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One day, while wandering in the Mong Kok district of Kowloon, I bought an antique abacus. Known as one of the most densely populated areas on earth, Mong Kok is a busy shopping area with many open stalls and shops. The streets and pavements are crowded with people, and you can hear hawkers calling out their wares. There are clothing booths and kiosks and many street-food vendors. There is a street known as Bird Street where birds of many kinds are displayed in cages and sold. There is another known as Goldfish Street where, yes, you guessed it, goldfish are sold. I saw one stall that had bras, yeah, bras, stacked cup on cup, about four feet high. I wanted to take a photo of them but I felt a little self-conscious so I didn’t. I bought the abacus from a guy at an open stall along the side of the street.
The guy sat in a fold-out chair and had a small rug laid out in front of him. This was his store, like at a flea market in America. He had various things displayed on the rug. Tools, hammers, several screwdrivers, a wrench or two. He had some kitchen tools, too: a spatula, a couple of knives, some spoons, bowls. There was no rhyme or reason to how all of this was laid out on the rug. It was just jumbled together. At first, I wondered if the abacus was for his own use to calculate transactions. And perhaps it was. He noticed me looking at it and said, “ping yum”, or something like that. He gestured to it and nodded his head. I took this as an indication that it was okay, I could go ahead and touch it. I picked it up to look closely at it and he said again, “ping yum”. I assumed this was the Cantonese word for abacus. He was nodding his head and still gesturing.
The abacus was made of dark wood, its frame slightly warped. The counting beads, which I later learned were known as heaven-and-earth beads, were round and smooth. I didn’t know just how antique the abacus really was, but it looked old, or at least it looked used, and I had always wanted one so that was good enough for me. Abacuses are old, indeed, dating back not just to ancient China, but to ancient Babylon. It is, in fact, the oldest calculating device known. Well, maybe Neanderthals used rocks or shells or little mammal bones to count, if, that is, they counted anything at all. But the abacus is unique in that it is a counting tool that dates back to about 2400 BCE yet it still remains basically as it was created; a wooden frame, some rods and round beads that slide back and forth on those rods.
I looked at the abacus in my hands and flicked the beads back and forth. The guy sat there and watched me pretend that I knew how to use it. I asked him how much. He said something in Cantonese that I didn’t understand but with some hand gestures and a few English words thrown in, he made the price known to me. He gave me a look that I interpreted as, no bargaining, so I handed him some money. I was never much a bargainer, anyway. He nodded a vigorous thank you then made a dismissive hand gesture like he was waving me away. No receipt. No wrapping. No bag. I nodded my head in thanks, tucked it under my arm and continued wandering through the teeming streets. When it was time to head back to Hong Kong Island, I made my way back along the congested streets of Kowloon to the waterfront terminal and boarded the Star Ferry.
The Star Ferry is to Hong Kong what the Golden Gate Bridge is to San Francisco, what Pike Place Market is to Seattle. Many locals use it to cross the harbour between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon but it has also become a tourist attraction.
The ferry was jam-packed full of people, and I sat on a bench next to a young Chinese man. I looked out at the water. The harbour was busy with sampans and barges, freighters, and lighters. The buildings of Hong Kong loomed in the distance across the harbour. I was heading back to our hotel in the North Point neighbourhood. My wife had stayed on the island for the day, and I was supposed to meet her and her family for dinner. The young Chinese man was wearing a sport coat and tie. He looked like he might be heading home from work. We were about halfway across the harbour when he looked at me, smiled and pointed at the abacus, which was sitting in my lap. He asked, in English, if I knew how to use it.
“No.”
He smiled again. “Then why do you have it?” It was a reasonable question, and he was being friendly.
“I like it,” I responded.
“You like it?”
I suddenly felt self-conscious. I felt like a tourist, some random American guy carrying an abacus, which is exactly what I was. But he was being sociable and pleasant and did not seem derisive or mocking.
“Yes,” I said. I wanted to tell him that it was an antique but just in case it wasn’t, I thought I’d better keep that to myself.
“What do you like about it?”
At this point I thought I detected a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but he smiled in an affable way. I held the abacus up and flicked a couple of the round beads back and forth on their rods.
“Well,” I answered. “I just do.” I knew that was not much of an answer, so I decided to elaborate. “It is an ancient tool.”
He seemed to consider my answer a moment. He looked at me. He looked at the abacus. I think he wanted to say something like, yeah, I know it is an ancient tool. He made one of those tightening of the mouth and raising of the eyebrows faces and shrugged his shoulders. Then he said, “Okay,” and he turned his head and looked out at the harbour.
For some reason I felt that the conversation needed to continue, so I asked, “Do you know how to use it?”
He looked back at me and again seemed to consider what I had just said.
“No,” he responded.
“Ah-ha! See? There you go,” I said.
I’m not sure he understood what I meant by that. That was my way of being a wisecracker. Cocky. Like I was implying, hey buddy, I may not know how to use it but, ha-ha, neither do you. He smiled again then he reached inside his sport coat and pulled out a cell phone. He held it out to show it to me.
“I use this,” he said.
He tapped his finger on it and the screen lit up and then he tapped again. He looked at it a moment, then held it toward me so I could see it. A calculator was illuminated on the screen. I smiled and nodded my head. I wanted to say, okay, ya got me, but I didn’t. Instead, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone. I tapped on it and when the calculator appeared on the screen, I held it out to show him. We both laughed. Then he asked me what I was going to do with the abacus since I didn’t know how to use it.
“I’m going to hang it on the wall in my house,” I said.
“On the wall? Why?”
“Decoration,” I said.
He didn’t say anything in response, but I imagined him thinking, what kind of idiot hangs an abacus on his wall? I imagined him thinking that it would be like if he were to hang one of those antique, hand-crank adding machines on his wall, and he would never do something like that. When the ferry docked, I rose and stood amid the crowd waiting to disembark. I held my abacus under my arm. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see the young man behind me. He was smiling again. He held up his cell phone so I could see it. On the screen was an image of an abacus. We both laughed. I winked and pointed at him and this time I did say, “Okay, ya got me.”
I refrained from telling him about the bamboo flute that I had purchased the day before, which I also planned on hanging on my wall.
How to cite: Beyl, Jeff. “The Abacus.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 17 Mar. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/03/17/abacus.
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Jeff Beyl writes about nature, fly-fishing, music, geology, surfing, and the ocean. He has been published in several magazines such as Big Sky Journal, Outside Bozeman, Montana Fly-fishing, Idaho Magazine, Northwest Sportsman, Ocean Magazine, Snowy Egret Literary Journal. His book, A Conversation With the Earth, was published in 2020. He has travelled widely through Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. He is a jazz guitarist and photographer, scuba diver and fly-fisherman. He lives in Seattle with his wife. [All contributions by Jeff Beyl.]