Grandfather (1)

1. The First Meetings

When I learned about my maternal grandfather’s real name, it was already seventeen years after his passing away. This was the fourth name of his that I had learned over the years. When I was a little girl growing up in Beijing, I had always known him by the name ZHANG Chang-Zhong, Zhang being the family name, and Chang-Zhong meaning “to prosper China”. It was a typical Chinese name of his generation. However, one thing puzzled me throughout my childhood was, how come his family name was Zhang, while my mother family name was Liang? Although over one hundred million Chinese people were Zhang, I surveyed the names of all the relatives I knew, and found no one else was Zhang besides my grandfather and my uncles. Even my grandfather’s own sisters were Liang. So were the children of his brother.

My grandfather must have changed his name, I concluded, but for what reason? Chinese people are very respectful to their ancestry heritages and would never change their family names. What happened to grandfather? Was he trying to conceal something from someone?

This problem occupied most of my childhood memories of grandpa. During those years, grandpa was as far away from me as the ocean breeze to a desert rock. I lived in Beijing with my parents; grandpa lived in Hong Kong with grandma and my three uncles. Hong Kong was a foreign territory forbidden to us. Over the years, I only met grandpa three times. The first time I was only three when grandpa came to Beijing. I had no memory of our brief meeting except for the only photograph we took together as a proof. That was also the first time my father met my grandpa.

The next time I saw grandpa was the summer of 1977 when my grandparents went to Guangzhou for a trade convention. My mother took this rare opportunity to take me to the family re-union. I was six and was excited about the trip too. After several days of travel on train, we arrived in Guangzhou, but immediately I became terribly ill. I was locked up in a high rise hotel the whole two weeks and missed most of the family action. During those delirious days, grandma came to see me several times and brought me food and little presents. I only remembered seeing grandpa for only a few minutes. He came to the hotel one afternoon to fetch my mother, and left half a pack of chewing gum. After they left, I sat by the window, looking down the city, playing with the silver wrappers from the gum, and feeling extremely sorry for myself. I was sorry and embarrassed to be sick. I had been looking forward to seeing my grandpa for a long time, and I wanted to leave a good impression for him so he would know of my existence. And I wanted to make certain of his existence. Devastatingly I failed. His brief entrance and exit left me with more emptiness and left us further apart.

After that I became afraid of grandpa. A few years later I saw him one more time in Guangzhou but we had no interaction that I could remember. In Guangzhou he stayed in a private apartment with gardens and servants. He seldom joined us for family activities and was often in secret meetings.

When we were living apart, I wish he would write us like grandma often did. When he was around, I wish he would speak mandarin so I could understand him. When he talked to my mother, I wish he would not agitate her and make her nervous. In our pictures together, I wish he would smile more and showed some recognition. He seemed so worried and reserved; I was even afraid to look closely at him in pictures. For all his mysterious style and aloofness, I mistrusted him. While I kept my distance from his, secretly I tried to collect information about him.

Secretly, yes, for it was forbidden to ask questions.

(draft)