Our Family Remembrances

I am reading James’ piece again almost 2 years after it was first written.  I find it as moving and funny as I did the first time I read it.  And now I am inspired to share my own memories of Grandpa Cha (Gung Gung), which are of course somewhat different.  I am sure that we each only saw a small piece of this great man whose accomplishments and presence were (and still are) larger-than-life.

I actually have rather few early memories of Gung Gung, even though I may technically have spent more time with him than James.  Because our mother was so busy during our childhood years, we tended to spend a lot of time with Grandma Cha, also known as Nai Nai.  And since she rarely left my grandfather’s side, I had the great fortune of staying with them often, and accompanying them both on various trips.  Perhaps by virtue of being a girl, my relationship with Gung Gung in those days seemed to be more strongly colored by his relationships with Nai Nai and my own parents.

As a child, I remember being terrified of Gung Gung.  While he never raised his hand or even voice to me, as far as I can recall, I was nevertheless deeply impressed by his punishment of my brother James.  James was a rather rambunctious young lad, and when my parents were not around, no-one seemed to be able to control him except for Gung Gung.  And while his punishments were never as harsh or severe as my mothers’, it was somehow more shameful to have incurred his wrath or to have disturbed his peace.

I remember Gung Gung taking great delight in cutting fruit to share with me at the dinner table – one of our favorite childhood jokes was cutting a banana in half and calling it a “banana split”.  Gung Gung would love to watch nature documentaries on the English television channel; rather than wasting his time on entertainment alone, he chose to feed his voracious intellect and to practice his English listening comprehension.  To this day, I feel a great sense of comfort when watching nature shows myself, almost unconsciously sensing that he is with me.

I visited Gung Gung’s African empire when I was about ten years old, passing through Switzerland, as was customary in those days.  At that time I was too young to realize what it meant for a Chinaman from Hong Kong to have established such a strong foothold in that part of the world.  And definitely too young to appreciate the enormous cultural and economic divide between the African ladies selling beads on the street in Kaduna, and the Swiss ladies behind the chocolate counter in Zurich.  Although even at that age I did noticed that Swiss cows were brown and fat, while African ones were white, and so thin that ribs and shoulder blades poked out sharply.

While Gung Gung would often have me sit by him, and hold my hand, when I was a child, we seldom had long conversations.  Even at my wedding, Gung Gung to me was still somewhere between an exalted deity, and a gentle bear to hug and kiss.  It was not until years later, when I became established as a young doctor that I began to develop an adult relationship with him.

Perhaps one of my earliest memories of Gung Gung’s noticing me as an adult involved a visit that he and Nai Nai made to Seattle with Great-Uncle Bill Liu and his wife Great Auntie Cai-Fung in the late 1980s.  They were traveling together and wanted to drive down to Portland to visit my Auntie Priscilla.  Road-trips on American freeways were (and are) considered great fun because there are few other places in the world that can boast such wide and comfortable roads, lovely roadside scenery, and convenient road-side rest-stops.  Nai Nai did not want Gung Gung or Great Uncle Bill to drive the 3-4 hours, but she was uncomfortable with having me drive.  Her impression of my driving skill was held over from when I failed my driving test twice in California at the age of seventeen.  (That particular episode had been perhaps the one major conflict she and I had ever had, and I am afraid I had been all rebellious teenager about it.)

For this particular trip, I was trying to point out that I was now in my twenties, had an impeccable driving record, and had made the trip to Portland several times.  It was looking like a bit of a stalemate between me, Great Uncle Bill and Nai Nai when Gung Gung quite unexpectedly came to my support.  He quietly stated that he felt confident I could do it, and as usual, that was that.  Of course that was not really the end, in the sense that there was a nonstop stream of Shanghainese commentary and exclamation for the next 3 hours on the road, but nevertheless, we all made it without mishap.

During my residency training years in the early 1990s, when my own children were first infants and then toddlers, I would visit Gung Gung and Nai Nai at least once or twice a year.  They were usually either in California, Hong Kong or Compton Manor.  Each time I would spend the majority of the time with Nai Nai, chatting and visiting with her, but gradually and almost imperceptibly, I began to notice that Gung Gung would draw me into conversation about some health-related matter.   It could be about a news article on a drug, or health condition that he had heard about.

