Grandpa

My grandfather is a good person. Not because he’s successful, educated, more successful and educated than the rest of the family, but because he is a real person. He is more real than anyone else I’ve seen. From a very young age I knew that, though I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know what exactly made him special to me but he was. He and my grandma together made me feel happy. As a little kid that couldn’t yet walk perfectly I would burst into tears when I saw their train leaving. They’d come to where we lived to take care of me, or I stayed with them for a year or two when my parents were working. I hadn’t developed my fear of loss then. I didn’t know what was losing, losing a person dear to me. But I could fear at the moment of separation. Young as I was, I knew the dread in the sound of the train leaving the platform…

And my crying would make me grandfather cry. It still does. The other day he told me that after that night I cried on the phone (It was Qingming Festival. I called them from Shanghai, wishing I could go to sweep the ancestors’ tomb with them in the countryside), for a few days he couldn’t sleep and stayed up in bed with tears. He said that so plainly, “For a few days after I couldn’t sleep and cried,” as if he was just talking about some simple fact.

Grandpa doesn’t hide his tears. That’s what makes him special. He cries when watching people die or cry on the TV. His eyes blinking, forehead wrinkled, nose red and lips pouted. That’s the expression of him that we always remember. And we’d laugh at him. My cousin and I giggled on the side watching him cry until he took out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes. But he didn’t mind. He kept watching. He was completely in the story, no matter how we laughed.

He used to be a bad tempered person. With grandma they’d always get into some kind of argument. Since they retired the housework has been laid almost entirely on grandma. She prepares the three meals, does the dishes, cleans everyone’s clothes, buys vegetables at the market every morning, throws away the trash every evening… When we were little grandpa would occasionally make some beef hotpot, the really spicy ones. But as years went by he stopped doing anything at home. He became basically a child, being taken care of by grandma. And he’d lost the discipline he used to have, in grandma’s words. He would spit on the floor (at home) and wipe it out with one foot. It’s okay as long as you don’t see it.

Of course she complained. She complained when she had to clean the mess he left on the floor after a meal. She complained like an angry mom hating her naughty child, with little patience and few kind words. It wasn’t good to hear. As a sensitive person I would sympathize with grandpa. But he’d also argue back, quite fiercely. He had the kind of loud voice with which he suddenly roared like a lion. It would shut grandma up, after they argued back and forth a few times. He sometimes made grandma cry, like last time when they played cards on the mountains. He might be where my mom got her quick temper from.

But as years go by he’s become more and more like a child. He’s no longer fighting back. Just listening, or ignoring, or responding to her with a joke. When the other day grandma blamed him for leaving the hat on the couch where I was sitting, he laughed and said, “You don’t blame the one who sat on my hat, but instead blame me for having my hat be sat on! You’d be a very bad judge!” With his countryside accent he sounds quite funny sometimes.

Now only when playing cards does he get into the fighting mode, or when playing chess with his old friend. But with grandma he lets her say whatever. He does owe a lot, a lot to her. He owes his life to her. Like a child he always asks for grandma when leaving home or walking outside. Where’s your grandma? Or to my mom — where’s your mom? I’ll go if your grandma goes. Is your grandma going?

And he’s fine with being a child, or a tyrant, or a tearful thing in front of the little kids. He’s fine with how he is. That’s what breaks my heart when I have to leave him.

He’s always hoping for something, and rarely complaining. Year after year he says, when you come back we’ll go to visit… We rarely go. When we do go, he’s often not able to walk that much or see many places. He has to sit somewhere in the middle of the journey and wait for us to come back. But that’s okay. Next time he still says, let’s go visit this or that place.

He has little patience for arduous tasks. Walking too far, waiting too long tires him out. But if I request that we go somewhere or do something he’s usually in favor, or gives in soon after a brief objection. “All right, let’s go! If you say go let’s go. We’ll go with you!” He says. These years I’ve been requesting more family pictures. He’s not particularly enthusiastic about them, but he doesn’t say no either. “Let’s ask your grandma to go together,” he often says. He’ll do what you ask him to do. He won’t say much during the process. When it’s done, whether he’s content or tired, he’s happy to be back home and have done whatever we did. If we’ve taken some pictures he’ll ask for them. He’ll ask to look at them before anyone else. “Bring the pictures here for me to take a look?” After looking at them he’ll put them away, put the memory away. There’s not much clinging or strong feeling. It’s all simple and smooth. For grandma he can be a big baggage. She drags him along the way during our walks and has to stay behind with him wherever we go. But he is not actually. He doesn’t create any burden for others emotionally. He walks, looks around, stays quiet, and once in a while tells a silly joke that makes himself laugh, which is what, instead of the joke, makes us laugh.

