We’ve been circling to look for a suitable spot, but nothing has caught our eyes yet. I space out as Jen rambles on, chiming in with the occasional “mm-hmm” or “oh”, because her wind-blurred words don’t actually reach my ears. My thoughts are with Meh.
Jen slams on the brakes, and I crash head-on into her helmet.
“Holy shit!” She blurts.
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a friggin’ chicken!” She lifts her chin to signal in front of the scooter.
I push up my glasses and see a white chicken darting across the street, flapping its wings, not quite flying, its nimble feet stepping left right left right on the asphalt until it reaches the grass on the other side. As if catching its breath, it pokes its head forwards and sways from side to side, before finally standing still to lock its eyes on us.
“Seriously, how rural is Tainan? Chickens get to roam on the street?” Jen eyes the voluptuous white bird. “Hey, I dare you to catch it. An extra dish for dinner!”
“That’s a ‘white phoenix’ used for kaiguang. You can’t catch it.”
“How did you know?”
“Meh and I used to watch grandpa perform the ritual. This was the kind of chicken he used.”
Unlike Jen, whose family is Catholic, Meh and I come from a long line of huat-su, practitioners of folk magic. Through the years, we soaked up ceremonial culture and followed our elders into each and every temple in Tainan, big and small. When adults performed rituals, us kids would play in the temple or on the square. After watching so many rites, we were familiar with the general procedures even if we didn’t know the exact details. Meh probably knew more than I did. After all, they were the heir.
Kaiguang, or consecrating a statue, involved “initiating light” and “dotting eyes”. You need to draw blood from a cock’s comb, mix it with cinnabar, and dot the eyes, ears, mouth and nose of the statue. Then a shaft of sunlight is shone on it using a bagua mirror. Once all the rites have been performed, the statue embodies a deity and is welcomed into the temple, ready to receive offerings and grant wishes.
Meh once took part in a kaiguang ritual. They had to hold down the white phoenix whose comb was to be slashed, but they were reluctant. I remember the scene clearly. A golden statue, veiled with a red cloth, was carried in from afar and placed in front of the altar. Father, wearing a red band on his head, chanted a mantra, rang the bell, and sounded the “dragon horn”. Then he grabbed the chicken with one hand and gestured in front of the statue: Help me transform the chicken, Master. Help me transform the chicken, Buddha. Uncharmed, you were a mortal chicken. Charmed, you shall be a kaiguang chicken. Dot the sky, sky be clear. Dot the earth, earth be sage. Dot the people, people be prosperous. Dot the deity, deity be revived. Dot demons and ghosts, and promptly they shall go . . . and so on and so forth.
With its feet bound and its wings gripped tightly by Father, the chicken was forced to stretch out its neck like a watering can. It looked from side to side and kept quiet. Father raised the sword and handed the chicken to Meh, who tried not to grimace as they took hold of it. It drooped its head and didn’t struggle. Then Father slashed its comb and the chicken shrieked harrowingly, flapping its wings as if trying to break free from the pain and prison of the flesh. Meh almost lost hold of the bird, but Father swiftly grabbed it by the neck and dripped the blood on a plate. He then signalled with his eyes for Meh to take the chicken away. After the ceremony, Meh cried as they untied the white phoenix’s feet. “Go on, go away, the pain is over, you’re free now.”
“So what do you do with the bled chickens?” Jen asks.
“Chickens used in rituals can’t be eaten or kept at home. You have to set them free. Let them roam on their own.”
But some, like Meh, would roam into oblivion.
*
The white chicken cocks its head and stares at us. It soon loses interest, swings its plump body around and prances off, its booty jiggling. Jen notes that we are lucky to bump into a white phoenix, and this one seems psychic, so why not follow it and see if it will give us a pointer? I say okay.
She rides slowly, the two of us on the scooter trailing behind the chicken’s bum. A rather absurd sight, if you think about it, but I’m in no mood to laugh. The red packet in my bag is giving me grief.