The year that Gung Gung turned 80, he had a major heart attack in a rather remote part of China.  He was fortunately able to summon an old friend and long-time physician Dr Don Harrison to his bedside, but there were definite limitations to what could be safely offered in rural China at that point.  I was still in residency at UCLA at the time, but I was able to see him shortly afterwards when he returned to Hong Kong.  I remember having several long conversations with him at that point about health strategies for prolonging his life.  He seemed for the first time to feel his own mortality, and was determined to focus his powerful will on the question of how to best take care of his own health.  From that point on and for the next 12 years, while Gung Gung still came to work at the office every day, his office was redesigned to accommodate a full-incline lounger for naps, and a treadmill for doing exercise.

On the occasion of his ninetieth birthday, a number of the third generation grandkids (3Gs) visited Gung Gung’s birth village of Yuen Hua with him for the first time.  Although I had often heard it mentioned in stories about Gung Gung growing up, I had never fully realized the extent of the desperate poverty of his family, and indeed, village life.  Gung Gung and his sister were raised in the tiny 3-room ancestral house that also housed his five half brothers and their families.  The ancient stone and clay chimney stove in the kitchen had not been modernized, but was partially restored.  The ancient family burial plot with its circle of worn gravestones and tall pine trees was particularly moving to visit.  Gung Gung was not an emotionally demonstrative man, but this occasion I could tell that he felt both deeply content and yet also very sad.  On that trip, Gung Gung traveled with his usual entourage of Chinese dignitaries and officials to see famous Hangzhou sights, but seemed particularly delighted to chat with the oarsman who manned his boat on Xi Hu lake, who spoke his native Yuen Hua village dialect.

The year before Gung Gung became ill, I was pleased to accompany him on a trip to Sendai, Japan, to view the annual cherry blossom festival.  I saw yet another side of this complex man.  Gung Gung had learned some Japanese during his visits to Japan in the early years of textile development with Great-Grandpa Liu (Nai Nai’s father).

He was deeply appreciative of many aspects of the Japanese culture, including their strong technical proclivity, aesthetic sense, and endless perfectionism.  However, his appetite was clearly Chinese – after a protracted search for fatty maguro tuna fresh from the fishing boat, he promptly bought several pounds and wanted to eat them on the spot.  Fortunately Nai Nai and my mom were able to convince him to have the fish carved properly into sashimi by the hotel chef that night.

Gung Gung lived for just over a year after he was initially diagnosed with widely metastatic non-small cell carcinoma of the lung.  He fought perhaps the bravest and toughest battle of his life during that year.  For a man who had rarely known anything but the best of good health, he seemed depressed and even disgusted by his own weakness.  But he rarely admitted to pain or fatigue, and never allowed himself or others to indulge in a single moment of pity.  He faced his fears and his disease with characteristic fierce determination, hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.

In the last few days at the hospital, Gung Gung remained alert and aware.  He demanded to be moved out of the intensive care unit (ICU), despite the fact that this might compromise his care.  I believe this was because he could see how much it frightened our family members, and particularly Nai Nai, to see him there.  At one point, he demanded to be moved home to Shouson Hill Road.  Because his speech had become slurred and difficult to understand, several different family members and doctors came to ask him if he understood the consequences of such a move (he would likely die very quickly at home, or even on the way home).  It must have been frustrating for him to not be able to communicate clearly, and yet I distinctly remember being incredibly impressed with his single-mindedness, even speaking in English to make sure the doctors and everyone could not misunderstand him.

I said goodbye to Gung Gung for the last time one May afternoon, on my way to the airport.  He and I both knew he did not have long to live, and I’m glad he was insisting by then that my mom and uncles and aunties stay at his bedside.  On the flight back to the US, shortly before landing, I raised the window shade to reveal a gorgeous sunrise over the clouds.  As I sat on the plane admiring the colors, I was suddenly overcome by an incredible sense of peace and contentment that was mixed somehow with grief.  When my plane landed, my husband and kids greeted me at the gate with the news that he had died about 2 hours earlier.  At that moment I knew that Gung Gung’s spirit had come to bid me a final farewell.

I do not know if I will live to know another man in this lifetime who has accomplished as much, with such humility and humor, and who had the ability to inspire such tremendous respect and love from those who were privileged to know him.  What I do know is that I will always be grateful to have had Gung Gung in my life, and that I will continue to honor his spirit by demanding the best of myself, and by living life to the fullest.

I write these memories of my grandfather on the occasion of his duan chi.

