Lao Ye comes from a remote village in the mountains. In fact, his home village is next to mine; the two villages are bordered by a hill, with a graveled path winding up and down it to connect the two “small but beautiful” places. Beautiful places deserve special names: his home village is called Bei-gang-xi (implying a creek from the north) while mine is called Shui-chang-liu (meaning water flowing a long way). There are indeed two streams with the same names over there. With mountains, valleys, and fields in different shapes and colors; with the streams below, the sky above, and sometimes the breeze in between; with various kinds of birds, animals, fishes, and insects---such a beautiful place could have made a great many poets and artists. And Lao Ye is an artist who is very good at painting.
I don't like Lao Ye because he is a good painter, but because he and I are “birds of a feather,” just as my other “very close friends” and I are. In my mind Lao Ye is much more similar to me than the others. He also comes from a very poor family. His parents had been “peasants” working so hard but making so little money in those “old difficult days,” so he has learned how to restrain himself from overindulgence and how to enjoy a very simple life. Besides, among my “very close friends” only Lao Ye and I are Hakka people. Hakka people are generally regarded as being a little frugal or stingy, and inheriting the “hard-neck spirit” [2] from their ancestors, which means they would persevere in dealing with all kinds of difficulties.
Lao Ye is a typical Hakka person: once he has set a goal for himself, he will try his best to reach it. But talking about his shortcomings, some of our common friends joked behind his back, “Lao Ye is a niggard! No way will he invite us for a big meal!”
Well, I didn't really laugh at him when I heard such a joke. In my eyes he was a good example: He made good use of his time and money. He was busy with his teaching job, and with his creative work as well. From time to time he sketched still life, or drew birds and flowers, and yet most of the time he painted landscapes from nature. To create a picture of his own, he observed the natural scenery, decided what to adopt, modified or rearranged the adopted parts, and finally completed a beautiful and meaningful picture on paper. This time-consuming process, as well as the good result it might turn out, would make Lao Ye very pleased; so he kept on drawing and painting, no matter how much time and money he had to spend on a new piece of work, or on a personal art exhibition.
In the past few years Lao Ye was so busy that he couldn't afford coming to the weekend parties that my other “very close friends” hosted in turn. Regular comers to the party such as Li laoshi, Chen laoshi, Lao Zhan and Lao Wang would talk about Lao Ye. They sometimes gossiped about his love life. It was said that Lao Ye's wife was a “native,” daughter of the chief of an aboriginal tribe in central Taiwan. “No wonder she looks so pretty!” “Indeed, she has big and bright eyes!” “But she's too shy to come with us, isn't she?” “It must be the husband's fault: Lao Ye shouldn't have overprotected his wife . . . ” They began to laugh at Lao Ye again behind his back, saying that he might have been afraid of losing his wife as she was so young and beautiful.
Personally I agree that Lao Ye should have brought his wife out more often, so that she wouldn't have had to stay home alone so much time, since all of us except Lao Ye enjoyed our weekend parties together with our wives.
It seemed that Lao Ye's wife had never wanted to join the party; nor had Lao Ye himself participated much in our common “social life.” But both of them had been regarded as our “very close friends.” The fact is, whenever Lao Ye was in the midst of us, there would be a very pleasant atmosphere in the room (That's why we were fond of him). Lao Ye was kind of wise and sort of naïve. His funny stories always made us laugh; and when he was intentionally laughed at, his amusing manner usually helped him get out of the embarrassing situation in just a few seconds. He showed admirable self-control. His good and pleasant personality, as well as his sense of humor, was really remarkable. Knowing that he was going to retire from his teaching job, I expected that he would get more leisure time for chatting with us, and I looked forward to his wife's turning into a genuine member of the very-close-friends family.
Now Lao Ye retired from his job as an art teacher. “Life is short, art is long.” He retired at the age of 50, planning to give himself a number of years for painting---painting with all his heart, all his soul, and all his might.
