Unpeeling the Past

The grands trying to figure out a Roti Canai. My grandmother unfolded the whole thing and put it on the table. I realized that I had to show them how to eat it.

"I thought it was a placemat!"

Last Saturday as I lazed around my grandparents' house my grandfather opened up to me about his past. He's a stoic guy, that one. He's almost completely deaf, but we all know that he uses it as a convenient excuse to tune everyone out. Occasionally he'll interject with a full-throated "FOOLISH!" (in English) or "Ohhhh...yohhhh....." but most of the time my grandfather sits there in his own silent world, either sitting at the table with his calligraphy or by the computer surfing the web (yes, he actually does that).

My surprise visit brightened his mood considerably, and he unexpectedly slowly started sharing glimpses into his younger years in China. He never does that, and apparently no one knows much about this period in his life because he simply does not want to talk about it. I am writing this down now so I will never forget this special moment.

It all started when I commented on how his English was ridiculously amazing. My grandfather throws around words like "parsimonious" and "comparatively"... vocabulary that you just wouldn't expect to come out of a 98 year-old Chinese man's mouth. This topic then bloomed into how he feels his English is much better now than how it was back in China. He first started talking about how a new movie theater opened up in Chongqing during the Japanese resistance (WWII) and was so popular that even Americans had trouble getting tickets. He said that it was "People Mountain People Sea" (人山人海)...

"你知道 People Mountain People Sea 是什麽意思嗎？"

Do you know what People Mountain People Sea means?

"當然知道，不就是擠得要死嗎？"

Of course, doesn't it mean that it was very very crowded?

He chuckled heartily. You see, one of his favorite things to translate Chinese into English word by word. For some reason he finds this wordplay extremely amusing. His favorite is calling my grandmother "Small Air" (小氣, stingy). I find it amusing that he finds it amusing.

Then from the Americans that couldn't get their hands on the movie tickets, he trailed off into another story on how he had two US soldiers assigned to follow him to Xi'an. One was a Major, the other was a Lieutenant-Major, though he couldn't be sure about their exact ranks. During wartime, there was no heating anywhere in China. The Chinese suffered under the bitter cold, and so did their American companions.

"那時戰陣根本沒有暖氣，我帶他們到的最好的旅館也沒有暖氣。一個以前是個醫生，surgeon，另外個我記得是個記者。結果過了一晚他們後天跟我說他們差一點死掉了！"

There was no heating during the war, even in the best hotel that I brought the Americans to. Prior to the war they had different occupations -- one was a surgeon, the other as I recall was a journalist. After dropping them off at the hotel, they told me the next day that they almost died!

“他們差一點死了？怎麼回事？"

They almost died? What happened?

“不說那時代的中國沒有暖氣嗎？所以他們用煤炭，結果晚上一個突然醒過來，發現窗子是關的，另外個美軍已經昏迷了，趕快把串子打開讓空氣跑進來。哎呀，如果他們真的死了那就糟糕。"

As I said there was no heating then, so they burned coal for warmth. Then, one of the guys woke up in the middle of the night and discovered that the windows were shut tight. The other guy had already fallen unconscious, so he quickly opened up the windows to let the CO2 out. If those guys actually died under my watch then I'd be in big trouble.

I thought to myself, okay grandpa... that's a mildly interesting story.

But then he fell silent for a minute. I didn't press him. I just lay there on the couch with my hands propping my head, hoping that this warm-up would lead to something really substantial.

He started again.

“我被派到前線。那時候Free China和日本站的中國有不同的貨幣。我們決定跟他們導彈，所以引了一大堆假幣。一開始很有效，他們幾個月都沒有發現，但他們一旦發現的時候就殺了和多人。他們爲了我們的假幣殺了人，殺了很多人。哎呀............”

I was placed on the front line. During that time Free China and the areas occupied by the Japanese operated under different currencies. We decided to mess with them and printed a load of counterfeit money. It was very effective at first and they didn't discover it until a few months later. However when they found out they were ruthless. They killed a lot of people. They killed a lot of people because of our counterfeit money. So many people died. Ohhh.... yohhh.....

I had no response, what could I say?

I knew that my grandfather was a general in KMT intelligence, now I could finally sketch out who he was as a young man. But these stories carried such burden, each decision spelled out life or death for himself and for many unknown persons... consequences unknown. I simply cannot compare my leisurely carefree life to his. And wartime tragedies still happen in our generation everyday.

No wonder he prefers to stay deaf and silent in this world. I asked my dad whether grandpa had ever told him this story. He said that it was the first time he heard it himself. But I am so grateful that he shared this piece with me. It helps remind me that life can take you in all different directions if you can just survive. I'm sure that he never thought that he'd be retelling this tale 70 years later sitting in his apartment in Flushing, New York, sitting on a bright orange leather couch in front of a huge flatscreen television.

So long as it's not the end of the world, then it's not. My grandfather is an amazing individual and I'm proud of his resilience and indefatigable curiosity. I hope that we're cut from the same cloth.