Where I Come From (I--III)

Where I Come From:

The Breathing Moments of My Parents’ Life

Prologue

This is how I celebrate my birthday: write down the breathing moments of my parents’ life that burn into my brain and heart and memory a vivid picture of who they are and where I come from.

Part I.  My Father

“The 13^th from left”

My father has no hobbies except for reading. 

In our modest apartment in Peking we have 21 bookcases bearing 18,ooo volumes—nearly no space for human beings.  Books have long been our most intimate companions.

For a home library of this scope an index might be necessary.  But my father does without that. 

He himself is the index.

About 26 years ago, I, shorter than a table, used two chairs to acquire a book in my father’s absence from one of the five bookcases we then had. It was a hardly detectable theft, I thought: the book was thin, small, in gray paper cover, entitled Stories From Greek Tragedy.  I cannot recall why I chose it in particular, probably driven by a random desire.  Anyhow, I was about to open it in the secret joy, as my father came home. 

He glanced at the bookcases on entering the room as usual.  Only one glance, then he turned to me, furrowing his brows, “A book is missing.”

“I have no idea…  You could be wrong… Which one?” I tried not to give up.

“The 13^th from left on the highest shelf of the 2^rd bookcase from right,” he said, in a soft confident tone.  “The title is Stories From Greek Tragedy.”

That ended the story.  I had no choice but to surrender. 

I realized that every glance of my father’s attentive eyes at the home library was a snapshot.  What seemed undetectable to me was conspicuous to him.

“I’ll let you read it later; your current vocabulary doesn’t suffice to help you enjoy it,” as he put the book back he made a promise.

Three years later the book was given to me as a birthday gift.

“My memory of music”

Re birthday gift my father is desperately uninventive.  He knows only two options: books and music tapes.

When I was young my parents were too poor to afford me a recorder.  The only one we had was a present from my uncle; it was a tiny recorder with three buttons: Play, Withdraw, and Forward.  After we got that my father began to consider music an alternative to literature as a gift for me on December 4.

In the following years, therefore, I learnt to appreciate Bach, Bizet, Brahms, Chopin, Handel, Haydn, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mahler, Mozart, Paganini, and Tchaikovsky, before departing for Germany in 2002.

On my first birthday abroad, my father sent me a letter revealing the significant role music played in his life: During the Cultural Revolution he almost committed suicide three times; every time he was saved at the last minute by music:

“I did not want to die in deafness so I listened to music—not real music because I no longer had access to it, but my memory of it.”

I am listening to memory now.

Immensee or the Green-Reverie Lake

My father was overjoyed at my first scholarship from Germany, not only because of his memory of music, but also because of his memory of two literary pieces: Goethe’s Werther and Theodor Storm’s Immensee. 

Albeit less popular outside of Germany, Immensee resonated just as much as Werther with my father’s soul, when he was a young campus poet under the pen name of the “swift-fleeting swallow.” 

That he ceased to practice poetry during the Cultural Revolution does not mean that he ceased to be a poet.  I’ll never forget the poetry in his eyes when he told me about his old yet ever-fresh reading experience of Immensee.  It was first translated into Chinese and became accessible to him as Green-Reverie Lake.  The title image of the story about an unattainable solitary white waterlily has since then been carved into his vision and approach to life.

I read the German original during my second year in Germany, and I was amazed how keenly and thoroughly my father intuited the message of the novella through translation:

Der Mond schien nicht mehr in die Fensterscheiben, es war dunkel geworden; der Alte aber saß noch immer mit gefalteten Händen in seinem Lehnstuhl und blickte vor sich hin in den Raum des Zimmers. Allmählich verzog sich vor seinen Augen die schwarze Dämmerung um ihn her zu einem breiten dunkeln See; ein schwarzes Gewässer legte sich hinter das andere, immer tiefer und ferner, und auf dem letzten, so fern, daß die Augen des Alten sie kaum erreichten, schwamm einsam zwischen breiten Blättern eine weiße Wasserlilie.

My father speaks no foreign language; yet he submerges in World Literature like Reinhard submerges in the Green-Reverie Lake. 

 The First Layer of an Oil Painting

My father plunged me into World Literature when I was four.

There were three crossroads from our apartment to the kindergarten.  My father took me there at dawn and picked me up at dusk.  Sitting on his bicycle, I was told a story whenever the light was red.  For some reason we barely caught green lights; my ears were hence loaded with anecdotes and scenes from Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Arabic, French, Spanish, Russian, and British literature.  Even after three decades they are still lingering in my mind, awaiting the moments to be waked anew.

According to my father each personality is like an oil painting: no matter what colors are added to it later, as long as the first fundamental layer is painted in bright colors, the whole personality is bright.

In retrospect I see him painting the “first layer” of me with lotus shine and sunlight.

Part II. My Mother

“Accident Victim: Quick thinking, clear speaking”

It happened on an October night of 1997. 

One of our neighbors fell sick.  Once my mother heard of that, she put one chair upon another and climbed on the “ladder” to fetch a little medicament box above the highest shelf of a bookcase.  My father and I were talking to the neighbor’s son at the door, when suddenly a horrible sound shocked us all.

My mother fell down.  We knew from her posture that her head first hit the floor.  She could not move; I ran to the phone while my father kneed beside her.

Ten minutes later an ambulance came.  As we arrived at the hospital, a doctor asked us about the details of the accident; neither my father nor I were able to answer—not because we did not really witness it, but because we were emotionally too challenged to think: As we saw the huge bump on my mother’s head, both of us anticipated something fatal. 