“Max is such a pain, even when he’s dead! I can’t believe you’ve put up with him for so long.”
“Meh was my . . . I am their older sister. What would they do if even I refused to help?”
Meh, or Max, was my brother, and then became my sister. I sometimes struggle to explain to strangers and elders all the complexities involved. I, too, had trouble adjusting to my new sister, whom I had called “brother” for so long, so I called them “mate” instead, or dragged it out as a high-pitched “maehhhh”, which turned into Meh. I sounded like I was bleating whenever I called them, but that aside, we had no complaints about this new name.
“Dammit! Right, the name is Meh. I keep forgetting.” Jen tuts. “Another hassle right there.”
“It’s fine once you get used to it.”
*
Many things are fine once you get used to them. Yet except me, no one in our family accepted Meh’s transition. To them, it only meant that they no longer had a male heir to pass on the bloodline and the family trade. But they forgot something crucial, or maybe they were burying their heads in the sand, something that only I remember distinctly—the fact that Meh should have been a girl in the first place.
I witnessed part of Meh’s personal history, or rather prehistory, which overlapped with my childhood. It all began in the hustle and bustle of the underground shopping streets of old Chinatown. Those were the halcyon days when young couples would shop, eat and date there. Speakers blasted out the hottest new songs, and shop windows brimmed with the trendiest items. Walls were covered with posters of celebrities from Taiwan and abroad. A masala of scents wafted through the shopping arcade. Tides of people waded in this River Ganges of food smells, sweat and perfumes, soaking up the unenlightened scent of worldly dust. Mother clutched my hand, walked past crowds of shoppers, and swung into a fortune teller’s shop.
An eerie incense was burning inside. The fortune teller’s posters were splashed across the shop window facing the corridor: “See fate. Change names. Take charge of your future.” A sofa set, a bookcase and a desk took up all the space inside the cramped little shop. The fortune teller, a portly middle-aged man whose receding hairline left his shiny forehead exposed, wore a wrinkly smile as he greeted us with a, “Come in, come in. How may I help?”
“I’d like to know whether the baby I’m carrying is a boy or a girl.” Mother ran her hand through my hair and passed a slip of paper with astrological details to the fortune teller. “Another fortune teller said my daughter augurs a son for me. Is that so?”
The man peeped at Mother’s belly, still quite flat. “Hmm . . . let me see . . . perhaps not. This astral chart indicates that you will have two daughters. As for a son . . . let’s have another look . . . there might be one, or there might not be.”
“So will I have a son or not?”
“It’s hard to tell . . . Your case, hmm, is very strange. First time I’ve ever seen anything like this!”
“What can I do then? My husband’s family wants an heir! Ideally, I should produce a son.”
“Indeed. Why don’t you beg Lady Linshui for a ‘belly switch’ to swap the girl for a boy? I know a huat-su who is very powerful . . .”
“That won’t be necessary,” Mother cut him short and took back the astrology sheet, “My father-in-law is a huat-su himself.”
Later, I watched mother chatting on the phone with her friend as I sat in a kiddie ride and licked an oval popsicle. “True, my father-in-law is a huat-su, but I am still worried. What if I do the belly switch but I still give birth to a girl?”
Mother consulted Grandfather and Father after we went home. It was a muggy evening and tiny mosquitoes were swarming around the outdoor lamp. Sitting in its dim yellow light fanning away the insects, Grandfather said, “Sure! If Lady Linshui consents, we’ll do a belly switch. You lot prepare the things required.”
Before performing the ceremony, Father took us to the Lady Linshui Temple to ask whether she would help us. As the head of our family, Father tossed a pair of poes in front of her statue. He kneeled at length and tossed the blocks several times. The bulging side of both poes kept landing face up, meaning that Lady Linshui “smiled” out of confusion or contemplation. Beads of sweat began to erupt on Father’s forehead, and Mother gripped my hand tighter and tighter. Father eventually conceded, “Goddess, if this baby is a boy, he will be at your service.” No sooner said than the poes landed, one with the bulging side up, the other with the flat side up—a reluctant consent from Lady Linshui. According to Father, the goddess doted on the unborn baby.
