When Chinese Eyes Are Smiling

Copyright © 2016 by Thomas Gangale

In some ways, Nuku'alofa was a lot like Casablanca or Babylon 5, an out of the way place where there's no telling what unusual characters you might meet.

For instance, an American ex-pat who grew up in Hawai'i, part Chinese, part hauli, part Cherokee, attended the exclusive Punahou prep school with a guy named Barry who would be looking for new employment come 20 January 2017 after doing an eight-year stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. My friend had done deals with active duty People's Liberation Army generals who were part-time corrupt businessmen, former KGB officers who were full-time corrupt businessmen, CIA cutouts, Australian gambling casino owners, Triad drug traffickers, Polynesian princesses, tax-evading American satellite companies incorporated in the Caribbean... the run of the mill international scene.

My friend's surname was Chinese, and he claimed to be a direct descendant of an imperial minister who tried to clean up the drug scene and ended up sparking a disastrous war with the drug traffickers... who happened to possess the planet's most powerful navy at the time. History remembers this as the First Opium War, and it was the beginning of China's "century of humiliation." If you ever wonder why the Beijing government is so difficult to deal with, it's because it's determined to prevent another century of humiliation... by any means necessary. That, of course, and it holds the traditional mindset that everyone from outside the celestial empire is a barbarian who deserves to be treated as such. But, the Chinese respected my friend, even though his family was Kuomintang, his Mandarin wasn't great, and due to his mixed ancestry, he wasn't instantly identifiable as Chinese. Sometimes he referred to himself as a half-caste, sometimes as a Chinaman, terms I was raised to regard as impolite, but then I never imagined that someday every other song would shout the word "nigga," a word which has always possessed great power in the most negative sense, and which has been repossessed by its rightful owners for better or worse.

Once in awhile I would see my friend smoking dope. The quality of the stuff in Tonga was far below California standards. You know those thick ropes that hang from high school gyms? Think of what it would be like to smoke one of those, soaked with sweaty crotches semester after semester, and you get the idea of Tongan doobies. How the hell can you have the same climate as Jamaica and not be able to grow good ganja?  To the once and possibly future resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, trust me, Bill, you wouldn't want to inhale this shit. But my friend would persevere, to the point that on one occasion I looked him in the eye and remarked, "Now you look Chinese."

Thomas Gangale's Tales of Tonga