You have so many interesting stories, you have to write them down,” my friends often say. I always answer them, “No, these stories are too Chinese and not Chinese enough at the same time.”
My answer is not just an excuse for my laziness, which I am.
Due to the fact that (ethnic) Chinese, communists or otherwise, who could write in English and got published were more or less from the same background, these stories have been told so many times: a big family of several generations, whose members are generals, politicians, scholars, revolutionaries, artists, etc. Though play different roles, they endured the same events in the 20th. Century China: the Revolution ending two-thousand-year-old Imperial era in 1911, the “May 4th. Movement” led to individualism and women’s emancipation, the Japanese invasion and the War of Resistance, the Chinese part of WWII from 1937 to 1945, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. Then it was the establishment of the People’s Republic, The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and so on and so forth. My family and friends could barely escape all these; they are, though probably not under the spot lights, but after all actors against these backgrounds. There was no need for me to tell such a family saga once more.
Yet my stories are not Chinese enough, to some western readers at least. Neither of my grandmothers, maternal or paternal grandmother had bound-feet, nor was either of them concubine. Both of them had names to be registered, i.e., official identities, instead of “girl no. X” before getting married and “Mrs. so and so” afterwards. Neither of them was old-fashioned enough to marry my grandfather solely by parents’ arrangement, and they were not modern enough to do so by “free love”. Their marriages were arranged by their parents, who could not do it without their consensus. Both my grandmothers could read newspapers and novels and write a little. Against the marital troubles they suffered, they could blame neither the Age nor social conditions but themselves. They were not interested in study to become independent women, so that they had no choice but dependence on their husbands, who were not always loyal. In short, they found themselves in a transition status.
Everything changed in the summer of 2007. I went to Wuhan, a metropolis in mid China, to celebrate my aunt, my father’s sister’s 80th. birthday. My cousin Hong came from Japan to the same purpose. We shared the same hotel room, and she told me many things I never knew, for example, our great grandmother was a concubine, and presumably had bound feet. My aunt was a great story-teller too. I helped her with typing some family stories into the computer, so I got known even more.
Now, let’s begin with the big family of generations.
I.
At the southeast coast of China, there was a small town called Xiamen in Fujian province. This was a transcription of northern pronunciation; in old days this city was known as Amoy, closer to the local dialect. Amoy was a small town, but for centuries it was a place loved by merchants, poets, heroes, monks, and foreigners. Thanks to the pressure from the nomads in the North, the center of Chinese civilization kept moving down to the South. There were at least three major waves of migration to the South (ca. 310, 755, 1126 AD), and Fujian was one of the places favored by them. Jianzhen (687-763), the monk contributed great to the development of Buddhism in Japan, set off from Amoy. Shortly after Islam came to the world, the Persian and Arabian traders arrived at the city, and settled down here. In The Treaty of Wanghia signed on 3 July 1844 between the Qing Empire and the United States, Amoy was one of the five treaty ports with fixed tariffs and permission to erect churches and hospitals.
In 1897, great news arrived at the Zhou family in the city: two brothers successfully passed the imperial examination at the provincial level and became candidates! The Zhous were an old family that came from central China five hundred years ago. They cause of their migration was unclear, probably was to escape from the turmoil caused by war, but obviously not one of the three major waves. Now they grew up into a big family with several generations under the same roof. They were not rich, but they had a small fortune that was just enough for them to keep being “cultivated”. Hearing the happy news, the whole family, from grandparents to grandchildren, from masters and mistress to servants, were in great joy. The local authority sent them a board with horizontal inscription of “Same family, same year” to congratulate them, commending their appropriation of educating children. To some extent this inscription betokened the Zhous’ destiny; many members of this big family were educators, from university professors to middle school teachers, including me.
My great grandfather
Courtesy to http://www.xmculture.com
Zhou Dianxun (1876-1929), one of the two brothers, was one of the forerunners in this “family of educators”, as the authority today puts it. He was a handsome young man distinguished with extremely bright eyes. As a child he was often teased,”you may hold a contest with the lantern to race that who is brighter; and you will surely win, for your eyes are so bright that can blow it out.”