While his passing has been heartrending for me, his life deserves to be celebrated without regret. There have been so many eulogies of Gung Gung (GG) commemorating his many honors, public achievements and from his admirers. These are pieces of his personal side that intersected with my memories. Among GG’s most relaxing and profound joys was the time that he spent with his rambunctious, rowdy, and frequently unruly family. As the eldest of the third generation, I’ve had the privilege of knowing him the longest.

He was 50 when I born. At that time, China Dyeing Works was already established as one of the stalwarts of the  New Territories industries, providing employment for many in Hong Kong: including my grandfather Mr. CC Wong who built the first CDW factory and all subsequent upgrades, and Cousin Larry Yu’s grandfather Mr. IT Yu.

I was born during a difficult time for his business. The imposition of textile quotas essentially throttled Hong Kong’s burgeoning export machine, and GG needed to find growth somewhere else. About this time, through his British and Japanese contacts, he was considering expansion in West Africa. The financial burden on him must have been tremendous. All seven of his children were in school, including 5 in college and 2 in boarding school. Fortunately, I was a small baby and did not eat much

My first memory of GG was at three. There was a lunch prepared on the large round dining table at Shouson Hill. One of the dishes was my favorite char-siu pork, and while the adults milled around, I sneaked meat off the plate with my grubby hands. GG caught me and asked me to stop; telling me that what I was doing was naughty. I’m not sure what I thought, but the temptation proved too much, and I sneaked another piece when I thought he wasn’t looking. He caught me and took me into the corridor behind the dining room to discipline me. From that moment on, I started paying careful attention to everything that GG told me.

My next memory involved a very rare visit by GG to my parents in the US. Emily and I were very small and asked him to tell us a story. He said he did not know any stories, but could tell us something about when my mother was small. He told us that my mother loved oranges.  He once found her, a child of 5, sat in a wheel barrow full of oranges, happily peeling them and eating them.  I recall—from a five year old’s memories—the story of how he rode a train carry dyestuffs to Chungking. It stuck in my head because he said that none of this would exist (he waved around the room to include me and my sister) had he not made it to Chungking.

Emily and I had three occasions to live with GG. Once in the mid 60’s when we were babies: I do not remember much beyond the char-siu incident, although I vaguely recall the wooden water buffalo. Once again in the early 70’s when we lived in Shouson Hill for about a year. Then, we lived there once more in the mid 70’s for about 2 years before we moved to our own flat in Shouson Hill.

The Early 1970’s

Of the early 70’s, what I remembered was how much my parents and GG worked. There was even a time when we were babysat for several months by GG’s colleagues, the Yeungs. As kids, we were spoiled by our Aunts and Uncles. When they were in town, Uncle Payson and Aunt Ronnie lived in Shouson Hill. Aunt Virginia also stayed there while she dated Uncle Tim. And Aunt Priscilla taught us how to Go-go. We would sometimes be invited to chaperone Uncle Victor and Auntie Laura on their dates.

This must have been the time of maximum growth of the Nigerian and UK ventures. So he was away from Hong Kong a lot—usually with one or both of my parents. Dinners were an endless procession of discussions about telex and people and companies referred to by their initials.

The biggest deal at that time was Nixon’s visit to China. I remember every TV in the house was tuned to watch that event. A TV was put into the living room (a big no no to this day) to track every activity. GG pointed out Chairman Mao and Chou En Lai to me. It didn’t mean much to me then. Still, I remember asking how come they were playing ping pong in such a fancy hall?

It turns out that this visit foreshadowed the opening of China. More importantly, that reopening would mean that GG and Nai Nai could resume contacts with his relatives in China—Nai Nai’s father and mother, his sister’s family and Uncle Bill Liu’s family.

From my kid’s point of view, GG and my parents’ travels were so exotic. Unusual things tended to follow him back from Africa. We grew up looking at huge ivory elephant tusks and exotically carved ebony and hard wood African faces. What? Didn’t every household have sub-Saharan African art in the living room and a Christmas tree flown in every year from Switzerland?

He also brought the first, if not only, domestic servants from Nigeria to Hong Kong. These servants were always men. I sometimes felt that the African servants were quite lonely. They were surrounded by Chinese speaking servants, including very stern Chinese housekeepers and cooks, with only a pair of runabout uncontrolled English speaking Chinese kids to befriend them. Nevertheless, they were deeply loyal to GG and felt privileged and well rewarded to be working abroad and in Hong Kong. We heard that one servant eventually returned to Nigeria and married 10 wives!

