My story 2: My Grandfather
My story 2: My Grandfather
I am the eldest of three brothers and two sisters. From my earliest memories, my grandparents
took on the role of parents, feeding me, nurturing me, teaching me. Later, I
learned that this is common practice in China. In royal or other noble
families, because the eldest grandson is the heir, the grandparents take
possession of him at birth. Sometimes
the mother would never see her child again. Luckily for me, we were neither
royal nor noble, so I still saw my mother every day. When I was a little older, I realized that my
mother often cast me glances of love and concern, but seldom talked to me, so
she had little influence in my growing up.
My grandfather was an educated man although I don’t know
what grade he reached. His writing seemed to me to be at high school level,
although there were no high schools in my native county, Ruijin ﹝瑞金﹞, until I myself graduated from Junior High.
My grandfather was the second of seven sons, but the oldest
of the surviving brothers. I have met only three of my grandfather’s brothers.
The youngest was only a year older than my father. He taught a one-teacher and
one-class of all grades elementary school and I was one of them at the 1st
grade. The class had 10 to 15 pupils which lasted only two or three years, then
closed because some parents withdrew their children from the school and the
income could not support his living. He went back to be a farmer. His son was one year older than me, and was
my good friend. We were neighbors.
My 5th grand uncle went to Japan to study and
came back to do nothing. I did not know what he had learned in Japan but he did
bring back the Japanese cleaning habits. I often saw him sweeping the village
halls, lanes, and empty grounds with a broom in an endless effort to keep them
clean, but to no avail. Countless chickens, ducks, and dogs disregarded his
chiding and chasing and left their droppings. The wind, which blew dirt from
nearby fields, did not help. He was
constantly mad of the villagers for their messiness and the villagers regarded
him as a freak. After Communists taking over, his freak was regarded as
anti-revolutionary. He was arrested by the new authorities, tried by the masses,
and was executed in the first sweep of counter-revolutionary movement.
My 6th grand uncle was the greatest calligrapher
in the village. His time of glory came each year before the Chinese New Year,
when everybody asked him to write blessings on red papers to put in front of
their doors or around their homes. This Chinese tradition is still widely practiced.
He charged no money, but he did command a lot of respect during those times. My
grandfather was jealous. As soon as I was able to write, he commanded me to
write our own red papers so that we would not have to ask his brother to do it.
My writing was horrible, and I feared that displaying them would make me a
laughingstock. But nobody ever did laugh at me.
Most people in my village were illiterate farmers, and the ones who
could read didn’t care about perfect writing.
I admired my great grandfather for somehow getting his seven
sons educated, which was very rare at the time. I don’t remember him, but my
grandfather told me that I was his favorite. When my immediate family fled from
the Communists in the late 1920s, my great grandfather went with them. I was
born a refugee in Guangdong, and he took care of me as a baby while the others
had to go out to work. He died before I knew him.
Because we were refugees, he was buried without ceremony. After
returning to Ruijin in 1934, the Tseng families decided to have his remains
returned to our native village for a proper burial. They sent his beloved
youngest son, my 7th grand uncle, also my elementary school teacher,
to Guangdong to retrieve his remains. My grand uncle brought back his father’s
bones wrapped in a plain cloth package, and placed them on a table outside the gate
of the village’s common ancestor hall. According to tradition, people who did
not die at home were not entitled to be laid in the hall, but a framed wooden
tablet bearing his name could join other ancestors to be worshipped in it.
There was a big ceremony that lasted nonstop for seven days and nights, with
drums beating, cymbals clashing, suonas blowing their highest notes, and monks
chanting. All these made for a noisy and exciting environment in my young mind.
The most solemn moments came twice a day, once in the morning and again in the
evening, when a Chinese traditional burial ceremony was held. As soon as the
ceremony started, all noises were to stop except for the strange Chinese orchestra
sounding as it was called for by the master of the ceremony.