Mother told me to set aside some canna lilies prepared beforehand. Grandfather tied his headband, donned his Taoist robe, and chanted a spell so long that it made my head swim. Young as I was, I giggled when Grandfather flailed about in front of twelve masked performers acting as the Twelve Nanny Goddesses. The temple personnel brought us a long bench, lit seven candles—which reminded me of my birthday cake—on the Seven-Star Candelabra and placed it under the bench.
Three ups and three downs on the Hundred Blossoms Bridge. Mother lifted me onto the long bench draped with a dark cloth, and then Father and Mother stepped on behind me. The three of us and the unborn baby crossed from This Shore to The Other Shore. The Nanny Goddesses watched, smiling. Mother’s uterus was a bouquet, white blossoms for boys, red blossoms for girls. She had to pick away the red ones in the pool of blood, and keep the white ones unstained by menstruation, because periods are red flowers that bloom inside the womb.
After the ceremony, Mother brought home the charmed canna lilies and took meticulous care of them. A few months later, Meh was born as a male baby, and became my brother.
*
They had to first become my brother before they could become my sister. This process was like a slow capillary action, like blood seeping into a tampon. Before it is extracted again, nobody knows whether or when the white has completely transformed into red.
I remember Meh’s middle-school days, how they acted exactly like the average boy. They adored One Piece, Naruto, Hunter x Hunter, NBA games. They liked baggy hoodies, joggers and trainers. They fancied the girl who was top of the class. It took me a long time to understand that their likings were not gendered. Everything they adored was equally adored by me, assigned female at birth. They were not proof that Meh was still a “boy” in middle school. Maybe they’d always been a girl, one who happened to like those things.
But I can pinpoint the moment when Meh suddenly appeared unfamiliar to me. I had just graduated, and, as I was preparing for graduate entrance exams, Mother miraculously got pregnant for the third time. By then, she was at an advanced maternal age and the foetus was unstable. The obstetrician urged her to be careful even when doing everyday activities, and I went home every weekend to look after her. Even so, she lost the child seventeen weeks into the pregnancy. I heard her tearful screams late one night and bolted up to check what was happening. Mother was slumped on the bathroom floor, blood running on the tiles. Panicked by the red stains, we both turned pale, and she kept crying and screaming in pain.
That was when Meh came in. It was an indescribably uncanny moment, as if the air was lulled and Mother’s cries subsided. Meh was just an adolescent brat, yet they looked so solemn and compassionate. Benevolent words flowed from their mouth in a distinctly feminine voice, not a timbre Meh could produce given their changing vocal cord. They said, “This daughter is not written in the stars, let her go.”
They knelt down to caress Mother’s sweat-soaked hair and murmured gentle words of comfort. Mother passed out in tears. Meh cleaned the torrent of blood clumps between her legs, amidst which there was a doll-like piece, curled up and fallen on the floor. Meh wrapped it in a towel and cradled the bundle like a loving Mother Goddess. I called the ambulance, which arrived shortly. Medics rushed into the bathroom and carried Mother away on a stretcher. Meh and I followed her to the hospital, sorted out the admission paperwork and stayed for the night.
The next morning, Meh hadn’t the faintest recollection of what had happened the night before. They checked that Mother was doing fine and went home, flip-flopping, to catch up on some sleep. Mother said as soon as she woke up, “I feel like I saw Lady Linshui last night.”
I remembered that dodgy fortune teller’s convoluted prophecy about Mother having but also not having a son. Meh had wrapped the foetus in a towel and handed it to the hospital, so I had no way to find out whether I had lost a brother or a sister.