How lucky he was to have been a teacher. Having taught (in the elementary school, then in junior high, and finally in senior high) for so many years, he came to a promising “turning point” at last. From now on, he would be paid the monthly pension by the government. Without having to work as before, he could possibly take better care of his family, and he was allowed more time and energy for drawing and painting. He was very pleased to have a new beginning, to obtain shengming de dier chun (that is, the second spring of life).
Naturally he was filled with gratitude. He was thankful that his parents had allowed him to get out of the mountainous village for further studies; he was also thankful for the particular system of education which the government had practiced in those years. If there had been no shi-zhuan (Teachers Junior College) where students were totally supported [3] by the government, if his father had wanted him to help with farm work in his home village, or if he had failed the shi-zhuan entrance examination, then his life after the age of 16 would have been completely different. Every time Lao Ye told me about those if's and then's, I was deeply moved because I had been in the same situation.
In a sense, Lao Ye and I were not only “birds of a feather” but also “leaves on a branch”---breathing quietly in the same sunlight, swaying gently in the same wind!
I hadn't seen Lao Ye or his wife in months. It was said that they went back to the mountains on weekends. Only on weekends could Lao Ye's wife follow her husband to a remote place, because she was still working near Taichung City, where the Ye's had been living for long---Oh, Lao Ye, Lao Ye! Your family name is “leaves.” The Chinese character 葉 (read as ye) literally means “a leaf” or “leaves.” You, whom I call “Old Leaf,” have established your own family; you got a beautiful wife, who also comes from the mountains; and she bore you two daughters, your beautiful new leaves!
Well, with the passage of time those new leaves must have grown up. I hadn't seen Lao Ye's children in YEARS. I wasn't sure if they were now studying in senior high or in college. And I really had no idea whether they would like to follow their parents to the mountains on weekends, or in a longer vacation. To my surprise, when my wife and I were planning to give a special party on January 1st to celebrate the coming of this New Year, we received an invitation from Lao Ye, whom we certainly would have invited as one of our important guests. Lao Ye's invitation showed that his first daughter was going to be married very soon in December last year. I was happy to go to the wedding party. Meanwhile, I was well aware that time flew!
The wedding party was held in a luxury hotel. The big hall for a ceremony and banquet was now crowded with Lao Ye's and his family's relatives and friends. At first, guests chatted cheerfully here and there, making a lot of noise. Then, when the music started and the bride and groom's procession came into the hall, all the guests stopped talking but gave a big round of applause; and all eyes were focused on the bride and groom, who were slowly and steadily stepping toward the main table in the front. Lao Ye and his wife, just like their son-in-law's parents, looked unusually happy that day. Yes, it was indeed a happy time, and the wedding was a great occasion for the two families.
Now the bride and groom were being led to each of the guest tables. They were supposed to drink a toast to the guests, from table to table. When they got close to where I was sitting, the bride suddenly called me laoshi and, turning to her dear husband, she excitedly said, “He was my first English teacher! He taught me when I was in the fifth and sixth grades (elementary school)!” Oh, my! Time flew fast, indeed. After years had passed by, I could hardly remember that I had taught “children's English” to those kids! I asked the bride curiously what school or college she had attended in years past, and what her major was. She replied with a sweet smile, “I majored in English literature, and yet I'm taking some education courses, hoping to become a schoolteacher some day.” I was pleased to hear that. At least I hadn't spoiled her interest in English when she was small.
A week after the wedding party, I heard Li laoshi and Chen laoshi say that Lao Ye's father “happened to die” on the very same day when Lao Ye's daughter got married. What a shame! It seemed that none of us had been told about it the previous week. I asked Lao Wang if the bad news was true. Lao Wang said, “That's true. Lao Ye's father caught a bad cold about two months ago, and was sent to one of the best hospitals in Taichung. No one would believe that he would pass away so soon---on his granddaughter's wedding day!”
Oh! It suddenly occurred to me that Lao Ye might have known that his father was then critically ill. He must have tried his hardest to wear a smile on his face, so as not to spoil the wedding party.