My grandfather served as the leader of all the males under
my great grandfather. We stood behind him in rows in generational order. The
ceremony master would chant orders. When he called out, “kneel” or “rise,” we
would all do as he said; at “offer incense”, my grandfather would offer a
burning incense given him by an aid; “pour the wine”, and he would pour a cup
of wine to the ground to pay respect to the God of the great earth. It was a
great experience, and that was the only time I had the honor of participating
in a traditional burial ceremony handed down since the time of Confucius.
In front of the ancestor hall, the families dried and
leveled a few acres of paddy fields to erect a paper mansion. There were many
rooms in it, each room filled with furniture - beds, chests, opened so people
could see the clothing stored inside -- all made of paper. Outside the mansion
were wagons, horses, even chickens, also made of paper. It was exciting to run
through the rooms and play hide and seek there. After seven days, the burial
ceremony ended, and they burned everything so that my great grandfather could
enjoy them in the other world.
My grandfather did not believe in ghosts as the common villagers
did, but he had great respect for our ancestors and worshipped them as was the
custom. And he believed in fortune telling and fengshui. He owned a fengshui
compass and often took me to the neighboring mountains and valleys to try to
find a good fengshui spot. He noted possible burial spots and analyzed them
according to fengshui principles. As I grew older and progressed in scientific
knowledge, I steadily lost interest in the subject, and now, unlike my
grandfather and disregard of the increasing
followers in the Western world, I regard fengshui as superstition.
I have also never believed in fortune telling and have never
consulted a fortune teller of any kind. But one day in my preteen years, my
grandfather contracted with a group of 4 dignified looking gentlemen to live
with us for several months. They discussed things and wrote book after book
until there was a pile of them. I learned that the gentlemen were specialists
in Chinese horoscope. They were telling my whole future life in the books they
wrote, one book per year. They were stored in a special cabinet, and I was
forbidden to read them. My grandfather often consulted the books when
situations called for it, such as before traveling or beginning at a new
school. But the cabinet was not locked, and I often took a peek at them when no
one else was in the room.
The handwriting was beautiful in black and red ink, and the
arrangements in the pages were art. Most of the text was beyond me, but one
phrase appeared frequently: “with a good man’s help”. ﹝有貴人相助﹞ For example, “With a good man’s help, he will come out of
the difficulty unharmed,” or “With a good man’s help, he is pushed into a
favorable situation.” Looking back now, I see that this phrase turned out to be
very true, as many good men have helped me in my life. I remember another
sentence from the books as well: “Plant a flower, but it does not bloom. Stick
a willow twig in the mud unintentionally, and it grows into a big tree.” ﹝有意裁花花不發，無心插柳柳成蔭。﹞ I have to
concede that lots of things in my life have happened that way.
The books stopped at the age of 60 -- probably because they
thought I would not live beyond that. After Communist Chinese opened China to
visitors from the outside world, and my brother and I were reconnected, I asked
about the whereabouts of those fortune books, but they were long gone. They
would have made a valuable collection in the manuscript department of any
prestigious library.
My grandfather was an amateur physician. If there was any
sickness, people in our village or nearby would come to him for help and he
would listen and prescribe different kinds of herbs. His prescription was all so scribbled that I
hardly recognize any character in it. But one sentence seemed appear at the end
in every prescription, “To be compromised by licorice root”.﹝甘草為引﹞
It must be one of the herb physician’s jargons which I even now have no idea
what it means. Although he practiced medicine without a formal medical
education and without license, some of his prescriptions must have been effective.
Once in a while we would receive vegetables, grains, or even a chicken or duck
from people showing their appreciation. (This is marvelous! – Evelyn)
When I was in my
mid-teens, my grandfather decided that I should get married. It was customary
that boys and girls married at an early age if the family could afford it. It
was also customary that the people getting married had no say about whom to
marry and how. Everything was arranged
by the parents and a matchmaker. My grandfather owned two business properties
in a small town not far from our village. One was leased as a Chinese herb
store. The owner was about the same age as my grandfather and the two of them
became good friends, often chatting about matters relating to Chinese medicine.
