1989 – and while they both journey across China searching for the family they’ve never known, the students begin to march in their thousands. Something is happening – something that draws Leah and Joan slowly but surely towards the terror of Tiananmen Square …

  And what about the broken coin now? Will Leah ever find out its secrets?

  The China Coin was shortlisted for the 1992 Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, the 1992 SA Festival Award for Literature, the 1992 NSW State Literary Award and the 1993 Children’s Peace Literature Award. It has also been named a Children’s Book Council of Australia Notable Book 1992 and was winner of the 1992 Multicultural Children’s Literature Award.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Adrift

  Little Brother

  Riverman

  Eagle Island

  Megan’s Star

  Hero

  Mates

  Magician

  Songman

  Secrets of Walden Rising

  The Excuse

  Wreck

  Saving Abbie

  Foggy

  Imp

  Treasure Hunters

  A Taste of Cockroach

  Cat’s Mountain

  Krakatoa Lighthouse

  Picture Books

  Drac and the Gremlin

  (illustrated by Jane Tanner)

  Bawshou Rescues the Sun

  The Boss

  Castles

  (illustrated by Caroline Magerl)

  THE CHINA COIN

  Allan Baillie

  Puffin Books

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (Australia)

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Penguin Group (Canada)

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  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd

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  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Penguin Group (NZ)

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  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published by Penguin Books Australia, 1991

  Published by arrangement with Blackie and Son Ltd, Great Britain

  Published in Great Britain in 1991 by Blackie and Son Ltd

  7 Leicester Place, London WC2H 7BP

  Published in Puffin, 1992

  Copyright © Allan Baillie, 1991

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  puffin.com.au

  ISBN: 978-1-74-228382-1

  I wish to thank the many people in China and in Australia who have helped me write and check this book, often at risk to themselves.

  This work was assisted by a writer’s fellowship from the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s arts funding and advisory body.

  1 Coin

  Leah thought: Here I am, about to be sold into slavery in the lost mountains of China.

  The plane dipped a little.

  I am being taken to a village so primitive they file their teeth and eat meat raw. I have been kidnapped by an evil aunt, who flies a broom on a full moon …

  Leah felt a slight tightening in her throat and glanced at the woman sleeping beside her.

  Let’s stop frightening ourselves, all right? Enough, enough. Sorry, Mum – Joan. Was only kidding.

  Leah reached across and dipped into her mother’s bag for the ring box, opening it in her lap. She pulled out a piece of dark metal, no bigger than her thumb, and lifted it to the light.

  Don’t worry about Joan’s family hunt, just keep thinking how it was when Dad first laid his hands on this piece of metal. Before the grief and the madness. Before Mum had the letter translated, when they knew nothing about anything.

  ‘I tell you, this is something great, lass. A key, a treasure, a secret – who knows?’ And he sat on the couch turning the piece of metal, his eyes gleaming. At that moment Dad stopped being a car sales executive. He was Marco Polo, Indiana Jones, an adventurer with a priceless ruby from a lost city in his hands. You could feel the electricity in the room.

  Oh sure, it was not a ruby. It looked like a piece of blackened junk. It was half-round – no not even that, almost half-round – and it was sheered across its face, as if it had been chopped in two a long time ago. Indecipherable bumps and pits on one face, and a mystery on the other: a few raised lines, an angle jutting from the cut, a snake – if it was a snake – winding round a rod and three tall crosses.

  It was not a ruby, but Dad made them feel it was. That was what counted.

  And when Joan had the letter – the last letter from her father – translated, it was almost as good as a ruby. The piece of metal was half an ancient coin with a secret.

  The plane lurched, pitching the half-coin from Leah’s hand to the Chinese hostess coming down the aisle.

  ‘Rough weather.’ The hostess smiled as she passed the coin back to Leah.

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Leah gripped it.

  ‘Oh, it’s broken.’ The hostess looked over Leah’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s all right. It’s always been broken. At least since we’ve had it.’

  ‘It looks old, very old. Is it from China?’

  Leah nodded. ‘The other part of the coin is still in China – supposed to be.’

  ‘Ah, you’re coming home.’

  ‘I’ve never been in China before.’ Leah let a sliver of coldness slip into her voice. She’s looking at my hair, Leah thought. Not the rest of me.

  ‘Doesn’t matter, you’re coming home. Good luck.’ The seat belt lights blinked on and the hostess moved away.

  Leah shook her head. Couldn’t the woman see? She was not Chinese, not even an ABC – Australian born Chinese. Joan was Chinese, all right, but Dad, David Waters, had been English. Didn’t it show?

  She touched her cheek, as if to check that her freckles were still there.

