The Story of My Grandparents In China

Last night, I sat at my grandparents' tiny dining room table at their apartment. My grandmother sat beside me, slurping her nĭou rò mìan, noodle soup with beef. Next to her was my mother, sneaking one more dò shā bĭng, sweet red bean pancake. Across from me was my grandfather, already almost done with his mìan. As I prodded my noodles with chopsticks, I watched the three of them eat. (By the way, watching Chinese people eat is an exciting experience: there is much slurping, shoveling, loud talking and chopstick-pointing.) I then realized I knew almost nothing about my grandparents lives when they were young. However, I know so much about my American grandparents growing up, I could write an American Girl book. I listened to the sound of the passerbys outside the apartment and wondered what China was like. I've never been there, but my grandparents lived there for almost thirty years before relocating to Taiwan. My mother was even born there. I wondered what it was like to grow up there, and how it was different from Taiwan.

Even though I've been trying to avoid speaking English these past two days--especially in front of my grandparents, who can say and understand only "beautiful," "water" and "Kimberly"--I asked my mother in my maiden tongue, "Could you ask Gong-Gong and Pao-Pao to tell you about their lives in China, then translate for me?"

My mother raised her eyebrows, shoved the last piece of dò shā bĭng in her mouth, then turned to her father and began to speak in Chinese. My Gong-Gong took leave of his soup, looked at me and answered her. After he finished, my mother said to me in English, "He says it was very difficult." She pointed to the beef soup that we were eating. "He says that you couldn't eat meat every day."

Then my grandmother cut in. My mother listened to her, then laughed and turned back to me. "My mother says, 'Not for me.' She came from a very rich family. Her family were landowners. Though my father--" she jerked her head toward my grandfather and dropped her voice to a whisper, "says that they only owned rural land. However, my mother's family was very rich. They sent her cousins to college at Beijing and Shanghai, which was unheard of for women back then. Almost seventy years ago."

Aha! I had found an opportunity for me to speak in Chinese. I asked, "Did Pao-Pao go to college?" Rock!

My grandmother answered, "No." And my mother told me the story. When my grandmother was in high school, she was hit in the head with a Frisbee. (At least, I think it's a Frisbee. My mother couldn't find a name for it, but she described it as a wide, flat object.) The Maybe Frisbee caused such an injury to her head that she was out of school for two whole years. During this time, her younger sisters continued to go to school. When it came time for them to graduate, my grandmother--whose parents had long since died--sent her younger sisters to college but stayed behind to work. "My mother is smart," said my own mother. "She knows a lot about numbers, and even though her family was rich she knew that there wasn't enough for all three of them to attend college. So she stayed behind."

And it's a good thing she did, because it was in her home province that she and my grandfather met.

My grandfather--a soldier in the army--only came to meet my grandmother--then a secretary--when he moved with the Nationalist troops to the province in China where my grandmother lived. "Luckily," said my mother, "my father never fought in the war. He was always at the back." (I'm not sure what this means. "At the back?" Like he hid in the back? Or maybe he worked "behind the scenes?" Unsure. Lost in translation.) There, my grandparents met, they married, and they started a family, first with the birth my aunt; later, my uncle would be born. My own mother wasn't born until my grandparents embarked on their escape route to Taiwan.

Three months after my mother was born in Canton, she and her family crossed the Taiwan Strait, the body of water separating China and Taiwan, and settled in a small city at the southern tip of the island. My mother, Yie-Teh; her older brother, Li Zhong; her older sister, Yi Shing; and her parents escaped the Communist overtake of China.

And the rest is my history.

I sit here on the couch in my grandparents' living room typing this. My grandfather is watching television, a Chinese news station. Even on the other side of the world, Taiwanese anchorwomen pile on the makeup and have hair that doesn't move, just like the CNN women do. My mother has the telephone plastered to her face. She's talking to her sister, who is in China with her husband at her summer house. My grandmother is in the kitchen. I can hear her washing the dishes for probably the fifth time. Next to me is my little fake Moleskine ($3.99 Piccadilly at Borders, baby...take that, $10 Moleskine), open, already chock-full of vocabulary I've picked up over the past two days, written in English, pinyin, and the occasional character that my mother has scribbled for me. I have so much to learn over the next seven weeks, by watching, listening, and writing.

In studio, the teachers encourage us to be fearless and let go of any expectations. I know I can do that here, too. SO IF YOU'RE MY FAMILY MEMBER, A PIECE OF FOOD, OR THE ISLAND OF TAIWAN: BRING IT, BABY.