First Part of My Family Tale
-- by Mookoo Liang in April, 2001
♪
When dad and I arrived at our "old house," a little cottage located half way up the mountain, both he and I were somewhat excited. I had not come back here in a few months, so I was longing to see it again. But dad visited this place almost every day; working on the land surrounding the cottage was just the same old familiar routine for him. Could he be excited too?
Perhaps he was not really excited. Yet obviously he was very pleased about my idea (and act!) of visiting the old cottage again that afternoon. When I said I missed our "old home" very much and asked if he would like to go together with me, dad said "Let's go!" immediately.
Dad couldn't care more for the old cottage, the land surrounding it, and all the plants he grew over there. His fondness for those things was expressed in his eyes, and I noticed it while we both were walking across one of the terraced fields.
The terraced fields were originally created for growing rice. Now rice became rather cheap, and dad was over seventy --- too old to grow rice. These level fields were also used for growing bananas, grapefruits, and betel nuts, just like some sloping fields on the hillside.
We walked and talked in a leisurely way. Dad suddenly stopped, pointed to a banana tree with some brown leaves, and sighed, "It's very odd that recently banana trees are dying one after another. That must be a new type of disease that the chemicals fail to deal with."
He explained to me why he had to substitute something else for the diseased bananas. If he planted a new banana in the very same spot where a banana had been killed by disease, that new tree would be infected and die soon. "Mostly I would put a betel nut in the place," dad added. "I'm getting old and weak. Growing betel nuts involves less labor."
For quite a few moments neither dad nor I spoke. I thought of the fact that, in order to have a better job, all his children had already moved out of this mountainous area. Even dad and mom lived in a new house several kilometers away from this single and solitary cottage, so that they could obtain, as his children suggested, some next-door neighbors.
Standing in the shade of trees, I watched dad cutting off brown banana leaves. He was adept at using a banana knife, which he usually hid somewhere in the field after work. And right in the middle of the field, dad had previously set up a garden sprinkler --- by tying a revolving tap at the top of a bamboo pole. He walked toward the pole and moved it a little further to water more betel nut seedlings. His blue shirt was partly wet now, as I could see, with more sweat than water.
I looked around for anything else that I would have missed so much. The rugged mountains with different kinds of trees gave me a vivid picture, so familiar and so special, so amazing and so meaningful. Such a landscape could be seen from various "standpoints." To get more "good views," I moved around and looked in different directions. As I turned to the west, I noticed that the sun was sinking. Is the daytime always shorter in the mountains? I looked at dad again. He had stopped working and was walking toward me.
"Dad," I called out. "Why not take a rest?"
"No problem."
"You must have spent a lot of time working here. In these and those fields, fruit trees are tall and weeds are few. How could you make it, dad? You have even set up such a perfect piping system!"
"Oh! No water, no crops. Like vegetables, some fruit trees need special care." Sometimes dad spoke just in a typical fathers' tone.
"But you should be a retired farmer," I reminded. "You might as well come and exercise here, but don't work too hard."
In fact, all my brothers and I asked dad and mom not to work too hard. Being their children, we had grown up, we had got married, and we had our own children. It was time for us to support and wait upon our parents. However, we younger generations lived far apart in different cities. Only during holidays could we return to pay a visit to them.
"Does mom come here often?" I asked dad.
"Well, she hasn't come in a couple of days. She will come more often after new vegetables are planted here."
Mom was also a hard-working type of person. She had two vegetable gardens, one next to the old cottage and the other behind the new house where dad and mom were living. She would take care of them in turns. She did not follow us that afternoon, so dad said he would water the vegetables before leaving the cottage.
Dad carefully sprinkled water on each vegetable plot. It was getting dark, and yet dad refused any of my help that would possibly spoil what I was wearing. I was in a white shirt, black trousers and leather shoes that afternoon. Having expected to see my birthplace again, I was not ready to work at all. I was embarrassed, though, to be an onlooker all afternoon.
As we were leaving the cottage, dad told me that he would call all his four sons together on a "good day" so that the parents and children could discuss how to divide his land into four "equal shares."