I wanted to find that fortune teller again, but he was nowhere to be found. By then, the old subterranean Chinatown had been blasted apart and converted into a park called The Spring. The shadowy understructures of the past were now dug out and exposed to the sun. I paid a visit when the park first opened. A wide artificial river flowed through the park, connecting Huanhe Street on one side to Kangle Street on the other. The riverbanks and islets in the knee-deep water were covered with white pebbles and dotted with vegetation. Not knowing much about plants, I couldn’t tell whether they were natural or artificial.
I crossed the river amidst the children’s laughter. Some pillars and beams of old Chinatown were preserved in the waterway, as if to remind younger Tainaners what used to be there. Shoals of youngsters used to squander their youth in the cinema, ice palace, food street, record shops and arcades, as if time were prophecy slips freely dispensed in temples. I walked through the ruins and failed to recognise my old haunt.
Meh was born too late to have seen the heyday of Chinatown. Just a few years after his birth, it had become “that place you must stay clear of”, as parents would warn their children. But another underground street played an important role in Meh’s adolescent days: the Nanfang Shopping Street under Superstar Tower near Tainan train station.
Back then, we went to cram school in Superstar Tower. I was studying for the civil service exam, they for university entrance. With only two lifts in the building, long queues of high school students often spilled out of the front door during peak hours, those at the tail end barely managing to fit on the pavement. Behind them, the traffic surged like a river.
Students always took the lift up; rarely would anyone press B1. I doubt anyone, other than Meh and myself, even knew that the underground street existed. It ran from Minzu Road to Zhongshan Road, short compared to Chinatown, with very few sellers and many sad, unoccupied shops. As Meh grew more feminine and began to try on women’s clothing, this became our go-to place because it was deserted but had plenty of public toilets. We would often sneak downstairs into the women’s toilets, and they would get changed while I kept watch.
I still remember the first time I saw Meh in women’s clothes. We crept into the toilet. They disappeared into a cubicle. I waited by the sink, ready to warn them if anyone came in. Their first women’s outfit was a white floral shirt and a pair of black trousers, a somewhat matronly combination, like what aunties and grannies would buy in a market. I guess Meh bought them because they were cheap.
The Max in the mirror looked laughable: their muscular body was strapped inside a shirt clearly too small, the waistline pulled up to their ribs, the floral pattern stretching into paramecium cells, the trousers refusing to button up. To be frank, Max was not suited for women’s clothing if you were to judge by conventional standards. Jen had shown me transvestite pages on social media full of androgynous men with dolly eyes and bright skin, long hair and willowy figures, striking sexy or cute poses for the camera. She asked me whether Max belonged to that category when she first found out that they, too, wore women’s clothes. I said no. Trans women who happened to be slender and conventionally beautiful had tens of thousands of followers and could show off their confidence and good looks on social media. But Max was light years apart, almost like a crossdressed clown.
Meh, a high school student wearing women’s clothes for the first time, stood in front of the sink and stared at their reflection for a long time. The wan light fell on their face. They asked me, “Sis, am I fugly?”
“Of course not! You just need some makeup. You’ll look gorgeous with makeup!”
That moment stung. My eyes still smart whenever I remember their glum expression when they asked, “Am I fugly?” This memory kept coming back to me, even after they had obtained a more feminine body through gender-affirming surgery.
*
After the turn of the millennium, Meh and I both made some big decisions in life. I became a civil servant, started working, got married, got divorced, and began dating a younger girlfriend. Meh studied urban planning at National Cheng Kung University, completed their military service, enrolled in graduate school, and decided to go through with surgery. We gave our parents the shocks of their lives, because we deprived them of heirs to inherit the family craft. Mother cried for a long time, and Father refused to speak to us for years, but Grandfather’s reaction was what surprised me the most. “Let them be,” he said. I couldn’t tell whether he lost heart or saw sense.