Well, a man can be a loving father and a true son simultaneously. Lao Ye was a true Hakka son, full of filial piety. In his first album of paintings, which he published and gave me in 1996, he included a photograph of his parents; and in the “Painter's Preface” of that album he told a touching story about his mother, who had passed away by that time, confessing that he couldn't have made so many paintings without his mother's encouragement. He deeply loved and respected both his parents. Now his father also passed away. I didn't really know what I should say to him. I just prayed for him in secret, hoping that he wouldn't lose the Hakka people's “hard-neck spirit.”
Without such a “hard-neck spirit” in him, Lao Ye wouldn't be the most interesting friend of mine. According to Lao Wang and Li laoshi, Lao Ye has another interesting “weak and strong” point that few people have known. He has been suffering from “achromatopsia” to some degree---being “partly color blind.” (This sounded rather unbelievable, but a bit sensible!) How could a partly-color-blind man have become an artist who is so good at painting?
In those years, color-blind young people were not admitted into shi-zhuan at all, for elementary school teachers were expected to be physically and mentally healthy, or they ought to be as “normal” as possible. How come Lao Ye was able to pass the physical examination to enter shi-zhuan? The fact is, Lao Ye so much cherished the chance for further study that as soon as he learned he had passed the first part of the entrance exam (some written tests on various subjects), he began to prepare for the second part of it, including a physical checkup. He managed to borrow a standard book used for checking color blindness, and studied (and learned by heart) all the pages with a colorful dotted number on each. Fortunately, he succeeded in getting through the “narrow gate.”
After that, his weakness dramatically became his strong point. While studying at shi-zhuan, his paintings were always impressive to his classmates and professors because he painted them in colors that would be slightly strange to the “normal.”
When the New Year's Day was approaching, my wife and I started to call our “family friends” by phone, inviting them to a dinner party at a restaurant (You know, I have a dozen of “very close friends” and so does my wife. All together we have about 20 so-called “family friends,” meaning that the husbands were originally my friends while their spouses were my wife's). Lao Ye argued that it should be his turn to give such a party this year. “You have played the host for the past two New Year's Days,” he said, “Let's just take turns, okay?” After a “warm” argument, we settled that two of us would throw two parties, one in January and the other in February. But we didn't give any party on January 1st, because Lao Wang (our good mutual friend) wasn't able to come that day.
Some of our friends jokingly said, “Lao Ye has changed; he's more generous than before.” Once again I felt it unfair to say so. As far as I knew, Lao Ye had been kind to others; he had been willing to help---especially the poor!
A couples of years ago, I was told such a story, which is by no means a fictitious one. After Lao Ye graduated from junior high at the age of 15, he came to Taichung City to take the shi-zhuan entrance examination, which lasted for two days. On the evening before the exam, he failed to find a hotel to stay at because he was unfamiliar with the city and because he dared not get into a “luxury” hotel that he thought would cost him too much money. He decided to spend the night, at least the first night, inside the train station. It was July, and it was not too cold there at night. But he was somewhat nervous, and felt too tired to read. After an uneasy sleep, he woke up at midnight and saw a man in his 40's or 50's walking toward him. The older man smiled at him and offered him some steamed bread. “For you, free of charge!” He then said to him, “You must be a student. Am I right?” Then they had a pleasant chat for a few moments.
The older man suggested that Lao Ye stay at his “humble dwelling” that night, saying that he was a veteran soldier (from Mainland China) who lived nearby alone. Lao Ye was very glad to follow that “good man” to his place. Then something terrible happened. While both of them were lying on the matted floor, the older man reached his hand to touch Lao Ye's private parts.
The first touch didn't mean anything to Lao Ye. “It might have been a careless act,” he thought. But the second, the third, and the fourth touches made this 15-year-old boy more and more scared. Lao Ye was then too naïve to know about homosexuality. What he really worried about was his money. With so limited money on him, he asked himself, “Is this man a pickpocket?” Thinking of this, he pretended he had to take a leak, and ran away from the place as fast as he could.