His plan was: first study the quality of each part of his land; then let a gentle and better slope be combined with inconvenient paddy fields while a steep slope be joined with better rice fields; finally, let all the sons draw lots to decide which share to take. "But the cottage should not be divided," dad said. "It had better go with the piece of land that it is on." I heard and understood dad's plan, yet it made me sentimental.
Is dad so old that he can't help thinking about how to distribute his property? Dad has been living in this mountainous area all his life; is he leaving for somewhere else soon? How can mom live without dad? Or how can dad live by himself? . . . Such silly questions occurred to me one after another. I was puzzled. Then I felt sorry, and somewhat angry!
I didn't want to think about those lousy things.
Only philosophers and/or religious people can "grasp" the full significance of life and death. I am a son of farmers. How can I indulge in such difficult subjects? I told dad that mom had wanted us to go home early, and that at that moment she might have dinner prepared. Dad and I hurried back to my car, which I previously parked near the foot of the mountain.
♫
I was woken by a telephone call, still feeling a little sleepy because I had sat up late the previous night. It was Janet, my second sister, who was coming from her place 30 kilometers away.
"You are in your Spring Recess, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yes. So you're most welcome to come!"
"Oh, I mean, if you are available, I'll drop in on you. If you're busy, I'll go with my family. They are leaving for the museum, to see
bingmayong."
Of course I told her to come, not only her but also her family being very welcome. In fact, Janet and her family rarely visited us. It's my wife and I that went to them more often, because their house was just halfway between our parents' house and ours. Whenever mom gave me vegetables that she had picked from her gardens, she would make me take some to Janet on my way home.
Janet said she was not very interested in seeing
bingmayong, that is, a big group of "soldier-and-horse sculptures" of Qin Dynasty style. She would rather come and chat with my wife and me while her husband and her sons were visiting the National Science Museum.
"Only I am at home," I said. "Maybe I'll stay alone for two more days during the Spring Recess." I told Janet that my wife had gone to her parents and that Tony, my only son, had not come back from the campus yet. But my personal plan for this one-week vacation remained a secret.
I had always wanted to write a story about dad and mom. And I started writing it when Spring Recess came. That's why I had not gone with my wife to see her parents. That's why I sat up late the night before Janet gave me a surprising "morning call." I was quite busy. But Janet was coming at the right time, wasn't she? She could definitely help me recall those "good old days" when she and I lived with our parents in the mountains.
I was sleepy no more. Before hanging up, I cheerfully said, "Please come, Janet. I'll be happy to see you soon." I did not reveal my writing project, though.
♫♪
Talking about childhood, both Janet and I had a strong feeling: Our older generations had lived in very poor conditions, and in those years not all children were as lucky and happy as we were.
Ah Zung, for example, was not a lucky boy. Although he had a "no problem" life when he was small, he lost his daddy at the age of 11. Two years later, when he was just 13, his mommy died, too. The situation became very bad after that. He was a frail teenager. He had to depend on his elder brothers.
Ah Zung had two elder brothers, not to mention his sisters. All of his brothers and sisters were already married, but how could a teenage boy get a wife without money or anything like that? Ah Zung didn't care about marriage; instead, he missed his parents very much.
Ah Zung's daddy and mommy used to be pioneers, coming from their faraway hometown to this sparsely populated mountain area. Then they worked mostly as woodcutters; they also opened up some virgin soil. When they passed away, they left their sons a piece of land on the mountainside, which was not formally allotted yet.
Land was important to every peasant; therefore, a senior relative of theirs came to Ah Zung and his 2nd brother's dwelling, to help divide the land for the three sons. (At that time, Ah Zung's 1st brother had built his own house in the neighboring village, where he lived with his family.) The senior relative carefully checked the size and the quality of the land, divided it into parts, and then allocated them by making the three sons draw lots to decide which share to take.
The senior said, "Let Ah Zung live with his 2nd brother and 2nd sister-in-law, sharing this cottage (which was not the cottage mentioned above). As for the cow, it has been working for you all these years; it should not be killed and divided. I strongly recommend that the cow belong to Ah Zung, who is still single, so that he can sell it for getting a wife in the future."