GG liked kids and he liked animals. There were always at least two dogs at Shouson Hill for as long I can remember. At this time, there was also a grey parrot. When GG was in Hong Kong he would walk around the enclosed driveway towel in hand at least 30, sometimes 50 times, in the morning before going to work. He would be trailed by a vicious Doberman called Peggy and sometimes by me on a training bike. I remember that I could not ride around as often as he walked. The Aunts liked to play badminton in the driveway, and I even remember GG taking a few swings in those days.

There were isolated activities that I recall clearly: There was a leak in the roof once, and I got to follow him up the ladder on to the roof to look around (Maybe they were looking at central air conditioning). When Typhoon Rose blew through, Hong Kong was paralyzed by continuous Signal 10 winds for almost a week. One of the windows in the upstairs rooms blew out. The eye of the storm passed right over the Colony. At that point, he and Nai Nai made me do a little ritual by painting something on my forehead, making me pray to the four winds with the windows opened, then lead me outside to pray some more. There may have been incense and chanting involved. He wasn’t home when a large python hid in one of the drainage pipes. The dogs sniffed it out and the servants and Nai Nai had to kill it with bamboo brooms. But I remember how impressed he was with it when he got home. From a child’s perspective, that snake was 50 feet long.

GG hardly ever said anything, but he was very supportive of the grandchildren. During those days, there was a red velvet drape between the vestibule and sunken living room. Emily and I would give periodic after dinner “plays” using the vestibule as a stage, and usually enlisting the wooden water buffalo as a third “actor”. Nai nai, and especially GG, would attend every one. When he clapped (which was just often enough to keep us interested, and only for Emily’s plays), we could not be happier.

And he would show his sentimentality in very unusual ways. Sometime around this time, I remember making a conical cardboard Santa Claus in one of my grade school classes. It was put on top of the annual Christmas tree at Shouson Hill. Ever since then, it was put on top of every tree in lieu of a star. One year, while I was in college, I was embarrassed by it and tried to substitute it for a proper Christmas star. He suggested that that Santa Claus was more appropriate. So back it went for more than 20 Christmases. Sadly, I believe the Santa Claus was lost somewhere at the turn of the millennium during the major remodeling of Shouson Hill.

The Mid 70’s

The next time we lived with GG and Nai nai was in the mid-70’s. Emily and I were bigger by then, so I got a room to myself; the one downstairs that is now the mahjong room. GG was gone even more often during these years. I believe he was setting up UK and US operations at this time. It was during this period that he bought a house in Los Altos Hills at Blandor Road. Emily and I were invited to visit the Blandor house every summer until I went to college. He still drove at that time, although he was already past 70. He drove very fast and was caught speeding several times going down Magdalena Avenue.

Blandor had one of the first TV’s with a remote control channel changer Reception was awful, so there was not much point to changing the two of three stations that were available. During leisure times, GG taught us kids how to play mahjong and cards. He liked to walk up and down the hills and roads of Los Altos especially in the twilight. Emily or I usually accompanied him. The walks were comfortable if quiet.

Back in Hong Kong, we were immersed in studies at this time, so our times with our parents and grandparents intersected mostly at dinner times. Frequently, he would get home from work and fall asleep on his vibrating Lazy Boy Recliner before dinner. Emily and I took turns having the job of waking him up for dinner. We always knew he was asleep because even with the door closed and the air conditioning running, we could still hear him snore.

I remember that every dinner had to have a fish. And he would always eat the fish eyes and fish cheeks. He would give the fish cheeks (which are the best part of the fish) to Emily and me when the mood struck him or when we did something interesting. My parents would always discuss business at the dinner table. After dinner, he would always return to his bedroom to watch TV. He liked to watch soccer matches, particularly German football, tennis, and nature documentaries.

Sometimes, when we weren’t loaded down with homework, the kids would be invited to join him. If there was some underwater adventure (mostly produced by Jacques Cousteau), he would point to the fish and tell us that “this one is good to eat”.

He had a dry sense of humor. He taught Emily and me, for example, how Shanghainese people used learn English. Counting One, Two, Three, and then using Shanghainese words and hand motions to match up the words. It was so funny that we could not stop laughing…

The Uncles brought two innovations into the house. The Pong machine introduced me to gaming. GG was fascinated even had a few tries, but I’m not sure if he enjoyed it, but he would sit and watch Emily and I play. The other innovation was the VCR deck. The machine was huge and fussy and no kids, but GG knew how to work it better than my Dad.

He still walked in the mornings, although we no longer joined him, since we had to commute to school. The dogs were different by then, but they still followed him around the yard. He got to naming them by size: Maxi, Mini, then finally, Midi.