Our reaction frustrated and annoyed the doctor; yet the more impatient he became, the more irrational was our speech.  As the three of us almost drove one another into despair, my mother spoke up.  I cannot recall what she exactly said to the doctor; but I remember every word written down by the doctor as a succinct report:

“Accident victim: quick thinking, clear speaking.”

After my mum was completely recovered from the accident, recalling this report gave us a big laugh.

The Betrayed Swan

My mother was the most talented student in math and physics in her high school; she was so innocent as to consider the world as reasonable as math and physics equations.  She was not interested in politics at all, and she believed her unrivaled grades guaranteed her a seat in the Department of Physics in her dream school—Peking University.  She was proud and aloof like a swan among ducks.

But the world is not a math or physics equation.

Because my grandpa was one of the earliest Chinese bankers, the whole family was labeled as “rotten roots” during the Cultural Revolution.  In addition, my mother’s distinguished pride and her unmasked indifference to politics were interpreted as “white-concentrated” (i.e. apolitical), a mark that only intensified the “rottenness” and led to a severe punishment: My mum was deprived of the right to attend a university—any university.

She was sent to an elementary school as “Mädchen für alles.”

“Eat them now, my girl”

My mother is the youngest of eight children.  Her siblings always claim that she inherits all the intelligence and wisdom of my grandparents; hence, they are left with nothing.  They are probably right.

The elementary school where my mother worked was far away from her parents’ house.  She went home only once every three months.  One winter afternoon, as she was in class, she suddenly saw my grandpa looking inside through the window. 

“What brought you here today, Papa?” my mother walked out in surprise.

“Nothing.  I’ve bought two fried rice cakes for you; see, your favorite food,” my grandpa said, drawing out from inside his coat a humble paper package. “I was afraid they would get cold, so I put it here.”  At that moment, my mother noticed the oil stains on his coat—it was a winter coat that he wore only on special occasions.

“Thanks, Papa!  But I am teaching now; I’ll eat them later, I promise.”

“Eat them now, my girl,” my grandpa insisted.  “They are from the ‘Aroma Forest;’ they make the best fried rice cakes in Peking.”

My mother was a bit embarrassed; but my grandpa looked into her eyes and commanded with irresistible sweetness.  “Eat them now, my girl.  I want to see you eating them up.”

My mother ate them up, without knowing that she was fulfilling her father’s last will.

On that same evening my grandpa returned home and committed suicide. 

He left a letter to my grandma—21 pages long, written with brush and ink on the specific Xuan paper.  He said that he could endure physical torture but not insults and humiliations. 

This loss drove my grandma mad; the family could not afford a doctor.  Four months later, however, she regained her sanity without any medical treatment.  Then the “Great Chinese Famine” came; my grandma worked hard and sold everything to feed the children: none of the eight died of hunger; she herself weighed less than 80 Ib.

Some called it a miracle; my mother called it maternal love. 

But she would never forgive herself for having left her father to his fate.

The Brood Hen

When I was born my parents were poor. 

My father earned 46 Chinese Yuan per month.  Determined to rebuild his home library burned in the Cultural Revolution, he was never truly realistic or practical with his money.

My mother earned 37 Chinese Yuan per month.  She managed to feed a family of three and paid my tuition in calligraphy, math, English, and typewriting at the “Children’s Palace.”  

But that’s all.  I grew up as a child with no toy. 

One day my mother took me to the uncle who gave us the tiny recorder.  His son was playing a toy called “The Brood Hen”: A proud hen circles around and lays an egg after each circle.  In my eyes, it was spectacular.  I came close and wanted to caress the hen.  However, my cousin forbad me from touching it.  I did not cry in their house; I cried on our way home.

My mother made up her mind to buy me one.  We made a detour and stepped in a toy store, only to be horrified by the price: 17 Chinese Yuan!

So we eventually returned home without the hen. 

Three months passed.  I almost forgot the incident, and I thought my mother forgot it as well.  However, in the fourth month after the incident my mum came home one night with a huge splendid box.  As I opened it I exclaimed: “The Brood Hen!” 

My father told me later that my mum had been saving money for the toy day by day and went to the same store at the end of the third month.  Unfortunately, the toy was just sold out. 

My mother burst into tears. 

But she did not give up.  Like a proud hen she circled around the city of Peking and finally found the toy in an obscure store.

After hearing the story I always have two images in mind when I think of my mother: a proud, aloof swan and a proud, caring hen. 

The two images overlap each other and become inseparable.

Part III:  Love in the Forbidden City

I know nearly nothing about my parents’ love story.  I even doubt that there was a love story between them back to the era of red terror and iron discipline.  

If my mother had not been deprived of the right to attend Peking University and my father had not for a similar reason (one of his uncles lived in the US) been forced to give up his first choice—Peking University—and enter the second, they might have encountered each other on campus.

Instead, they were brought together by a mutual friend many years later: As they first met, my father was already 37 and my mother 28.

I do know an anecdote following that “blind date”: Their future rendezvous all happened in the Purple Forbidden City.  It was then open to everybody with no entrance fees; and my father happened to be an art museum fan. 

My mum revealed to me recently that during their first three dates she was stunned by my father’s knowledge and insight; after the fourth, however, she became bored.

But she married him nevertheless.

Epilogue

Two years later I came to this planet.  My parents named me “Hui-Wen”: wisdom and literature.