Aha, so the boy got the cow! His extra special gift! It's ridiculous that every morning, when the sun had just risen from behind the eastern mountain, the thin and small teenage boy Ah Zung should lead his "personal property" (or his pet?) to an open field, where the big "working capital" grazed by itself.
In the slack season, being a "cowboy" out in the open air could be fairly enjoyable. While grazing his big pet, Ah Zung was allowed to do whatever he liked: to lie on the grass and watch the floating clouds, to collect wild flowers or beautiful butterflies, or to climb up a tree and imagine that he was a knight fighting on horseback.
And yet, in the busy season, which seemed ten times as long as the slack season, Ah Zung had lots of farm work to do in addition to the so-called "soft job" of grazing a cow. Ah Zung was a good boy. He listened to his brother and sister-in-law. He worked very, very hard, whether he was up the hill or down the rice field.
Ah Zung started to learn how to plow the rice field at the age of 12. The plow he used was an old-fashioned farming tool, with a long wooden handle that was even higher than Ah Zung's height.
Ah Zung raised his right hand overhead to hold the handle, and he held the hemp rope in his left hand to control the cow ahead of the plow. When the animal, the plow, and he reached the edge of the field (after making a furrow), he would make a U-turn for another furrow. It was an embarrassing moment for Ah Zung then. Because he was so short and small, he had to lift up the plow with his "shoulder" instead of his hands to turn the plow around.
The question is: were his brother and sister-in-law satisfied? No, they were not very pleased with him. They regarded him as an extra heavy burden, and they were always complaining about what he had done.
Poor Ah Zung! He never had a chance to go to school. Most of the time he worked either on the hillside or in the paddy field. And he even worked all by himself, as his 2nd brother had to work for other families to "make money."
Ah Zung was too young to go "making money." He could only work on his brother's or his own land, to earn his "three meals a day" (not to mention "new clothes" for the Chinese New Year). In reality, all the harvest from Ah Zung's land was "kept" by his 2nd brother, who once said, "The harvest? As you can see, the harvest was so limited. Do you think I have cashed in on him?"
As he had no watch, he could just tell the time by watching the sun. One cloudy day, he returned home from the field at about two o'clock in the afternoon. He felt hungry, but didn't know if it was time for lunch. (By the way, his 2nd brother was then "making money" somewhere else. When doing so, he did not usually come home for lunch.)
It happened that that very noon Ah Zung's 2nd sister-in-law cooked later than usual. When she saw Ah Zung coming home for lunch, she became angry, and yelled, "Don't you know I was also busy in the morning? You, lazybones; you're good for nothing! You know nothing but eat!"
How upset Ah Zung was! But he said nothing in response. Now his daddy and mommy had died and his 2nd brother and sister-in-law had taken their place. There was a Chinese saying:
Zhangxiong ru fu; zhangsao ru mu. (Your eldest brother is like your father; eldest sister-in-law, mother.) Ah Zung was unable to make a living himself then, anyway.
♫♫
Usually I visit my dad and mom once a month, but last month I went back to see them twice, on the first and second weekends in March.
I've got a teaching job at a high school. I'm busy on weekdays and I spend almost every Sunday in the church, and that's why I failed to visit my parents (and my parents-in-law) more often. Of course I have another excuse; that is, my three younger brothers will usually take turns visiting dad and mom in our hometown.
It was Friday, if my memory serves me, that I was informed that Uncle Xi had died. Dad asked me on the phone if I could return to attend the funeral that was going to be held nine days later.
"It'll be Sunday," said dad, with sort of emphasis.
"Oh, I will. I'll certainly go to his funeral. Uncle Xi used to be so kind to us!" I told dad that I should be present in such an important ceremony, whether it is on the weekend or not.
A few years earlier, I took a day off in order to attend the funeral of dad's 2nd brother; and when dad's 2nd sister-in-law passed away afterwards, I asked for leave, too. How could I neglect to show my respect for Uncle Xi, dad's eldest brother?