Before reaching twenty, he was pointed a leader in charge of administration at Yuping School in 1885. From 1904 he began to engage in charity works, while teaching at a middle school (since 1908).
13 years after his success with examination at the provincial level, he passed it at the highest level in the Forbidden City. As a first class candidate he was appointed a position of section chief in the Board of Civil Office, one of the Six Boards whose tradition can be traced back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).
Although he was not particularly late-developed, his real success came a bit too late. One year after his appointment, the Emperor was overthrown by the Revolution in 1911. The two-thousand- year history of the Six Boards came to an end; they were, so to speak, reorganized into ministries, and hundreds of thousands revolutionaries were waiting for the positions in them. Although enlightenment minded, he himself was more a classic scholar than modern and he could hardly compete with the students coming back from Europe, America, and Japan. Perhaps he also kept in mind the traditional moral principle that a gentleman does not serve two regimes; when the Emperor was gone, he could not work for the next, no matter the title changed into President, Chairman, or General Commissar. So he quit his position and went back to his hometown Amoy, picked up his career as a teacher, and went on till the end of his day.
At home, there were a wife, two concubines, and four children from three mothers waiting for him. The wife was his second. The first one was from a well-off background and married him with two servant girls as parts of her dowager. One of the servant girls became concubine when turned fifteen. In 1900, she gave birth to a son, my grandfather, Zhou Shouxi (Youmo, 1900-80). In the same year, the wife also gave birth to a daughter, and died shortly afterwards.
As there were more granduncles and grandaunts on their way, I have to give an explanation of the Chinese seniority system. There were two ways of seniority of siblings: the major and the minor, and both numbered boys and girls separately. The minor was closer to the modern way, i.e., to number the children from the same father in success of their birth, though boys and girls were numbered separately. The major would put all the brothers’ children together to number them in success of their birth. The Zhou family used the major. My great grandfather was Nr.5 among his brothers, who already had 9 sons and 7 daughters, so his eldest son and daughter were numbered 10 and 8 respectively.
My great grandmother took care of the wife’s daughter, my Nr.8 grandaunt as her own, and gave birth to a second son in 1906, my Nr.14 granduncle, Zhou Shoukai (Youyan, 1906-70). As a well behaved mother of two sons, she might have a hazy hope deep in her heart: one day she would become the wife. To her great disappointment, my great grandfather married a young lady from nice family, and she was passed off.
She fell seriously ill. On her deathbed, she called my grandfather in, and took a little bag from beneath pillow. There were several hundred copper coins in the bag. She handed the bag to my grandfather, saying, “This is my private saving, and I don’t have much to give you. Take good care of your brother. He is so young and will become motherless.” “Yes, mom,” my grandfather said, with tears in his eyes, “I’ll surely take good care of my little brother.”
The young woman died, left two boys of eight and two, and the copper coins become their funds. She was twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Nobody knew her precise age. She had a name, though. Her name was Xiang, meaning fragrance, my great grandmother.
II.
My great grandfather perhaps made a right decision, after all. He married a lady, instead of raising a former servant girl, my (biological) great grandmother to the status of wife. His second wife was as elegant as her name, Qiongyao, meaning a kind of jade. This way of indicating jade was an allusion from The Book of Songs, the oldest surviving collection of poems, attributed to Confucius’ selection and complement. Qionyao gave birth to a boy who did not survive his infancy, and never had any child ever since. However, she was regarded the Mother of my grandfather and granduncles and grandaunts, the grandmother of my father’s generation, as well as the great grandmother of mine.
From contemporary point of view, it was a violation of mother’s rights from the concubines’ part, but tradition had its balance. The deprivation of mother’s right was made up with equal right of children, regardless their biological mothers’ status. In contrast the European tradition of primogeniture, the Chinese one was that every (male) child was entitled to an equal share of inheritance. This balance derived, in part at least, from the wife’s monopoly of mother’s rights.
Viewing from the up growth of my grandfather and his siblings, the Mother must have been a wise woman. If their beautiful calligraphy, literature cultivation could attributed to their father, their warm kindness, the will to help, and so on, were definitely from their Mother. As the Harvard Professor Tu Wei-ming once said, in classic China, it was the mother, who was in charge of carrying on the moral tradition.