  No, she wasn’t going home. She was just ducking into a strange and probably hostile country to finish what Dad had started. Simple as that. And Joan …

  The lights of Guangzhou slid out of the black and washed over Joan’s face.

  Leah was touched by a moment of uncertainty. She studied her sleeping mother, black hair wisped with grey, high cheekbones and the
lips pressed lightly together. A Chinese woman, but she was wearing a Swiss watch, a New Zealand blouse, an Australian skirt, English walking shoes, with an American magazine on her lap. And everyone thought she sounded English.

  Joan had been trying hard since the coin had arrived, but she just wasn’t Chinese. Not a real Chinese, not a China Chinese. Born in Penang, given her name after Saint Joan by the nuns in the convent in Singapore where she was educated. Moved to Sydney when she was still a teenager. No, Joan wasn’t going home to China. Definitely not.

  But that half-coin was pulling them both into China. Separately.

  For Joan the coin was the key to a lost family. She had not known these people existed before the coin, but now they had become all the family she had. She had to find them and Leah thought she understood that much. If that was all it was …

  They were all the family Leah had, but she wasn’t involved in that. Not really. Let Joan find her family. She was going for Dad.

  Long after the letter had been read, he’d been hunching over the coin, holding his glasses like a magnifying glass over it, nodding as if it was speaking to him. ‘Were you cut by a sword? Why? When? What do you mean? Do you signify some terrible conflict? What are you?’ Then he looked up at her. ‘Oh, we are lucky, lass. Most people inherit money. Poor people. When it’s gone there’s nothing left. But we inherit a mystery, a challenge. We must go. All of us. To find out the secret of the coin.’

  Dad was not here. The three were now two, but Dad’s last adventure did not have to be over. Not as long as there was someone around to keep it going …

  Leah turned the coin in her fingers as the plane bounced on the runway.

  Joan sighed awake. ‘In China, are we? Excited?’

  ‘Tired.’ Leah put the coin back in the ring box and was surprised to see a slight tremor in her hand.

  Joan caught the hand and squeezed it. ‘It won’t be so bad. You’ll see.’ But there was a tremor in her grip.

  The plane slowed and turned back to the terminal. The passengers shuffled into the aisles, swinging bags down from the overhead lockers. Leah clicked her seat belt off and stepped into the crush. A small man hit her on the head with a briefcase. A muttering woman lurched into her. Joan threw a bag at her and waved her off.

  The hostess smiled at her as she stepped toward the open door, and said: ‘Welcome home.’

  She hesitated and thought hollowly: They are waiting for you …

  Joan placed her hand on Leah’s shoulder and they stepped together into China.

  China was a bowl of warm porridge. Leah gripped the rail to stop herself from wafting away in the night. Nothing was solid. The gleaming steps rippled down to the grey tarmac. The rail dripped from her hand. Shadowy people snaked slowly past dead aircraft toward lights in the mist.

  ‘Our first discomfort.’ Joan smiled weakly. ‘There’ll be many more.’

  As she walked Leah stared at the Chinese characters on the walls of the terminal, alien and faintly menacing.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, but she was not sure whether she was talking to Joan or herself.

  Yes, you can read some of it. Those terrible eighteen months of Chinese study Joan shoved down your throat did some good. Says ‘Guangzhou’. ’Course it says Guangzhou. What else could it say, ‘You are going the wrong way’?

  The long line of people ballooned outside an open glass door and for a long time Leah shuffled very slowly forward. Joan alternated between sighing and clicking her tongue.

  Suddenly the watchful men in crisp army uniforms reached for their passports …

  Now we get arrested for carrying damaged currency.

  … the passports were stamped and they picked up their bags and walked into the street.

  Would you stop making a big drama out of everything!

  Joan ducked into a midnight bank and came out, counting crisp notes, and Leah drooped and dripped in the still air.

  A man with a tired face was talking to her in Chinese, something about a taxi. She pointed at Joan and was slightly alarmed when Joan changed gears, switching from the anxious suburban woman who wanted to be called ‘Joan’ instead of ‘Mum’ to a hunched shrew, babbling away in Chinese as if she had never known a word of English.

  Not Chinese, but Cantonese, and Joan was on her home ground. Chinese was putonghua, the national language by government decree, but it was apparently not spoken in Guangzhou.

  Joan was repeatedly banging her forefingers together to form an X.

  The taxi driver finally sighed and took Joan’s suitcase. Joan lifted her chin in triumph and followed the driver to his car. Leah flopped, a wet rag, into the back.

  Joan beamed at her. ‘Wanted me to pay him in American dollars. Then thirty yuan, but he’s doing it for ten. Thought I was a tourist.’