Lao Ye returned to the train station and hid himself in a corner until the next morning. He didn't have a sound sleep. So he bought and drank a bottle of Combat-P to refresh himself before going into the examination hall. It worked miracles! Then he bought and drank another two bottles for the same purpose. Since then, Lao Ye has liked Combat-P very much. He would like to refresh himself with a bottle of Combat-P whenever he has driven a long way.
After taking the first part of the entrance exam, Lao Ye was ready to return home. He came across with an old woman in shabby clothes begging on the street, for in those difficult days beggars were occasionally seen in a city or town. Lao Ye felt very sorry for the poor old woman. He checked to see how much money he had left in his pocket. Then he kept the needed fare for himself and gave all the remaining 65 dollars to the miserable woman.
“Good intention makes good fortune.” Lao Ye once told me that the Chinese saying hao xin you hao bao [4] was very true. He hadn't thought he would pass the shi-zhuan entrance exam, which was especially difficult for candidates from the mountain areas; however, it was probably because he had given the poor woman 65 dollars that Heaven granted him the chance. This was Lao Ye's account of his success in entering the “narrow gate.”
Lao Ye also told us something about his school life at shi-zhuan. He said that the five years when he studied at Taichung Shi-Zhuan were the most significant in his life. He studied hard and learned quite a lot. Like a happy bird flying sometimes fast in the forest and sometimes high in the sky, he enjoyed learning many different things and practicing various kinds of skills. His favorite subjects were Psychology, Counseling, and Fine Art, which was why, years later, he became a guidance counselor as well as an art teacher at a senior high school. Though located in Taichung City, the shi-zhuan campus was two or three kilometers away from the Bus Terminal next to the train station. Every time Lao Ye returned home from school, he “trotted or cantered” all the way from the campus to the Bus Terminal for a long-distance bus. He never took a city bus to the Bus Terminal. He thought that jogging was good for health and it also saved him some money.
As a “mountain boy,” Lao Ye had never seen a train until he came to Taichung for further study. He was so curious about trains that sometimes he would spend 20 or 30 minutes crouching just outside of the railing fence and watching the trains passing in and out of the station. What a naïve youngster!
Well, in the twinkling of an eye, the boy student has already become a retired teacher. Lao Ye is now much richer than before, in many a sense. To enrich his life, or to pick and gather beautiful things for his artistic creation, Lao Ye has been traveling here and there. He has been to Mainland China several times, taking lots of pictures of the Yangtze River, Yellow Mountain, the 1000-Isle Lake [5], etc. His vivid description of Yellow Mountain was most impressive to me. “Perhaps its most outstanding feature is change,” he said. “The mystic clouds drift in and out, changing the scenery from minute to minute as the mist rises and ebbs . . . ” During retirement, Lao Ye went mountain climbing regularly. He made friends with professional mountaineers, and he even bought a piece of land in the mountains where he built a small but beautiful villa.
At first I thought Lao Ye was building a villa in his home village Bei-gang-xi, but I was wrong. Lao Ye's villa was for his wife as well, so it was made in her home village Ao-wan-da. Oh, Ao-wan-da! I've never been there, nor have I learned what the name means in the aboriginal language. However, it sounds to me like “O Wonder!” in English for it is said that there are many maple trees there. “You don't have to visit Japan for red leaves!” Lao Ye joked about my previous four “educational trips” to Japan. “Just come here, and you'll be satisfied with thousands of beautiful maple leaves and me, an Old Leaf!”
I like Lao Ye because he is so interesting. He usually speaks in a “humorous” way---this particular “sense of humor” is a combination of some wise, some kind, and some naïve components!
During the party he and I hosted on February 6th this year, Lao Ye was asked how much he liked his new son-in-law. “The younger generation are hard to understand, aren't they?” asked Chen laoshi. Yet Lao Ye replied, “It depends. If you give them a careful examination, a proper oral test or something, then you'll know them much better.” All of us burst into laughter, asking at once, “Did you really interview your son-in-law?” “Oh, it was before he became my son-in-law that I asked him five questions,” Lao Ye seriously said, “Each question accounted for 20 per cent of the full marks. That young man was not too bad. He made up 85 per cent!” I was curious about the questions. The most interesting one was: “Could you list 10 shortcomings that my daughter possesses?” What a tricky question!
