Kiam-Kim is three years old when he arrives by ship at Gold
Mountain with his father and his grandmother, Poh-Poh, the Old One.
It is 1926, and because of famine and civil war in China, they have
left their village in Toishan province to become the new family of
Third Uncle, a wealthy businessman whose own wife and son are dead.
The place known as Gold Mountain is Vancouver, Canada, and Third
Uncle needs help in his large Chinatown warehouse. Canada''s 1923
Chinese Exclusion Act forces them, and many others, to use false
documents, or ghost papers, to get past the ''immigration demons''
and become Third Uncle''s Gold Mountain family.
This is the beginning of" All That Matters, the eagerly anticipated
sequel to Wayson Choy''s bestselling first novel, The Jade Peony.
The author takes us once again to the Vancouver of the 1930s and
1940s to follow the lives of the Chen family, this time through the
experiences of First Son, Kiam-Kim, whose childhood and adolescence
in a strict but caring Chinatown family is at once strange and
familiar to us.
Like many families around them, they must survive in unsavoury
surroundings. Since the closing down of the railroad work camps,
Chinatown is filled with unemployed labourers who live in poor
rooming-houses. Sea winds fill the rooms with acrid smoke from the
mills and refineries of False Creek, and freight trains shake their
windows at night with noises the Old One says are dragons playing.
Yet this is a land where the Chen family will not starve; where
they will be able to keep a girl baby, and not sell her into
servitude as was the Old One, whose back is scarred from whippings.
In their new life, however, there is a constant struggle tobalance
the new Gold Mountain ideas with the old traditions and knowledge
of China. Old One doesn''t like Kiam-Kim to speak English, and
Kiam-Kim knows that to be without manners, without a sense of
correct social ritual, is to bring dishonour to one''s family.
Children who lose their ''Chinese brains'' are called ''bamboo
stumps'' by the elders because of the hollow emptiness within, so
Kiam-Kim must study hard at Chinese school as well as English
school. He must help Poh-Poh to cook for her mahjong ladies, and
her hard knuckles rap his head when he misbehaves.
Although Poh-Poh urges him to stick with his own kind and not let
non-Chinese ''barbarians'' into the house, Kiam-Kim forges a
lasting friendship with Jack O''Connor, the Irish boy next door. He
also has a girlfriend, Jenny, daughter of one of the mahjong ladies
who owns a corner grocery shop. Meanwhile, China is suffering
during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and soon the whole world
is at war. Boys at school are enlisting, and many Chinese have gone
back to fight for the old country. Kiam-Kim wonders, "What world
would we fight for?" Canada is his home, yet he knows that the new
country does not want Chinese soldiers.
The Jade Peony, was "a genuine contribution to history as well as
fiction" according to author Margaret Drabble. It spent 26 weeks on
the "Globe and Mail bestseller list, shared the 1995 Trillium Award
with Margaret Atwood, and won the Vancouver Book Award. Blending
rich historical detail with powerful personal stories," All That
Matters" follows Kiam-Kim as he learns the responsibilities and
rewards of family and community, as he approaches adulthood in a
city much divided, and as he faces decisions aboutwhat truly
matters in life. More than anything else, the novel is an
exploration of his character. "I think all stories should arise
organically from the characters'' definitions of the world," says
Wayson Choy, who believes that it is in the identification of
reader with character that literature exists. "If you give details
that ring true...that''s the meaning conveyed by good writing."
"From the Hardcover edition.