My grandfather was a brilliant student at school, and did every subject well. When he was about to graduate, an American teacher offered him the opportunity to study at the University of Chicago. He hurried home in excitement to tell his father this great news, expecting appreciation. To his disappointment, his father showed no sign of happiness. “I have no money to support such a project,” my great grandfather said.
“There is no need for money,” my grandfather said, still in hope, “my teacher will apply for a scholarship, and everything will be paid when it’s done.”
“True enough,” my great grandfather said, “but in that case you will not be able to make money for several years. You will soon turn twenty, and you have to take responsibility for your younger brothers and sisters.”
Everyone could see this urgency: the family kept growing. Besides my (biological) great grandmother, my great grandfather had two concubines, who gave birth to my granduncles Nr. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and grandaunts Nr. 11, 12, 13, plus grandaunt Nr. 8 from the first wife, my grandfather (Nr.10) and his brother (Nr. 14), eleven in all!
“Yes, dad,” my grandfather said. He was an obedient young man. The oldest son in China had far more responsibilities, no privilege.
So my grandfather gave up any hope of higher education, and started working after finishing schooling.
Probably because of his earlier experience, my grandfather was somehow reluctant to support his children’s interests outside school. He turned down, in turn, the request of my father for buying radio parts, of my aunt for piano class, and my uncle for singing class. (They later became engineer, economic historian, and biologist respectively.) “I promise you, all of you, to support your university education,” he said, “that’s good enough. Don’t ask for too much.”
To be fair to my grandfather, his sacrifice was not a little one. He was a brilliant student; he could become a distinguished scholar, as several brothers did. Every granduncle or grandaunt I met said to me among first things, “Your grandpa sacrificed himself for us younger brothers and sisters’ sake.” This sacrifice meant more after 1949.
As for his work itself, my grandfather did well. As mentioned above Amoy was an old trade port with a long tradition of migration, both in and out, and people remained at home had countless connections with outside world, mostly southeastern Asia. My grandfather found jobs with ease in Indonesia and the Philippines at banks owned by ethnic Chinese.
My great grandfather’s economic burden was soon released, but not solely thanks to the money made by my grandfather.
My answer is not just an excuse for my laziness, which I am.
Due to the fact that (ethnic) Chinese, communists or otherwise, who could write in English and got published were more or less from the same background, these stories have been told so many times: a big family of several generations, whose members are generals, politicians, scholars, revolutionaries, artists, etc. Though play different roles, they endured the same events in the 20th. Century China: the Revolution ending two-thousand-year-old Imperial era in 1911, the “May 4th. Movement” led to individualism and women’s emancipation, the Japanese invasion and the War of Resistance, the Chinese part of WWII from 1937 to 1945, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. Then it was the establishment of the People’s Republic, The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and so on and so forth. My family and friends could barely escape all these; they are, though probably not under the spot lights, but after all actors against these backgrounds. There was no need for me to tell such a family saga once more.
Yet my stories are not Chinese enough, to some western readers at least. Neither of my grandmothers, maternal or paternal grandmother had bound-feet, nor was either of them concubine. Both of them had names to be registered, i.e., official identities, instead of “girl no. X” before getting married and “Mrs. so and so” afterwards. Neither of them was old-fashioned enough to marry my grandfather solely by parents’ arrangement, and they were not modern enough to do so by “free love”. Their marriages were arranged by their parents, who could not do it without their consensus. Both my grandmothers could read newspapers and novels and write a little. Against the marital troubles they suffered, they could blame neither the Age nor social conditions but themselves. They were not interested in study to become independent women, so that they had no choice but dependence on their husbands, who were not always loyal. In short, they found themselves in a transition status.
Everything changed in the summer of 2007. I went to Wuhan, a metropolis in mid China, to celebrate my aunt, my father’s sister’s 80th. birthday. My cousin Hong came from Japan to the same purpose. We shared the same hotel room, and she told me many things I never knew, for example, our great grandmother was a concubine, and presumably had bound feet. My aunt was a great story-teller too. I helped her with typing some family stories into the computer, so I got known even more.
Now, let’s begin with the big family of generations.
I.
