Throwback Thursday: ‘The Red Tiger’ by Chuck Lim

Vancouver: March 1937

Canton Alley was decrepit in winter. All of Pender Street was. The main road through Vancouver’s Chinatown — just over the trolley tracks, though an archway in the heart of an eight-story, pagoda-gabled building — was where rows of rickety wooden buildings stood home to hundreds of bachelor men, crammed by the dozen into single boarding house rooms. They were as dreary as the interminable Vancouver drizzle: the rooms, the buildings, the men. 

On the corner of Pender and Carrall streets, across from the Bank of Vancouver and the Peking Chop Suey House, was a two-story brick building with cracked plaster cornices. Saplings grew in the mossy undergrowth of the corduroys on the red pantile roof. A neon sign hung above the door, trimmed in yellow with red letters: “Jack Fan’s Tai Shan Emporium.” Another sign with hand-painted letters was taped in the window: “I Buy Watches.” 

Jack sat hunched over a jeweller’s bench in the back room of his shop. The main room was filled with an eclectic assortment of imported goods: furniture, decorative accoutrements, ceramic kitsch hocked to tourists — all items that had once fetched a premium on Pender before the Depression had taken a toll on the import business. He now found himself fixing watches to supplement his modest income. Fan charged his customers a dollar to clean a watch. It would take him about an hour, but he’d say it took three so he could charge a little more. 

Fan held a loupe between his cheek and brow, and a pair of forceps between his thumb and forefinger. He kept watch guts in a white ashtray beside a dish of benzene. Every so often, Fan took a long lungful of the stuff. Intoxicated by the aromatic vapours, he’d gaze across to the bank, then down Carrall Street along the harbour to the dim and distant mountains. In this light delirium, he’d think of his son, Kim-fei. 

As he replaced a balance cock, he heard someone enter his shop. Footsteps crossed the floorboards and stopped at the front counter. Fan cleared his throat loudly while eyeing the stock of the shotgun he kept under his workbench. He placed the balance cock in the ashtray, laid down his forceps, dropped the loupe into his cupped hand, and made sure his workspace was in order before stepping out into the shop. He paused in the doorway as he caught sight of the man at the counter. It was strange: what gave Fan such pause?

The stranger wore hand-sewn canvas pants and a tweed suit vest over a dirty, white button-down shirt. The man’s long and thinning hair was tied behind his head in a tight bun. Though his features were coarse, there was something youthful underlying that coarseness, his face lined beyond its years. Fan thought he had seen him before — perhaps in the Alexander, or passing by the window on Pender. It was clear the man needed money. Best to approach him with politeness, he thought; the shotgun was under the workbench if he needed it. 

Fan greeted the stranger in Mandarin. The man replied in Cantonese, nervously, choking to find the right words. He explained that he was out of work, but felt fortunate to be in Vancouver. He said his name was Red Tiger.