Every year, during the first 15 days of the Lunar New Year when all the
businesses closed to celebrate, our whole family was invited to the store for a
banquet. Normally only my grandfather
and I attended. Occasionally I saw a plump, shy girl about my age, but I never
paid her much attention. Then one day out of the blue, my grandfather announced
that they had arranged that she should be my future wife. The whole family was
excited and gave a resounding approval, except me of course. I was told that a
fortune teller had studied the astrological signs from our birth information
and had concluded that we were a good match. Then her birth information,
written on a piece of red paper, was offered to the kitchen god of my family
for his approval.
In olden days, every household had a kitchen god to protect
the family. He sat at the top of the stove in the kitchen and watched us
closely. On the 24th day of the last month before every lunar New
Year, we offered him sticky candies. This was the day he was supposed go to
heaven to report on the good and bad things that had happened in the family
during the past year. Sticky candy would seal his mouth in case he had bad
things to report.
Marriage is a big event, so everyone felt it should have the
kitchen god’s blessing. The girl’s birth information was left in front of his
sacred tablet for 49 days. If nothing serious happened in the household during
this period, then that would indicate the kitchen god’s approval to accept the
girl into our family. So during this period, everybody was very careful not to
break things or start a fight, etc. When I heard the news, I was exasperated
because I did not want to be tied down at this age. I threatened to tear up the
red paper with her birth information and to throw things at our kitchen god.
Eventually, to everyone’s (except me) disappointment, my family gave way.
According to custom, it was bad for a girl to have her birth information returned
from a prospective marriage. I felt sorry for the innocent and shy girl. I
never heard anything about her or her family again.
Closely connected to birth astrology and Chinese horoscopes
is the 5 elements doctrine. Ancient Chinese people believed that all matters
are made from five basic elements: metal, wood, water, fire, and soil. This
belief system was woven into the Chinese astrology, horoscopes, and the zodiac
to form an intricate fortune telling system, which influenced my given name.
When I was a child, everyone was given a pet name by their
parents at birth. In the Chinese countryside, there were many pet names such as
“little dog”, “big head” and so on. The pet name was generally for the parents
to use, or for those of the same or higher generation as the parents. Peers
could also call a person by his or her pet name, but younger ones could not.
Later, the father would consult the most learned man in the village to give the
baby a school name. Even if the child had no chance of ever going to school at
all, the name was important for registering in the family book of genealogy.
Every clan in China kept genealogy records, frequently revised and periodically
reprinted. The Tseng clan can trace its ancestry to the famous disciple of
Confucius, Tseng-zhi, more than 2500 years and 75 generations ago.
There are rules in every genealogy book for naming a baby. A
Chinese name is generally comprised of three characters. The first character is
the family name, the second indicates the generation (I am the 72nd
generation form Tseng-zhi). The third character is open but subject to rules.
Usually, a member of a branch of a
family selected a third character with a regulated radical of the character.
For example, the third character of my original school name 曾治均 was selected to include “soil” as its radical. 均 means ‘average’ or ‘fair’。Then
my grandfather heard from a fortune teller that, according to my birth
astrology, the composition of my being lacked one out of the five
elements: water. This why he changed the
third character in my name from 均 to 津, which contains a
radical for water.
Actually, both characters in my pet name, 流洲,
( It was chosen because the family were going from place to place in refugee.) and
the middle character of my school name, 治, also have the radical for water. All this water
already more than compensated for the water lacking in my being. The change
of 均 to 津 put much too much water
in my name, and in my being. Before we could afford to buy a house, I often
joked to my wife that it was my fate not to own property, because I had too
much water and no land. It was also ironic that although I originally lived in
a land-locked countryside, I eventually crossed the sea to live on an island
surrounded by water (Taiwan); joined the navy; crossed the Indian Ocean to live
in England; and then crossed Pacific Ocean to live in America. I have had too
much water in my life.
My grandfather seldom slept in
bed but instead always sat in a bamboo chair to doze. He smoked a water pipe.
