My Pau Pau's Office
We stayed at my pau pau’s house the other night, me and my parents and brother. My Auntie Junnie, my pau pau’s little sister, was there too, and since the adults got the bedrooms I slept on a pull-out couch in my grandmother’s extra-bedroom-turned office. In the morning, Pau Pau knocked on the door calling, “Kelly!” in her shrill, accented voice. “Kelly! Are you wearing clothes? I have to ask you something.” I rolled over, my eyes (and ears) still adjusting, and she came in, a handful of gold chain in her fist. “Here,” she said. “Do you want this one?” ‘This one’ was a thousand-dollar jade pendant—two beautiful drops of jade, a tiny diamond, an intricately carved gold chain. “Do you like this one better than the one I gave you before? You bring me that one back and I’ll give you this one instead. This one’s better.” The other pendant—which I love—is a small, carved piece of moderately aged jade—pretty, but nowhere near as beautiful, nor as valuable. I didn’t know what to say; she always astounds me with her easy generosity. As she was leaving, she said, “Oh yeah, here,” and held out her other hand. “Which one do you want?” They were two pearls, uncultured, twisted modern art shapes: one white and one a silky, midnight blue, both wrapped in elaborate gold casings.
My pau pau is characteristically the most giving person I know—Annie came with me to visit her once and she described my pau pau in a nutshell by saying, “She’d basically see something and proceed to offer it to you.” (That day it was kitchenware, paper towels, goh, a few sticks of yao jiao gwei, and about thirty boxes of jello mix, and she did—she’d look around her kitchen, and when her eyes rested on something she’d pick it up and put it in a bag for me. You can’t say no to her; you always lose.) Every four or so years she takes all twenty-something of us on cruises (that leave from San Francisco or Los Angeles, since she’s terrified of flying); she’s letting my fiancé live with her next year. She paid for all my cousins’ computers when they went to college. Whenever we go see her she takes us somewhere to eat, or spends all day cooking. But I was particularly moved and touched and overwhelmed that recent morning with the jade, because the night before, when I couldn’t sleep, I had looked through her study—I’m hardly ever in there—and it seemed such an intimate, compact, and compelling expression of who she is. The first thing I saw was on her desk, a photocopy that her sister had sent her: Registration from Ming Quong Home Records. Wong King (Helen) (Age 6) SF. Placed by mother/broken home. Date admitted: July 19, 1930. Date dismissed: August 9, 1939. I got chills; I nearly started crying, because there it was: a cold and impersonal account of nearly her entire childhood. Nine years--she grew up there, really, she and her sisters, and they only returned home when they were old enough to pay rent. Here are some pictures I took of what was in her study, because I want you to know and understand her, and I think what she had in that room captures her so accurately.
Three closet drawers full of baby blankets she made, ready and waiting for when the rest of us beside my cousin Amye start having kids.
A post-it note on her desk; all of us in her family and our Chinese zodiac signs. (I've always been happy I'm the same as her--a rat--because she talks about it often.) I was especially touched to see Jesse's name on there.
The closet. She grew up terribly poor, obviously--a Chinese in the midst of the Depression, when even the 'real Americans' couldn't make money--and for all her generosity she's still the most frugal person I've ever known. (She takes extra sugar packets and creamer when she buys coffee at McDonald's.) The toothpaste, I promise you, is from when there was a sale somewhere and she thought she'd stock up. Sometimes when I go over she gives me a few tubes. The cake platter--she gave that to me and then took it back, saying she had another one for me, but then she hasn't found that one yet.
Family portraits--her family, husband (whom I never knew) and her four children--who, no matter how poor they were at first, always lived with her. My mother is the second smallest one.
Part of a card I sent her once. She loves mah jong; she and her friends play weekly.
In the early nineties, Asian Week ran this story about the orphanage where she grew up. She saved this clipping in one of those 'Grandma, tell me a story' gift hardbacks that she never got around to filling out.
The book peeking out on the top shelf is the one I printed for my senior project--I remember when I gave it to her, she was disappointed that I hadn't signed it. I doubt she's read it, but she's kept it close. The book next to it is one of those self-published ones with cardstock covers about the town where she was born. Underneath are the books people--my aunts, perhaps?--gave her to fill out with her story. Underneath, a Chinatown portrait of her and her two sisters.
Desk drawer one--paper clips, the yellowed seller's permit from the grocery store she and my grandfather opened, lovely pieces of jade. Desk drawer two (no picture, since her address is in it) had all the family phone numbers, ink for her chop, a letter from family in China (with her American name misspelled as Henen).