Meh decided to go for surgery after they saw Chinatown one last time before the demolition. Their dissertation was about the urban renewal project to transform Chinatown, and I helped them to take photos. On the eve of demolition, it looked decrepit and abandoned, not a hint of the prosperity I remembered. The only thing that matched my childhood memory was the main entrance in the shape of a traditional paifang gate. The golden resting-hill-style roof looked wistful. Droopy protest banners on the wall resigned themselves to the tug of the wind.
Camera in hand, Meh jumped over the barricade and entered the building. The lens captured every trace of that bygone age: sepia posters, dusty furniture, broken lightboxes and shuttered gates spray-painted with the word “SOLD”. Time stopped. Unnoticed. Sundry objects with which people used to make a living were now abandoned, gathering dust year after year. Stray cats and dogs stretched out on the ground, watching us lazily as we strolled through the ground floor and the basement.
Though run-down, Chinatown wasn’t quite a ghost town yet. A few shops were still open, like clothing stalls and a karaoke salon. Hokkien songs wafted from jukeboxes out into the street. A few elderly people sitting on plastic stools or deck chairs hummed along. As we walked past a women’s clothing store, a middle-aged woman called out to Meh. “Young lad, I haven’t seen you in a while! Where’s the other boy?”
“He’s busy.”
“This is your girlfriend, eh?”
“No, she’s my sister.”
That was when I realized that Meh had bought their first women’s outfit in Chinatown. We got idly into the lift and went up to the Grant Chinatown Cinema, officially closed a few years ago. The gates were locked. Some old posters still clung to the wall.
On the steps in front of the cinema, Meh poured their heart out to me. They had a boyfriend from their all-male high school, and the two of them had had sex for the first time here in the empty second-run theatre. Meh had dirtied their uniform, so they’d bought some clothes from the only store that was open. Meh hadn’t dared to wear the shirt and only changed their trousers.
“No wonder you got dark trousers. Did it hurt?”
“Like hell! In moments like that, I really want to become a woman.”
“Come on. Women hurt too, you know?” I rolled my eyes. “You’re going for surgery then? You’ve thought it through? You’ve got money?”
“Yeah. I saved up.”
“Go for it, if you’re sure. I’ll back you up.”
After a series of psychological assessments, in the year when Chinatown was demolished with explosives, Meh demolished the male organs in their body. Like slicing open the white phoenix’s comb, doctors sliced open Meh’s penis to form an artificial vagina. I, as the only family member who supported their transition, watched simulation videos to get an idea of what would happen to their body. The surgery was expensive, and they needed medication and injections afterwards to alter their hormone production. It only took one ceremony for Mother to transform Meh from a daughter to a son all those years ago, yet Meh had to brave such an arduous journey to transition back to a woman.
I visited Meh at the hospital after the surgery. They took off their underwear as soon as they saw me and lifted a corner of the blanket, “Sis, isn’t this gorgeous?”
“Gosh! Wear your underpants properly!”
“Take a look for me!” They pleaded sweetly, “Who else can I count on?”
I rolled my eyes and acquiesced. I lowered my gaze to scrutinize their new organ. “Nice work! Pretty much like mine.”
“Really?”
“Would I lie to you?”
I swore on it a few more times, and Meh finally smiled with relief.
*
Meh enjoyed their renewed body for many years until cancer knocked on their door. Ironically, even their illness was feminine after the transition. They had breast cancer, at the final stage by the time it was diagnosed. Jen said they had shit luck. I must agree. But Meh themself accepted the misfortune with zen-like composure.
“How else can I react? If it happens, it happens!” they said.
True, nothing could be done. Gender is negotiable thanks to modern technology, but death isn’t. When Fate calls checkmate, it’s final.
Meh said their biggest regret was not having the chance to wear a wedding dress. “A once-in-a-lifetime wedding! A bridal dress! That’s a girl’s most romantic dream!” So claimed Meh. But I must admit, as a woman who had married and divorced and was planning to marry Jen eventually, I didn’t understand Meh’s brand of romanticism.