At the southeast coast of China, there was a small town called Xiamen in Fujian province. This was a transcription of northern pronunciation; in old days this city was known as Amoy, closer to the local dialect. Amoy was a small town, but for centuries it was a place loved by merchants, poets, heroes, monks, and foreigners. Thanks to the pressure from the nomads in the North, the center of Chinese civilization kept moving down to the South. There were at least three major waves of migration to the South (ca. 310, 755, 1126 AD), and Fujian was one of the places favored by them. Jianzhen (687-763), the monk contributed great to the development of Buddhism in Japan, set off from Amoy. Shortly after Islam came to the world, the Persian and Arabian traders arrived at the city, and settled down here. In The Treaty of Wanghia signed on 3 July 1844 between the Qing Empire and the United States, Amoy was one of the five treaty ports with fixed tariffs and permission to erect churches and hospitals.
In 1897, great news arrived at the Zhou family in the city: two brothers successfully passed the imperial examination at the provincial level and became candidates! The Zhous were an old family that came from central China five hundred years ago. They cause of their migration was unclear, probably was to escape from the turmoil caused by war, but obviously not one of the three major waves. Now they grew up into a big family with several generations under the same roof. They were not rich, but they had a small fortune that was just enough for them to keep being “cultivated”. Hearing the happy news, the whole family, from grandparents to grandchildren, from masters and mistress to servants, were in great joy. The local authority sent them a board with horizontal inscription of “Same family, same year” to congratulate them, commending their appropriation of educating children. To some extent this inscription betokened the Zhous’ destiny; many members of this big family were educators, from university professors to middle school teachers, including me.
My great grandfather
Courtesy to http://www.xmculture.com
Zhou Dianxun (1876-1929), one of the two brothers, was one of the forerunners in this “family of educators”, as the authority today puts it. He was a handsome young man distinguished with extremely bright eyes. As a child he was often teased,”you may hold a contest with the lantern to race that who is brighter; and you will surely win, for your eyes are so bright that can blow it out.”
Before reaching twenty, he was pointed a leader in charge of administration at Yuping School in 1885. From 1904 he began to engage in charity works, while teaching at a middle school (since 1908).
13 years after his success with examination at the provincial level, he passed it at the highest level in the Forbidden City. As a first class candidate he was appointed a position of section chief in the Board of Civil Office, one of the Six Boards whose tradition can be traced back to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).
Although he was not particularly late-developed, his real success came a bit too late. One year after his appointment, the Emperor was overthrown by the Revolution in 1911. The two-thousand- year history of the Six Boards came to an end; they were, so to speak, reorganized into ministries, and hundreds of thousands revolutionaries were waiting for the positions in them. Although enlightenment minded, he himself was more a classic scholar than modern and he could hardly compete with the students coming back from Europe, America, and Japan. Perhaps he also kept in mind the traditional moral principle that a gentleman does not serve two regimes; when the Emperor was gone, he could not work for the next, no matter the title changed into President, Chairman, or General Commissar. So he quit his position and went back to his hometown Amoy, picked up his career as a teacher, and went on till the end of his day.
At home, there were a wife, two concubines, and four children from three mothers waiting for him. The wife was his second. The first one was from a well-off background and married him with two servant girls as parts of her dowager. One of the servant girls became concubine when turned fifteen. In 1900, she gave birth to a son, my grandfather, Zhou Shouxi (Youmo, 1900-80). In the same year, the wife also gave birth to a daughter, and died shortly afterwards.
As there were more granduncles and grandaunts on their way, I have to give an explanation of the Chinese seniority system. There were two ways of seniority of siblings: the major and the minor, and both numbered boys and girls separately. The minor was closer to the modern way, i.e., to number the children from the same father in success of their birth, though boys and girls were numbered separately. The major would put all the brothers’ children together to number them in success of their birth. The Zhou family used the major. My great grandfather was Nr.5 among his brothers, who already had 9 sons and 7 daughters, so his eldest son and daughter were numbered 10 and 8 respectively.
My great grandmother took care of the wife’s daughter, my Nr.8 grandaunt as her own, and gave birth to a second son in 1906, my Nr.14 granduncle, Zhou Shoukai (Youyan, 1906-70). As a well behaved mother of two sons, she might have a hazy hope deep in her heart: one day she would become the wife. To her great disappointment, my great grandfather married a young lady from nice family, and she was passed off.
