From the children (IV) — The family heirloom

In 2000, after Taiwan’s northernmost air-force dependants’ village — Lao Mei Mingde Village No. 1 — was demolished and levelled, we seemed to lose a shared memory as well. Thinking of it still hurts.

Fortunately, during a rare lull in the 2008 financial crisis, my second brother used his blog under the title “Wild children of Mingde Village” and dozens of short pieces to bring our happy childhood vividly back to life, and to string together the common memories of Lao Mei dependants’ children scattered across the world — the sea, the beach, country lanes, field ridges, big trees, brooks, the wellside … all playgrounds we could only call paradise. Yes, only paradise would do.

Before long, encouraged by my eldest brother, my second brother, and the whole family, Mother bravely took up her pen and wrote one splendid memoir chapter after another. Not long after the February 28 Incident, for a local girl to marry a mainlander serviceman was anything but easy; from these pages you see Mother’s steadfast love for Father.

In those hard years, as five children arrived one after another, Mum and Dad gave themselves to the family without resentment — deeply moving. When three meals a day were barely enough, they still found ways for us all to receive a full education; that became the best example for how we would raise our own children.

I have always felt very lucky. From childhood I never felt economic pressure — perhaps Dad, Mum, my elder siblings all shouldered it for me. I never felt crushing pressure over exams or getting into top schools; Mum and Dad never demanded elite universities — everything followed its course. Even after I failed the judicial officer examination and the bar many times, they never pressed me.

Between the lines of Mother’s memoir, life was plainly austere, yet Mother’s spirit was full. Whenever money was tight or illness struck, benefactors helped turn danger into safety and problems into solutions. The book brims with warmth and gratitude — no less the harvest of how Mum and Dad treated people day by day.

Though Mum and Dad lived modestly all their lives, they were rich in spirit. In the hardest times I often heard Father say to Mother, “The boat will straighten at the bridge,” and “Children and grandchildren have their own blessings.” For more than sixty years that has indeed carried us through countless adversities — a hall full of descendants, children living happily.

Mother did not preach; Father was even less a man of words — yet their example has deeply shaped all five of us: how to treat people (sincere, kind, upright, doing one’s duty), attitude to life (thrifty, knowing one’s blessings, cherishing them, gratitude, optimism), ideas about education (respect, openness, democracy), and more. And not only us five — among eleven grandchildren I see the same traces; I hope we pass them down generation after generation.

As children, two round sweets for ten cents, two boiled eggs instead of cake on the birthday child’s plate (one egg for those without a birthday), new clothes at New Year that were new school uniforms — all filled us with expectation, without a word of complaint.

Past fifty, looking back at my three children, they have neither the joy we knew nor any way truly to feel the lean years Mum and Dad lived through.

Fortunately, Mother, in plain, easy language full of thanks, brings those days vividly to life. The children turn each story with eager hands. Ha! That works better than my telling “the old story” a hundred times — it lets them step easily into small stories from a great age. Mother’s lively pen is admirable. This truly is the best “family heirloom.”