Dear Po

How would you feel if you knew I was writing about you on the Internet? You would probably be embarrassed that the Internet now knows all about our family. I’m not sure how I’d explain it to you or resolve the awkwardness. How should we reconcile the two: my somewhat bourgeois desire to express myself through writing and your more pragmatic desires to preserve the family? This is not the sort of thing we talk about in a conservative Chinese household.

My first memories were formed in your living room. I remember playing with the enlarged black-and-white photograph of Gong Gong watching over me, and the red lamps of the Buddhist altar glowing dimly in the background. I remember drinking the tea that was being offered to the Buddha (I wasn’t supposed to do that) and wanting to play with the gold necklaces you had hung around the Buddha’s neck.

One day, you came home with a little boat made out of styrofoam. It had a magnet attached to it so that we could make it move using another magnet. You had used it in your lesson that day. Teaching is your calling, your vocation. You are not like those teachers for whom teaching is just an ‘iron rice bowl’ job. You loved to teach and you crafted your lessons with loving examples and instructions without attending any lessons on high-brow educational psychology. One of your pupils is now a television show host, and you remember him, even though it has been years and years since you taught him. Your favorite pupils are the ones who never left your classroom: my mother, and myself.

You nurtured various plants and animals in your home. I was very proud to tell my university friends that my grandma grows pitchers plants in her yard, the kind they’d only seen and heard of from Sir David Attenborough. She took cats and tortoises into our home. She fed the cats milk and bread, and she fed the tortoises green beans. She cried when they had to be taken away, for one reason or another.

Nowadays, when you’re the only one at home most of the times, you mostly eat rice and vegetables. But when we come to visit, you will cook up stir-fried clams, ngor-hiang, hor fun, otah, fried chicken wings, and all other kinds of goodies. You made sure we had a sumptuous Christmas meal, even though you’re not a Christian.

There are still many things I want to know: how you survived the war, how you felt raising three children after your husband passed away, whether you think your life has been worth living, what dreams have you had to put to rest? But I don’t know if I will get the chance to ask, nor do I know if you will want to talk about such things. Perhaps my American education has made me too forward and inquisitive. In the old days, perhaps these things never needed to be asked, they never needed to be resolved. All that needed to be answered is in the bowl of tang yuan in front of you.

Love,

Qi