In fact, I went back to my parents the following day. Uncle Xi's death must have caused some discomfort to dad, I thought. And I knew Uncle Xi probably as well as dad did. He was a well-known good man. Even mom said he was our
da-en-ren, a kind and generous benefactor who had saved us from suffering.
"In those miserable years," mom said, roughly referring to the five years before and six or seven years after she was married to dad. "We lived in abject poverty. If Uncle Xi had not offered us so much help, your dad would not have succeeded in establishing such a family."
Mom made a pause and then began telling a story, which I guess all her children had already heard more than once:
Three years had passed since dad started living with his 2nd brother and sister-in-law. Dad was 16 then. His days were just work, work, and work! Yet he owned no savings.
One day, dad was very sick, lying painfully on the bed. Uncle Xi, his 1st brother, happened to come and saw him lying still in the bedroom. The 1st brother asked the 2nd what was happening to the 3rd. The 2nd answered that he had no idea how the 3rd could pretend to be ill like that.
When the 1st brother touched the 3rd on the forehead, he was shocked to learn that this youngest had so high a fever. The 1st said something to the 2nd. The 2nd replied loudly. The 1st said something more, trying to hide his anxiety or something, just in a louder voice. The 2nd replied even more loudly. Then, both of them lost their temper and became really infuriated. The sudden sharp quarrel between the two "elders" was so terrible that the youngest was scared half to death!
"Okay, since you don't care for Ah Zung at all, I'll take him with me from now on." Uncle Xi said with great determination.
"It's up to you!" said dad's 2nd brother. "You say I don't care, so I don't care any more."
As far as I know, dad was reluctant to go with his eldest brother at first. It was rumored that Uncle Xi had been a "tough guy" on the farm, meaning that he was as strong as a superman while working. Some people saw him working from dawn to noon (or from noon to dusk) without taking a break to drink water. Then, at the end of the job, he drank a large pot of water at a time.
Dad was afraid to turn to Uncle Xi, thinking that he might be going from bad to worse. "I did have an idea," dad said to me. "I thought of escaping from home!"
"What did you do, then?" I asked curiously.
"I picked up some clothes, and got ready to wander far from home."
"If you had done so," mom interrupted, laughing at dad, "you would have become the most pitiful tramp in the world. What a shame that you've got no sense of direction!"
"Oh, mom! There's no way that dad would possibly become a tramp!" I said. "Dad has always been a good man! A good man is blessed by God."
It was around 9 o'clock on Sunday morning. The funeral of Uncle Xi had just started, with so many "friends and relatives" attending the ceremony.
Like many other relatives, my mom, my brothers, and I got there shortly before the ceremony started. But dad had arrived at the place an hour earlier. He was one of the most important persons that day. He was supposed to "nail" the coffin during the service, because he was Uncle Xi's only brother still living.
"It would be very hard for dad to do the nailing," my youngest brother said in a soft voice.
"Well, dad will only hammer a nail symbolically," another of my brothers explained. "Somebody else will do the rest --- to fasten the cover of the coffin!"
The funeral service was held according to the Chinese folk belief. In addition to loud and noisy "lamentation music" played by a brass band, from time to time the "wailing & crying" could be heard through a loudspeaker. It was a special group of singers that were hired to perform the crying. I didn't like that, and neither did my brothers.
In the middle of the service, all the "friends and relatives" were invited to go forward, four by four, to the picture of Uncle Xi. As we were guided, we burned some joss sticks, offered the meat and fruit and wine as sacrifices, and at the same time we kowtowed to the picture.
Suddenly I remembered I had been converted.
Is it appropriate for a Christian to do those kinds of things? Is it possible for me to refuse to carry out their religious ceremony on that occasion? If I didn't follow their rules, what did I come for? What would my family (especially dad and mom) think of me? . . . Once again, many a silly question occurred to me. I was puzzled. And I felt very sorry!
My younger brothers asked me if I really believed in an afterlife. I said I had to keep praying to the Lord my God. Perhaps Jesus Christ would let me know more about it someday.
♫♪♫
My second sister Janet had been chatting with me in my house. We talked about all kinds of things: from jobs to interests and hobbies, from old places to new surroundings, from our nuclear families to dad and mom and many others that we both know.