Our relatives from China were given permission to migrate to Hong Kong, too. I remember meeting GG’s sister’s family for the first time. Uncle Jack Liu (Jing Jing) stayed at Shouson Hill for a year to study at a Hong Kong high school, ahead of the rest of his family moving to

Hong Kong. Uncle Jack seemed to live in deadly fear of GG, stuttering every time he was spoken to.

On the work side, I remember the factory and DiscoveryBay. Visiting the factory in Tsuen Wan was made a little easier with the opening of the Cross Harbor Tunnel. The trip was cut in half to about an hour. I remember visiting Tai Tai, GG’s mother, every month or so and seeing (and more importantly, smelling) the factory. The river outside the dyeing factory was completely polluted during these years. We could see the dye waste pouring into the river and smell it. I remember asking if all that pouring was allowed and being rebuked with “don’t ask a question that you don’t understand”.

GG was devastated when his mother died. My mother was traveling to Africa when it happened. He kept his emotions in check until she could hurry back. At the airport, he let out all his sadness as soon as she emerged from Customs.

He had just bought DiscoveryBay, so every weekend, we would get in a boat and rock for 2 hours to the island. Then we would all get off the boat and walk the hills around the beaches for a couple of hours. Sometimes, the boats would visit some fishing villages for the most delicious fish dinners. GG seemed to enjoy both the boat ride and the walks. During the long and frequently up hill walks, he would easily keep up with tweeny me. He would usually want to walk further than anyone else in the hiking party, but would be stopped by Nai Nai or impending darkness. On more than one occasion, I remember returning exhausted after sunset.

College and beyond

GG was always most supportive of his grandchildren. As he grew older, he would like to just sit and hold my hand. He liked to hear stories other businesses or business people that we knew.

My deepest regret was that I did not get to spend more time with him, although happily, I think I got to see him whenever one of his peripatetic moods brought him onto the West Coast. And to be fair, he had a lot more to occupy his time than his now voracious and huge grandson. Still, several meetings stick out.During the Sino-British talks of the mid 80’s, he told me that the brain drain from Hong Kong was devastating, and he was thinking furiously of some way to stop it. His solution (dubbed the Cha Cha Proposal), Hong Kong’s Basic Law—essentially a Swiss sort of Cantonship for a limited time—has managed to preserve the essential quality of life in Hong Kong through its first 10 years of Chinese government.

He liked to talk to me about China’s defensive capabilities. He sent me books to read so that we could talk about the space and defense industries. I told him that except for shooting down satellites in fixed orbits, Star Wars was a hoax. He was so proud when he told me that he was going to be the only civilian to be allowed to watch China launching its first man into space.

He won so many honors.  I remembering attending the honorary Doctorate awarded at the City University of Hong Kong.  He loved posing in that funny floppy red beret.  And then dressed up again, twinned with my grandmother when she was awarded the same degree later. And attending the honorary Doctorate awarded by the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou.  He was so happy he flew us all up and down to China in a private jet.

The Grand Bauhinia must have meant a lot to him.  Although I don’t remember him talking about it, the award came from the newly minted Hong Kong Special Administrative Region that helped establish.  Being a man of few words, deep sentiment, and decisive action, I noted that his front gate was changed from the 30 year old grey lattice to two giant red Bauhinias during the next year.

On a more personal note, he took time off his busy schedule to attend my wedding to Lisa. But before then, he liked me to introduce my friends (male and female) to him. Although he never commented on them to me, he did always invite them to join in a Cha family dinner. After every dinner, my friends always point out what a multicultural family GG hosted. The dinner conversation ranged from local, to Chinese, to British, to Japanese, to African politics, science, business, family, and acquaintances. The languages would shift from Shanghainese to Cantonese to English with the occasional Japanese and Xhosa word thrown in for good measure. Everyone at the dinner table was assumed to speak all of the languages. And languages were switched mid thought. Sometimes, a single sentence could be constructed from three or four different languages. The food was served by Filipino, Thai, Nigerian, and Chinese domestic helpers. The cook was Nigerian. The food was Shanghainese.And it is here that I think I would like to freeze my remembrances of GG: laughing at the dinner table, surrounded by his polyglot family, discussing world affairs, his chopsticks poised over the fish.

May his spirit rest and his memory tarry for a while longer…

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<!–[if !supportFootnotes]–>[1]<!–[endif]–> (broken seven, or the end of the traditional mourning period):