My Father : Twenty Years On

My father was born in 1911, the year of the Pig. It was also the year of the Chinese Revolution that swept away centuries of dynastic rule. China became a Republic, but for the next few decades she suffered utter chaos. Born to a poor peasant family my father left his poverty stricken village in Guzhen 古镇, in Southern China for Nanyang 南洋, the South Seas, of which colonial Singapore was a part. He was nineteen, jobless and hungry. Almost sixty years later, gray and blind, he took his one and only journey back to his birthplace. It was in 1988, just ten years after the liberalising market reforms by Deng Xiaoping. He had not expected to return to his home village again in his life time.

I was a Flight Engineer at the time. One day I flew with a certain Barry Newman, a British expatriate whom I have only just met. Captain Newman related how much he and his wife enjoyed their vacation in China a week earlier. I told him my father was born in China, and that he would dearly love to visit his birthplace, but due to his handicap it would be difficult. Captain Newman looked at me askance. I could almost read his reproachful mind. "What kind of son are you? Can’t you see there is not much time left?” He encouraged me to do the right thing. We went. My father died on October 16, a few months after he accomplished his heart’s desire.

At the time of that first visit, economic conditions in my father’s village were slowly getting better. Our relatives were doing relatively well. At least they didn’t go hungry, like the lean years of the recent past. Fast forward to the present, November 2008, twenty years later. I paid a return visit with my wife Madeline, and two other interested friends. I took them to see my father’s old dwelling, which still exist in the old part of town. We stayed at a luxurious hotel in the new quarter, where most foreigners stayed when visiting. In the last twenty years Guzhen had become the lighting capital of China. The Chinese within the country and foreign buyers from all over the world come here to negotiate and order lights in bulk of any type, grade and design. Entire streets are lined with nothing but lighting shops, and in the surrounding communities assembly lines churn out these orders. All these, together with numerous other industries in the region, have exacted a heavy toll on the environment. Acute air pollution is now a grave problem.

My relatives are doing well. The next generation has taken over, better educated and more attuned to the outside world. Most are involved in the lighting industry, some in domestic and foreign sales, and others in production. One is a director of a large lighting firm and another owns a couple of production houses. It is all

very different from when my father and I last visited.

I have kept a copy of the travel narrative Going Home I wrote twenty years ago. I will post it next, in toto, unedited from its original. This is my way of preserving the memory of my father. My daughter Joy, and my nephews and nieces can at least have some idea of their roots, if they care enough to want to find out, especially when they get older.