Before I move on to another topic, I think I should make a comment about how I feel about the cursed land in post #4 when I saw someone mentioning feeling creepy after he/she read it. In fact, my parents protected us very well so I didn’t hear these things until I was forty or fifty years old. Our happy childhood was not under a dark cloud. I recalled that my parents protected us from the point of view of love. We were like princesses and princes in a castle, living with free spirit and unaware of the sufferings of the world. They didn’t want us to have worries, so we never felt any financial lack or hardship at home. I didn’t hear them talking about pain and suffering. Even though my younger sister was sick since she was a baby and was often admitted to the children’s hospital, they didn’t show worry in front of us. They didn’t want us to grieve so I did not seem to have been to a funeral until I was in my 30s. Maybe my mom had some trauma as a child so they built a wall to protect us. I don’t know whether this kind of protection is good or bad. But because both of my parents are teachers, they have their own ideas on the principles and concepts of how to raise us. But I know they love us.
When it comes to love, my parents are free spirited. We can easily talk to them or discuss any issues. They also give us a lot of freedom to choose our hobbies or major in the university and so on. But at the same time they are also very traditional and conservative. Although they didn’t always hug us and said they loved us, even so we still knew they loved us. This paragraph is for my daughters to read. Traditionally, Chinese people don’t say “love” in words. Even If they didn’t say it, it didn’t mean they didn’t love us. Their love could be felt through many things they did for us. They loved us but didn’t pamper us. Discipline was a must. My mom was strict because she was born in a military family. My dad is a kind father. In my memory, my dad did not punish us. When he was angry with me, he would pick up the soft indoor slipper and throw it at me but purposely missed me. I would know that he was angry and I had to reflect on myself. Luckily, I was fairly well-behaved and I didn’t have many opportunities like that. But, throwing his slipper at me left a deep impression on me.
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Now let’s talk about what I know about dad. Dad was very smart and had a great sense of humor. He said a lot of interesting things with homonyms. (It is hard to explain those Chinese slangs in English so I am going to skip the examples here.)
Dad was very sensitive to numbers and he was thrifty. He would buy bread on Saturdays and eat tuna salad sandwiches once a week. He would buy cake on Sundays because this bakery has 20% off on Saturday for bread and on Sunday for cake. On the first day of every month, he would go to the supermarket to buy some paper goods or grocery staples to collect some points and exchange for prizes. Although he was thrifty, he did not take advantage of others. He tried to make full use of various resources to provide his family with a comfortable life. In addition to saving money, he also saved paper, especially thick paper magazines, advertisements or calendar papers. He used these papers as the backboard for his art works. In the early days he got second set prints of photos for free, he would think of ways to make full use of the extra copy of photos. Beautiful calendar pictures with flowers and birds were also his wall decorations. Fully utilizing and not wasting anything seems to be his innate instinct.
He was frugal to himself but very generous to others. In post #3 I have mentioned that he would lend money to his classmates but not ask them to pay it back right away (he was ok even if they were unable to pay back the money) when he studied at Hsinchu Normal College. Because those classmates came to Taiwan by themselves, my father said that he had a family (father and brother) in Taiwan. Compared with his classmates, he was luckier. Another relative mentioned that when they bought a house, my father lent them money without hesitation in order to help them out of difficulties. Dad never or seldom mentioned such things to us. He usually did good deeds quietly. Unless he needed to lead by example, he would not bring up such things. When he retired, he also used part of the pension to set up an education fund to help students in-need in the school. He usually ate simple meals. But when family and friends visited, he would entertain them with a feast. His way of thrifty living is worthy to learn from.
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(To be continued …)
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