She fell seriously ill. On her deathbed, she called my grandfather in, and took a little bag from beneath pillow. There were several hundred copper coins in the bag. She handed the bag to my grandfather, saying, “This is my private saving, and I don’t have much to give you. Take good care of your brother. He is so young and will become motherless.” “Yes, mom,” my grandfather said, with tears in his eyes, “I’ll surely take good care of my little brother.”
The young woman died, left two boys of eight and two, and the copper coins become their funds. She was twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Nobody knew her precise age. She had a name, though. Her name was Xiang, meaning fragrance, my great grandmother.
II.
My great grandfather perhaps made a right decision, after all. He married a lady, instead of raising a former servant girl, my (biological) great grandmother to the status of wife. His second wife was as elegant as her name, Qiongyao, meaning a kind of jade. This way of indicating jade was an allusion from The Book of Songs, the oldest surviving collection of poems, attributed to Confucius’ selection and complement. Qionyao gave birth to a boy who did not survive his infancy, and never had any child ever since. However, she was regarded the Mother of my grandfather and granduncles and grandaunts, the grandmother of my father’s generation, as well as the great grandmother of mine.
From contemporary point of view, it was a violation of mother’s rights from the concubines’ part, but tradition had its balance. The deprivation of mother’s right was made up with equal right of children, regardless their biological mothers’ status. In contrast the European tradition of primogeniture, the Chinese one was that every (male) child was entitled to an equal share of inheritance. This balance derived, in part at least, from the wife’s monopoly of mother’s rights.
Viewing from the up growth of my grandfather and his siblings, the Mother must have been a wise woman. If their beautiful calligraphy, literature cultivation could attributed to their father, their warm kindness, the will to help, and so on, were definitely from their Mother. As the Harvard Professor Tu Wei-ming once said, in classic China, it was the mother, who was in charge of carrying on the moral tradition.
My grandfather was a brilliant student at school, and did every subject well. When he was about to graduate, an American teacher offered him the opportunity to study at the University of Chicago. He hurried home in excitement to tell his father this great news, expecting appreciation. To his disappointment, his father showed no sign of happiness. “I have no money to support such a project,” my great grandfather said.
“There is no need for money,” my grandfather said, still in hope, “my teacher will apply for a scholarship, and everything will be paid when it’s done.”
“True enough,” my great grandfather said, “but in that case you will not be able to make money for several years. You will soon turn twenty, and you have to take responsibility for your younger brothers and sisters.”
Everyone could see this urgency: the family kept growing. Besides my (biological) great grandmother, my great grandfather had two concubines, who gave birth to my granduncles Nr. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and grandaunts Nr. 11, 12, 13, plus grandaunt Nr. 8 from the first wife, my grandfather (Nr.10) and his brother (Nr. 14), eleven in all!
“Yes, dad,” my grandfather said. He was an obedient young man. The oldest son in China had far more responsibilities, no privilege.
So my grandfather gave up any hope of higher education, and started working after finishing schooling.
Probably because of his earlier experience, my grandfather was somehow reluctant to support his children’s interests outside school. He turned down, in turn, the request of my father for buying radio parts, of my aunt for piano class, and my uncle for singing class. (They later became engineer, economic historian, and biologist respectively.) “I promise you, all of you, to support your university education,” he said, “that’s good enough. Don’t ask for too much.”
To be fair to my grandfather, his sacrifice was not a little one. He was a brilliant student; he could become a distinguished scholar, as several brothers did. Every granduncle or grandaunt I met said to me among first things, “Your grandpa sacrificed himself for us younger brothers and sisters’ sake.” This sacrifice meant more after 1949.
As for his work itself, my grandfather did well. As mentioned above Amoy was an old trade port with a long tradition of migration, both in and out, and people remained at home had countless connections with outside world, mostly southeastern Asia. My grandfather found jobs with ease in Indonesia and the Philippines at banks owned by ethnic Chinese.
My great grandfather’s economic burden was soon released, but not solely thanks to the money made by my grandfather.