It was interesting for the brother and sister to have such a free-and-easy talk in the morning. Especially I enjoyed it very much, because I had kept working hard on my creative writing since the Spring Recess. When Janet called me by phone, asking if I was available that very morning, I decided that I would take a rest. I needed to relax for a while, indeed.
"How is your Spring Recess?" Janet asked.
"Oh, quite busy."
"Busy? What have you been doing?"
"Writing a family story."
I regretted letting out the news about my writing project. Actually, I had not expected to reveal it so soon --- at the very beginning of our conversation! Now that a slip of the tongue completely changed my mind, I thought of the saying: "honesty is the best policy," and I told Janet everything about my plan for the "vacation."
"Ge!" (As I am her elder brother, Janet does not call me by name; she always calls me ge or ge-ge, meaning "elder brother" in Chinese.) Janet said, "Aren't you in your Spring Recess now? Why not take a rest?"
"No problem."
"You must have spent a lot of time working on this short story . . . My goodness! You've already written more than 20 pages, but you don't even know how to make your short story short!" With a particular smile, she added, "Don't be a workaholic, Ge."
"Oh! 'No pains, no gains.' Have you heard of that?" I smiled back. "And 'practice makes perfect.' I need to get some more practice!"
At times I would speak just like a ge-ge. Or in a typical teachers' tone! For many years I'd been teaching English, a foreign language to me as well as my students; yet I found it very difficult to overcome the different ways of thinking between English and my mother tongue. That's why I told Janet I needed to get more practice.
By "I needed more practice," I possibly meant either (1) I should lengthen my short story and make it a novel, so as to get more writing practice, or (2) I should be able to make my short story even shorter, after getting more writing practice, or (3) both of above, or (4) none of above.
It was as if I were plowing deep in my professional field again. I asked myself:
Which one really matters, language or notion? Can you actually (or significantly) separate form/container from matter/content? Can you really (or completely) separate a "tool" from its "function"? . . . These were some of the silly questions that came to my mind. Interesting as language it, it always seems too simple or too complicated for me to use when I want to define something further.
I was woken by Janet's question:
"Ge, what did you tell about in the story?"
"Oh! Mostly about dad," I said. "And I mentioned dad's brothers as well."
"Didn't you tell about mom?" Janet said, "She is not only active but also talkative. She's quite special, isn't she?"
I couldn't agree more. Telling about mom's childhood would be more interesting! Mom was also born in a poor family. Her father, about 20 years older than her mother, also passed away when she was 13. Her mother, the 2nd (or 3rd) wife of her father, had to support the family by cooking or working for others.
For a long period of time, mom and her 2nd sister lived with their "old papa" at home while their mother was cooking for a faraway family. (Their 1st sister was married, living somewhere else.) Perhaps due to the distance, their mother rarely came home. So they had little money. And every time mom was sent to get something on credit or to buy a very small bag of rice in cash, she felt so embarrassed that she would try to hide what she got when she was walking home.
One day, something very bad and sad happened. Mom and her sister found no rice to cook and they had no money to buy anything for their old and sick papa to eat. They . . . they became thieves --- digging sweet potatoes out of somebody's garden. They quickly took the stolen potatoes home. They put them into the empty rice bowl; but, in no more than 2 minutes, they took them out and hid them under the bed. Then they became so frightened that they kept changing the hiding place.
"Did grandpa find out about that?" Janet asked me.
"No. It's hard to imagine what would have happened if he had learned about it."
Among all our grandparents, only mom's father could read and write. He taught classical Chinese language at a
si-shu, a type of "private school" in the past. He passed down several old books and a photograph. (I've seen the photograph myself, and I've always been curious about him.)
"Where is that gentleman now?"
"Impossible to know!"
"Where was dad's 1st brother going?"
"Who knows?"
"Where is my son Tony?"
"He's still in his university, but he'll be back home soon."
"Where is Janet's husband?"
"He's visiting the National Science Museum, together with his children."
"Where are
bingmayong shown?"
"Oh, don't be silly any more. May the Lord be with you." <#>