Generally speaking, Lao Ye was wise. But he would make some subjective remarks once in a while. For instance, he described the 1000-Isle Lake as “tremendously big and deep,” but then he exclaimed that he had tasted the most delicate clams at a restaurant near it, saying, “How fresh those clams were! They had just been picked up by hand from the 1000-Isle Lake!” Is it possible to pick up clams by hand right from the bottom of a very deep lake? Lao Ye was occasionally laughed at for lack of common sense.
All of a sudden, I thought of the tragic event [6] that happened at the 1000-Isle Lake on March 31st, 1994; I thought of the devastating earthquake that happened in central Taiwan on September 21, 1999; and I thought of the floods caused by the typhoon Mindulle on July 2nd, 2004. All these natural and man-made calamities made people very sad, yet the July-2nd floods caused Lao Ye to be “loudly and openly” laughed at. It was the third day after the floods. Like some other mountain villages, Ao-wan-da had been cut off from the outside world by serious landslides, and the rescue helicopter was the only way to carry food and medicine in and the sick and wounded out. Lao Ye and his wife had been reported missing. Then, when Lao Ye appeared on the fourth morning, we realized that he had got out of Ao-wan-da by taking the very last seat in the helicopter the previous afternoon. And all of us made fun of Lao Ye because he “escaped” without taking his wife with him.
“Why didn't your wife come out together with you?” I asked.
“Well, there was only one vacant seat in the helicopter at that moment,” said Lao Ye. “The helicopter was meant to carry the sick and wounded. You know, my wife and I were both okay---and safe!”
“But don't you think that women should have been rescued first?” I protested. “Your wife could have been scared to death, if there had been another storm last night.”
“My! I'm going back to her very soon. I've come out here to pay the monthly huiqian. In my family, paying huiqian [7] has been my duty, not hers.”
Lao Ye always gave me interesting reasons or explanation whenever I felt puzzled about what he had said or done.
The other day I told him that I had found several maple trees near my house so I wouldn't have to go as far as Ao-wan-da to see beautiful maple leaves. He said, “The maples in Ao-wan-da are really maples, called feng (楓) in Chinese; but the maples near your house should be called cu (槭) in Chinese. Look at their leaves carefully, and you'll see feng and cu are different, though very much alike.” 《The End》
= = = Notes = = =
[1] This story is fictitious; if it sounds like a true story, please bear in mind that what a storyteller regards as “truth” exists in his imagination rather than in the real world. This is my first statement. And my second statement is like it: When reading this story, please pay attention to its invisible parts as well as its visible parts, for it's hard for a storyteller to tell all things he wants to tell.
[2] The “hard-neck spirit” is pronounced as “ngang-kiang jinsin” in the Hakka dialect. In Mandarin it is interpreted as “ying han, ying gutou” or literally translated as “ying-jing jingshen.”
[3] In those years students of the Teachers Junior College called shi-zhuan did not have to pay any schooling fees; instead, they were given food, uniform clothing, lodging, and some “pocket money” by the government.
[4] Literally, hao xin means “good heart, good intention” and hao bao means “good reward.”
[5] The Yangtze, or formally called Chang Jiang, is the longest river in China. Yellow Mountain, or Mt. Huangshan, situated in southeastern China, is famous for the uniquely shaped pines, the fantastic rock peaks, the sea of clouds and the hot springs. As to the 1000-Isle Lake (called Qiandaohu in Mandarin), it is not very far from Mt. Huangshan. We remember that a tourist group of 24 persons from Taiwan was tragically killed in a boat by three armed robbers on March 31st, 1994.
[6] See also [5].
[7] Huiqian is an mount of money one has to pay, usually per month, for a particular “fund” organized by a group of friends and/or relatives who intend to help and to get help from the other members of the group.
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