This, aside from the orphanage record, was the most meaningful to me--someone gave her one of those gifty journals called "Grandma, tell me about when you were little!" and she filled it out--I can't imagine why; someone probably made her, because she hates that kind of thing. It was such a blonde, wholesome, idyllic, all-American sort of book--more suited, actually, to my grandparents on my father's side--and I found myself laughing aloud and getting teary at the juxtaposition of the reality of her life against these blonde-girl images. Here are some of the questions, and her answers;
Grandma, did you ever get spankings? What for? [Also, this book was weird to me ... why would that be the first question your grandchildren would want to know?] My mother took my sister Louise and I to Ming Quong Home in 1929. A home for orphans and parents that couldn't take care of their children. They were divorce.
Could you roller skate? Ice skate? Where? I roller skate when I was at Ming Quong Home.
What kind of games did you play? At the home we play store. Which was outside and we used rocks for money and made mud pie to sell.
Did you have a tooth fairy? In those days we didn't have things like that.
What kind of birthday parties did you have? Your favorites? We never had birthday parties or any kind of parties.
What were your favorite toys? Did you have a bicycle? Had none.
Did you get to stay up to watch television? Or to listen to your transistor radio? TV was not invented. Did not have a radio.
Did you ever have your own pet? What? Name? No pets.
Did the boys tease you? [This one made me laugh] No boys.
Did you have secrets? What? No secrets.
What kind of house did you grow up in, Grandma? As I said I grow up at an orphanage in Oakland called Ming Quong. [I love 'As I said.']
Did you have a secret hiding place? No.
This, I think, is the most compact picture I've ever seen of what I come from, and this is the legacy I want to pass along. It was not easy being Chinese in America, back then--it was nothing like it is now, and I wish to grasp this and to meditate on my family's struggle. And, too, I want my children to be cognizant of this history. I want my children to know their tai pau; I want them to eat her woo tau goh and her jook. I want them to understand, as I’ve come to, that being Chinese in America takes many different forms, and by that I mean that I don’t want them to feel inferior to the more recent wave of immigrants, who are richer, more educated, more comfortable in retaining their traditions because they’ve been given the freedom to do so. My pau pau and aunties and my tai pau--they could not afford to resist some degree assimilation and Americanization; that's a luxury that Chinese immigrants have now (and often take for granted, I believe), but in restoring old traditions, in holding onto what's still left--they're honored through this, and they tell me so. They are pleased that my bridesmaids will wear cheongsam at my wedding; they're relieved the wedding will start on the half hour. That are happy to know that their sacrifices and all that they lost and were denied have not gone entirely in vain.
And so I want my children to understand this, to know what they have come from and to appreciate their heritage. I want them to comprehend the privileges and the gifts they've been given by these nameless ancestors whose stories will be just that--stories to them. I want them to respect these traditions of their ancestors and to understand what these traditions have cost those who came before them, and to cling to whatever they still can.
My pau pau is characteristically the most giving person I know—Annie came with me to visit her once and she described my pau pau in a nutshell by saying, “She’d basically see something and proceed to offer it to you.” (That day it was kitchenware, paper towels, goh, a few sticks of yao jiao gwei, and about thirty boxes of jello mix, and she did—she’d look around her kitchen, and when her eyes rested on something she’d pick it up and put it in a bag for me. You can’t say no to her; you always lose.) Every four or so years she takes all twenty-something of us on cruises (that leave from San Francisco or Los Angeles, since she’s terrified of flying); she’s letting my fiancé live with her next year. She paid for all my cousins’ computers when they went to college. Whenever we go see her she takes us somewhere to eat, or spends all day cooking. But I was particularly moved and touched and overwhelmed that recent morning with the jade, because the night before, when I couldn’t sleep, I had looked through her study—I’m hardly ever in there—and it seemed such an intimate, compact, and compelling expression of who she is. The first thing I saw was on her desk, a photocopy that her sister had sent her: Registration from Ming Quong Home Records. Wong King (Helen) (Age 6) SF. Placed by mother/broken home. Date admitted: July 19, 1930. Date dismissed: August 9, 1939. I got chills; I nearly started crying, because there it was: a cold and impersonal account of nearly her entire childhood. Nine years--she grew up there, really, she and her sisters, and they only returned home when they were old enough to pay rent. Here are some pictures I took of what was in her study, because I want you to know and understand her, and I think what she had in that room captures her so accurately.
Three closet drawers full of baby blankets she made, ready and waiting for when the rest of us beside my cousin Amye start having kids.