  They glided along a raised highway, past grimy old buildings with dim lights and windows opening on cramped little rooms, mouseholes to live in. But the taxi reached a silken river and a tall hotel with a cool lobby.

  And when they reached their room Leah could almost believe that she was still at home. Normal beds, telephones, TV, showers, toilets – everything was the same, except for the large thermos of hot water and the lidded cups for tea.

  Leah turned on the TV and walked to the window to look down on the river. The Pearl. Once upon a time British warships sailed out there and bombarded the city, so they could sell opium. When Guangzhou was Canton.

  Some of the edgy weariness washed from Leah’s face. History is dull, lifeless, when you read it half a world away, but when you’re here where the battle happened, it begins to breathe. Maybe it won’t be so bad …

  ‘That is better.’ Joan whirled out of the shower. ‘We are going to have a wonderful …’

  Leah turned into the room. Joan was standing in front of the TV, dripping on the carpet, crushing her hands into fists, staring at a small mob in an open space.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ Joan opened her hands and smiled too hard. ‘Someone’s died in Beijing and students are unhappy. Beijing is a long way away. It can’t possibly affect us.’ She nodded to herself and turned the TV off quickly.

  She rubbed her hands together and forced a smile. ‘How do you feel now? We’re in China!’

  2 China

  ‘Cantonese cuisine is the best in China – in the world! Eat, eat!’ Joan had been selling China to Leah from the moment they got up next morning. Now they were having yum-cha – a long procession of tit-bits and cakes – on the revolving restaurant on the top of the hotel.

  But Leah was taking her first look at China in daylight and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

  ‘Have a dumpling! Tell you what, we won’t even start to look for our village today. We’ll see what Guangzhou is like …’

  You can see what Guangzhou is like from here, Leah thought.

  Outside there was an endless panorama of muddy buildings: being built, being torn down or just glowering in the heat. The sky was still and grey and maybe it had been that way forever. Pearl River? It was a river of lead.

  ‘My mother talked a lot about the great city of Canton. River jammed with junks, always the smell of fish cooking …’ Joan was gazing, almost dreamily, over the city. ‘You see, Leah? We came from here …’

  Leah shifted uncomfortably. She had not thought much about Joan having a mother. Joan had been there, at the beginning, and that was that.

  They finished the yum-cha and walked across the road to stroll by the river, which did not get better.

  ‘Why did they call it the Pearl River, Joan?’ Leah said. ‘It’s dirty mud.’

  Joan made a face. ‘Maybe it was a pearl river once. A long time ago.’

  They watched rusty freighters creep past islands of low barges, ferries working the current, a lone fisherman standing on a small rowboat with a net on a long pole.

  Leah noticed a few young women looking curiously at her. Always looking up at her. I am a giant, she though
t.

  Before the coin the Chinese were them, the intense students, the restaurant waiters, with their stumbling, flat English. Friends said that she sounded like Crocodile Dundee whenever she talked to them, to make sure they understood she was a local. Now she was in China she wanted to pass as one of them, so they wouldn’t stare at her, but they were still them and she was a giant.

  A man spat at the footpath as he passed. A squatting youth waved a bone and a striped fragment of fur at the man. The man waved the youth back and moved away.

  ‘What – ’

  ‘Change money? Change money?’ A furtive man in a gleaming blue shirt was talking to Joan out of the side of his mouth while he was staring at the striped foot.

  Obviously a spy, Leah thought smugly. Wanting money for his microfilm.

  The man in the blue shirt made another offer and Joan looked a little interested, but not enough.

  Just a minute, this was for real!

  Joan was actually getting involved in some sort of crime. A policeman could step out from behind a tree and haul her away …

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘Shutup.’

  The man in the blue shirt made a final offer and Joan nodded at the fisherman. The man in the blue shirt pulled a lot of notes from his pocket, apparently tens. Joan shook her head and began to walk way. The man called softly at her back and pulled more notes from another pocket, this time fifties. Joan accepted the money and motioned the man away while she counted it. She then motioned Leah close and gave her some of the money she had changed last night. Far less than Joan had received and the notes were different.

  ‘Now you give that to the man. I don’t want him anywhere near my bag. Don’t wave it around.’

  Leah stepped stiffly to the man and pushed the notes forward. ‘All right?’ She said in Cantonese.

  The man looked up in slight surprise, then smiled. He moved away without glancing at the money.

  ‘That was illegal, wasn’t it?’ Leah hissed as they walked past the youth with the animal bone.

  Joan nodded happily. ‘We did all right there. He tried to catch us with the old little-note trick. You can’t count the little notes and he was going to make sure you couldn’t count them right.’