Family History

Chinese often know their family history back to about eight generations. But since I don't want to write a thick volume of recent Chinese history, let me start with just one or two generations ago.

Liping's grandmother is still alive and I have seen her several times. When I first met her, she surprised me when she said that I should call her Oma. When I asked her how she knew that we call our grandmothers Oma, she said that she had had a Dutch neighbor 65 or more years ago in Jakarta who called his grandmother Oma.

Liping's grandparents were rich coffee plantation owners in Indonesia. They were so rich that the children didn't walk around, but were actually carried by servants. They never received any proper schooling, though. Liping's grandparents also were Hakka, the most traditional of all Chinese "tribes". It is usual that the Hakka-women are in charge of the finances of the family, while the men are left with the illusion of power. That, unfortunately, was not the state of affairs in Liping's family.

When the communist and anti-Chinese scare hit Indonesia in the 50s, Liping's grandfather sold the whole plantation, converted the proceeds to many bars of gold and went looking for a fishing boat which might take them to safety in Taiwan. He paid an absolutely horrendous amount of gold to secure passage for his family. Only the eldest daughter was left behind as she had already married. She still lives there now and the grandparents and Liping's mother's generation still mainly use Bahasa Indonesia to communicate.

When the family arrived in Taiwan, it didn't take long for a local conman to cheat them out of the remaining gold. Suddenly they found themselves destitute without any useful skills. There aren't too many coffee plantations that need to be managed around here. In fact there aren't any.

So the grandfather went to work as an unskilled laborer in a factory and became a very bitter man. The promised land turned into a hellhole for him and all Liping remembers is an angry old man, sitting in his undershirt in the kitchen, smoking one cigarette after another. He died before I got to know Liping.

The nine remaining children, almost all daughters, were sold for bride-money. That didn't exactly endear them to their parents, especially as they had until that time lived a very sheltered life. Liping's mother was one of them, and she had to be sold off pretty early, as, you see, she was already pregnant. In fact, the family was extremely lucky that Liping's father was willing to marry her.

About the father's side, not too much is known, as he was kidnapped by the Nationalists one rainy night and conscripted into their army. He never saw his family or his homeland again. Originally he was from Canton province, and there might still be relatives around, but we know next to nothing about them. Fortunately for him, he had already finished high-school and was therefore one of the higher educated amongst the KMT soldiers. He managed to save up some money and thus was able to pay the bride price. Most other soldiers never got that far and lived in loneliness until they died. Even now many of them can be found in concierge jobs.

Liping's parents then proceeded to build a rudimentary hut on government land. That's where Liping grew up. The family was desperately poor and one of the sons was sold, because there wasn't enough food. Still, he died. Liping's mother became more and more unhappy with her situation, started drinking and quarreling, had boyfriends outside and finally kicked the old man out. She still somehow managed to relieve him of all his money every month, and when he didn't have any left - but she needed something - she sent him to steal it. Liping's father never complained very much. He was of the opinion that he was already very lucky and didn't really deserve such a beautiful wife anyway. He took on a second job selling sesame-balls in the streets, loved his children dearly, but was absolutely powerless to do anything about the worsening situation.

We don't know exactly what happened, it may have been sleep-deprivation or something more sinister, but one day he apparently stumbled with his push-cart into the traffic, got hit and killed. Liping was about thirteen years old when this happened.

Now things got even worse, because although Liping's mother got a pension, it was still less than before. The mother drank more, got more angry, beat the little sister even more and often simply left home for a period of time. More than once Liping came home from school to find her little brother literally crawling in his own shit. [<-- excrement]

When the little sister couldn't take it anymore, she left home and lived on the streets. She was twelve at the time. Liping left as well, but since she had always been an excellent student, she got good scholarships and lived in school dormitories. Her sister didn't even finish elementary school. Her older brother joined the military and the little brother followed a few yeas later.

Liping found a place to live for both of the little ones, and while it worked out fine for the brother, nothing seemed to work for the sister. She was simply too damaged, couldn't stand it to stay anywhere for long, couldn't develop any kind of trust and quit one job after another.

That was about the time when I appeared at the scene. We were both worried about her little sister and Liping continued to persuade and cajole her to stay with a job and to go to night-school to get at least a rudimentary education. It didn't look too good.

Liping herself had managed to get into the best program and the best university in the country. Her older brother, while being a very nice person, had somehow inherited the weakness of her father and never was any help. But that didn't really matter.

After a few years the little sister somehow realized that she would be in deep trouble if she continued what she was doing and made a real effort. It must have been a real killer for her, as she also had to work long hours for very little money at the same time. Then she met Ah-ji, they got married and things are looking good, although Ah-ji's family has its own troubles as well.

Both brothers are going to get married any time soon, and all they want is safety and security. They may be the most boring people you can imagine, but they know what they have and they will never ever risk it.

And Liping? The whole ordeal has left her a lot stronger than she otherwise would have been. I know her classmates quite well and I can say for sure that not one of them is as independent-thinking and as independent-acting as she is.

That turned out to be very important for me as well, as Liping told me that one of the main reasons that attracted her to me was the fact that life with me would never be boring, but unpredictable and always full of surprises. :-)))

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As to how they broke the vicious cycle: We will have to take Liping's words for that. According to her, the main reason lies with the fact that Taiwan was booming at the time. Another very important fact was that the Confucian work-ethic was still very much alive then. And the third was the fact that the country was ruled by a comparatively benevolent military junta.

In my own estimation the second one is probably the most important. No matter where you turned, whether it be to teachers, classmates' parents, or anywhere else in society - everywhere you got the mantra that hard work pays off in the end, that beginnings don't really matter, that trying your best is what it's all about. And like they said in Illuminatus: What I tell you three times is true. Sooner or later you believe it and when you believe it, it will give you confidence and with that confidence it is indeed possible to overcome.

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Things have changed drastically over the last twenty or thirty years. The boom has fizzled out, the junta has given way to a young democracy and you are beginning to see the first homeless. The Confucian work-ethic is a thing of the last generation and my students have so far lived their life in such luxury that it isn't easily imaginable for the average Westerner. The big issue now is independence. Many people want it at any price and the others are afraid of a war with China. Nobody - I mean not even 0.1% of the population - wants to be part of China. Take part in the boom which has moved over there, yes. But that's all.