A post-it note on her desk; all of us in her family and our Chinese zodiac signs. (I've always been happy I'm the same as her--a rat--because she talks about it often.) I was especially touched to see Jesse's name on there.
The closet. She grew up terribly poor, obviously--a Chinese in the midst of the Depression, when even the 'real Americans' couldn't make money--and for all her generosity she's still the most frugal person I've ever known. (She takes extra sugar packets and creamer when she buys coffee at McDonald's.) The toothpaste, I promise you, is from when there was a sale somewhere and she thought she'd stock up. Sometimes when I go over she gives me a few tubes. The cake platter--she gave that to me and then took it back, saying she had another one for me, but then she hasn't found that one yet.
Family portraits--her family, husband (whom I never knew) and her four children--who, no matter how poor they were at first, always lived with her. My mother is the second smallest one.
Part of a card I sent her once. She loves mah jong; she and her friends play weekly.
In the early nineties, Asian Week ran this story about the orphanage where she grew up. She saved this clipping in one of those 'Grandma, tell me a story' gift hardbacks that she never got around to filling out.
The book peeking out on the top shelf is the one I printed for my senior project--I remember when I gave it to her, she was disappointed that I hadn't signed it. I doubt she's read it, but she's kept it close. The book next to it is one of those self-published ones with cardstock covers about the town where she was born. Underneath are the books people--my aunts, perhaps?--gave her to fill out with her story. Underneath, a Chinatown portrait of her and her two sisters.
Desk drawer one--paper clips, the yellowed seller's permit from the grocery store she and my grandfather opened, lovely pieces of jade. Desk drawer two (no picture, since her address is in it) had all the family phone numbers, ink for her chop, a letter from family in China (with her American name misspelled as Henen).
This, aside from the orphanage record, was the most meaningful to me--someone gave her one of those gifty journals called "Grandma, tell me about when you were little!" and she filled it out--I can't imagine why; someone probably made her, because she hates that kind of thing. It was such a blonde, wholesome, idyllic, all-American sort of book--more suited, actually, to my grandparents on my father's side--and I found myself laughing aloud and getting teary at the juxtaposition of the reality of her life against these blonde-girl images. Here are some of the questions, and her answers;
Grandma, did you ever get spankings? What for? [Also, this book was weird to me ... why would that be the first question your grandchildren would want to know?] My mother took my sister Louise and I to Ming Quong Home in 1929. A home for orphans and parents that couldn't take care of their children. They were divorce.
Could you roller skate? Ice skate? Where? I roller skate when I was at Ming Quong Home.
What kind of games did you play? At the home we play store. Which was outside and we used rocks for money and made mud pie to sell.
Did you have a tooth fairy? In those days we didn't have things like that.
What kind of birthday parties did you have? Your favorites? We never had birthday parties or any kind of parties.
What were your favorite toys? Did you have a bicycle? Had none.
Did you get to stay up to watch television? Or to listen to your transistor radio? TV was not invented. Did not have a radio.
Did you ever have your own pet? What? Name? No pets.
Did the boys tease you? [This one made me laugh] No boys.
Did you have secrets? What? No secrets.
What kind of house did you grow up in, Grandma? As I said I grow up at an orphanage in Oakland called Ming Quong. [I love 'As I said.']
Did you have a secret hiding place? No.
This, I think, is the most compact picture I've ever seen of what I come from, and this is the legacy I want to pass along. It was not easy being Chinese in America, back then--it was nothing like it is now, and I wish to grasp this and to meditate on my family's struggle. And, too, I want my children to be cognizant of this history. I want my children to know their tai pau; I want them to eat her woo tau goh and her jook. I want them to understand, as I’ve come to, that being Chinese in America takes many different forms, and by that I mean that I don’t want them to feel inferior to the more recent wave of immigrants, who are richer, more educated, more comfortable in retaining their traditions because they’ve been given the freedom to do so. My pau pau and aunties and my tai pau--they could not afford to resist some degree assimilation and Americanization; that's a luxury that Chinese immigrants have now (and often take for granted, I believe), but in restoring old traditions, in holding onto what's still left--they're honored through this, and they tell me so. They are pleased that my bridesmaids will wear cheongsam at my wedding; they're relieved the wedding will start on the half hour. That are happy to know that their sacrifices and all that they lost and were denied have not gone entirely in vain.
And so I want my children to understand this, to know what they have come from and to appreciate their heritage. I want them to comprehend the privileges and the gifts they've been given by these nameless ancestors whose stories will be just that--stories to them. I want them to respect these traditions of their ancestors and to understand what these traditions have cost those who came before them, and to cling to whatever they still can.
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