The Eldest Son Goes to University

The next summer (1968, Minguo 57), in the summer after his second year of senior high, the eldest son came back from Taipei. He left his luggage in the living room and went out to chat with friends. Out of habit I helped him unpack. In his suitcase I found a letter returned by the post office. The address was Lukang, Changhua, stamped “addressee unknown”. I did not read the letter. When he came back I asked him what it was about. Only then did he tell me: once, after taking five hundred dollars in living expenses from home back to the Taipei study hall, he got off the bus and met a young man in slippers about his own age, seventeen. The man came over and struck up a conversation, saying he needed to get back to Changhua but had no fare, and asking whether he could borrow some money—he would send it back as soon as he got home. My son felt a sense of kinship when he heard Changhua; after all, his mother is from Changhua too. He gave him the five hundred dollars. The other man wrote down his home address and handed it to my son. They said goodbye, and the young man boarded a bus and left.

My son told me: “I waited a week with no word, so I wrote asking for the money. I never expected the letter to come back.”

That month my son had no money for meals and did not dare ask home for more. I asked how he had got through the month. He said: “I usually save a little each month, so I lived on toast every day until the second month when I came home and Mum gave me money.” I felt so sorry for him and told him: “It is fine to do a good deed, but only within what you can afford—otherwise you might make yourself ill from hunger.” He said: “I know. I will be more careful from now on.”

Time passed quickly. My son finished senior high; on 1 and 2 July he would sit the joint entrance exams for colleges and universities. The evening before, I went with him to Taipei. I stayed at my good friend Mrs Chen’s home; my son stayed in Uncle Qiu’s dorm—Mr Qiu was a classmate of my husband’s. Early the next morning the eldest daughter hurried from home to meet us at the exam site. Mr Qiu and we accompanied my son to the hall. The exams ran two days straight; we stayed with him throughout, and lunch was arranged thanks to Mr Qiu. My husband stayed home, working and looking after the three younger children.

After the exams we went home to wait for the results. A few days after the score sheet arrived, television announced each university’s admission cut-off. We had no TV at home, so we stood at the Li family’s doorway and peered in, just in time to see my son’s score line up with National Chengchi University, Department of Political Science. The great stone in my heart finally dropped. My son had not let me down; at last I could give my husband an account. That night lying in bed, tears ran without stopping. My husband is not good at putting feelings into words, but he was very happy too.

Early the next morning, Uncle Qi bought strings of firecrackers and came to the door to congratulate us: “Old Tang, congratulations—your son got into a national university.” He lit them; they crackled and popped. Next came Uncle Huang next door, Uncle Yang, and several other uncles, all setting off firecrackers. Even Uncle Zhang from Laomei Street came, and a good friend who worked at the First Nuclear Power Plant—an engineer who had long cared about our children’s schooling. In our little lane so many firecrackers went off that the cost must have been about three hundred dollars. When the noise died down, congratulations poured in. Everyone was glad because the eldest son was the first child in the dependants’ village to enter a national university; they hoped every family’s children would follow his example.