“How about a wedding dress for your funeral? White fits the occasion. I can make one for you!” Jen suggested. “That’s once-in-a-lifetime, too.”
“Mother of . . .” Meh almost hurled their pillow at Jen, but they gave it another thought and stopped themself. “Actually, you’ve got a point.”
I was suddenly relieved that our family had cut us off, otherwise there was no way Meh could have chosen such a crazy funeral.
“But you haven’t got anyone to marry,” I reminded them.
“Ah, right.” They shrugged. “Then find me someone after I’m dead, otherwise no one will worship my ghost.”
Meh arranged their funeral like they were planning a wedding. Jen took care of the dress, and I was the assistant. As chemotherapy carried on, Meh lost a lot of hair and weight. Clothes that they previously couldn’t squeeze into now hung loosely on them.
Jen had to tighten the dress many times. She ordered Meh to stop losing weight every time she fitted the dress on them, threatening to quit otherwise. Meh would smile, apologize, and beg Jen to tighten it yet again. “This is the last time,” they would say.
When the “last time” came for real, Meh lay in the coffin with their eyes closed, sleeping peacefully like a foetus in the womb, their face elegantly made up by a professional. I cut off a strand of their hair and some nails. Jen pinned their dress so that the fabric wouldn’t slide off, even if we wouldn’t see it once the casket was closed.
“Are you ready to send her off? Like this? Are you sure?”
Clearly it was the first time the cremator had worked with a corpse bride. He double checked, triple checked, and we kept answering, yes, right, we’re sure, exactly like this.
Meh took off in the flames and transformed into an urnful of genderless ash. We settled them into the columbarium, and then picked today as the day to find them a spouse.
*
I’ve been wondering whether I should find Meh a bride or a groom. They were bisexual and dated both guys and girls, though each relationship was surprisingly short. Jen finally suggests, “Max is a woman now, so let’s find her a groom?” That’s how we set off with a red packet containing joss paper, cash and Meh’s hair and nails, started driving around on a scooter to look for the right spot, and came across the white phoenix. Now we are waiting for it to point us in the right direction.
The chicken walks past undeveloped land. It walks past roads and paths and bridges. Then it stops and flaps its wings—it’s the first time I’ve seen a chicken fly so high. It lands on the maroon railings and looks down at Jen and me on the asphalt road. It turns around, juts out its butt and takes a crap. Chickenshit falls on the pavement by the canal, right across the road from The Spring.
“Look, mum! Dad has a cock in front of him!” A girl shouts innocently, pointing to the white phoenix. Her parents, mortified, drag her away.
“Right, the holy chicken has spoken. This is it.” Jen pulls over and points to the chickenshit. “Go put the red packet there! Move it.”
“Are you sure? This area is full of kids and parents and couples. It’s not where you’d normally look for marriage material.”
“Oi, is your Max normal marriage material?” Jen hits back with a glare. “We agreed to follow the chicken. This is some god’s design, ok? Go on, put it right there! The chicken is checking on us!”
The white phoenix has turned towards us again. It cocks its little head to peer at us, as if perplexed by the two foolish mortals dragging things on.
“Fine!”
I give in and hop off the scooter. I put the red packet on the pavement, a little distance away from the shit. While I look for a rock to hold it in place, a gust of wind blows it into the canal.
“Shit!” Jen and I blurt out in unison and rush to the waterside. We watch as the red streak sinks into the golden ripples. The chicken clucks in contempt.
“Damn! Now what?” I ask.
“Not much we can do. It’s not like you can fish it out of the canal.” Jen shrugs, but tries to console me: “Maybe this means Max is not destined to get married? Or maybe she came to her senses and figured it’s nice to be single. Yeah, that’s how you should see it.”
As I stare at the canal and fret, the white phoenix jumps down from the railings and steps on the pedestrian path. Booty swinging, it sashays into the sunset.