Smoke from burning tobacco passes through the water, making a boiling sound,
and is then inhaled. Using this kind of apparatus to smoke required technique. If done incorrectly, the smoker would drink
the nicotine filled water instead inhaling the smoke. The water in the pipe
became very poisonous after a while. Leeches that we children caught to play
with would not die when we cut them into two or more sections; instead, each
section would grow into a separate leech.
But pouring the pipe water on them killed them instantly. Every night in
my childhood, after I went to bed, the sound of the water pipe, the flickering
of tobacco, punctuated with occasional coughing, all constituted an orchestral
lullaby to make me feel secure, warm, and comfortable.
Among the property that my grandfather owned and managed
were the fields cared for by my father, some fields leased to others, and two
shops in the town. He often went to town to chat with friends, but also gambled
a lot by playing a kind of Chinese cards. He often lost and once even had to
sell some land to pay the debt. I once watched a Chinese movie called “Living,”
in which the man gambled away all his property and became poor. After the
Communists took over, the man was spared because he had become one of
proletariat. If we had known what would happen in the future, my family should
have let my grandfather gamble away all of his properties.
My grandfather did no farm work at all. He did not even plant vegetables as other
seniors in the village usually did after they could not do hard farm labor. The
farm work was supposed to be my father’s job, but since he had asthma, we hired
a farm aid, a regular laborer who had been with us since before the Communist
occupation. He lived with us, ate at the same table, but did not sleep in the
same house. He was a silent, obedient, and strong man, and a good worker.
During the Communist period in the 1920’s, because he was from the desirable
working class that the Communists regarded as loyal to their revolution, he was
trained as an executor. The district government became his new employer. He
obediently killed people nearly every night. One night he had to execute more
than 100. The knife had to be changed three times.
After the Nationalists chased the Communists from my native
county, the villager wanted to lynch him. But my grandfather protected him,
saying that it wasn’t his fault, that he had been forced to kill. My
grandfather hired him again. Then something happened. After the harvest of
rice, the field was ploughed, ready for the planting of soybeans. He was using the back of his hoe to press
into the loose soil to make a hole, while I followed him and put 6 or 7 beans
in each hole. But I got too close, and he hit my head with the hoe. Although no
harm had been done except maybe for a blue-black mark on my scalp, someone
accused him of trying to kill me because killing people had already imprinted
in his personality. My grandfather let him go, and nobody has known of his
whereabouts since.
My grandfather believed in Taoism. Every day after washing up and
before retiring to sleep, he stood at the well between the halls, looked up to
the sky, and prayed:
“To the Greatest God in Heaven’s golden
palace, the mysterious highest being, please bless my family with peace,
safety, and luck.”
昊天金闕大天尊，玄君，高高上帝，XXXX，平安賜福。
Every year, my grandparents brought me to
a celebration in a Taoist Temple. It was located by itself on a rolling hill.
The visiting crowd was so large that most of us had to sit, rest, and
sleep in the open. In front of the altar in the temple were five people, all
youngsters, kneeling to a row of empty chairs, the Taoist bible open in front
of them, and chanting. After some text that I do not remember, they repeated a
sentence, repeated it so many times that I still remember it:
All worldly things are empty. All is
empty. Everything comes to nothing.
世間萬事萬物皆空，歸一歸空就是。
I remember imagining in that row of empty
chairs, there sat the deities receiving our worship, and their name was
‘empty’.
The celebration lasted three days. The
temple provided a feast every day. In the nights I often awoke to find myself
under a small, portable mosquito net, with my grandmother sitting outside
fanning me in the summer heat. There was an impressive scene during the night
of the so-called ‘ghost lanterns.’ There were green lights all around us, some
within 100 feet of us. There were lots of them. They floated in the air close
to a man’s height. Sometimes they formed a circle, sometimes they moved in a
straight line. It was scary. Only later did I learn that the temple was
surrounded by burial lots, and that the lights were phosphorescence from human
bones.
My grandfather died on February 11, 1953, at midnight, as he
was stripped off all his properties and his means of living by the Communist
Chinese government.
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