When I ask him to tell stories — I’ve been wanting to collect his life stories — he often remembers those fun moments. Encountering a tiger on his way down the mountain, registering marriage with grandma by himself, engaging in water games with the villagers, rescuing an American soldier, running away from the “Japanese devils”… It’s always light-hearted, with little heavy emotion or reflection. So it’s never what I really want to hear. I want history. Personal history, collective history. I want to feel its weight so that I have something to write about. But his anecdotes are like a story from the TV series, and often sound more insignificant than that. He carelessly tells them, with his careless words heavy with countryside accent, as if those things didn’t happen to him but happened in another life that he still remembers. “That’s a story!” He declares at the end, meaning it’s time to watch TV or do something else and stop talking about the past. I am, as expected, rarely satisfied.

There were times when things became more serious. Once he even came to tears. It was when he talked about his dad. I asked about his childhood, his parents. He said he didn’t grow up with his dad. He died when grandpa was little. Eight years old? He died from a disease caused by the lack of salt in his body. The salt was robbed by the Japanese and there wasn’t much salt to eat. Thus he died. When grandpa said that his eyes blinked and blinked, trying to squeeze away the tears, just as he watched the sad moments in the TV series. “Okay, no more.” I wanted more but he was reluctant to continue. “It’s difficult…” he said. “What’s difficult?” “The old days. There wasn’t even enough salt to eat.” Then he said quietly, turning away to the TV, “Okay, let’s stop. It doesn’t feel great to talk about these things…” So I did not insist more.

I guess that’s why in the old generation’s mouth, communism is good, at least was good. It’s simply that. Communists fought for the people, not the capitalists. That’s good. Today they say, science is good, politics is complicated. I once asked grandpa, a few year back when I was still undecided about my major, what I should study. He said science is good, don’t study politics. “Why?” I asked. “Politics changes. You have no control over it.” But no more. He wouldn’t say more.

I guess I can’t say my grandfather is a good person. He’s simply a product of his age. He was taught the old books, the old (and new) morals. He married and worked and lived his life the good old ways. My cousin said the other day, “In today’s age grandpa would be an honest and upright leader (which is, as most Chinese think, not so common anymore. Grandpa was once the chairman of the labor union in the city)!” Exactly, he’d be a rare good leader. He takes his obligations seriously. He believes in working for the people. He doesn’t want to bother with what’s outside him, not even chatting much with the strangers (at least not without grandma’s company). (When we walk together in town we often meet someone that says to him, “Chairman Liu! Long time no see!” And he greets back with a smile. After parting with the person he asks, who’s that?) Just working well, staying safe, doing what he ought to do, is good to do seems to be all that matters.

There’s a kind of faithfulness behind all that avoidance of complication. It’s a sort of simplicity that’s inherited from those days. It’s no longer present in us, nor in my parents’ generation. That dedication to what one ought to do, to what fate brings us, to whatever time and place we happen to be… And while taking things as they are, he gives back a part of what he is. There’s no hiding, no bragging. There's a bit of laziness, some lack of control over his temper and feelings, but that’s it. Not more, not less.

How could he understand people like us? Who frets over a house, a car, a picture, a word someone said but shouldn’t have said, or the school we go to, the job we do? In his years there weren’t so many choices. He went to the old school. He joined the communist party. He became the head of his county. He married grandma. He went to the army. He came back to work at the iron and steel factory to foster the Great Leap Forward. He became the chairman of the labor union. He was hospitalized for stomach illness. He brought up three kids. He sent mom off to study. He saw one of my uncles grow into a common worker and the other get into drugs and then turn back into a good person… All that happened. All that was under and out of his control. He couldn’t care more or less than he did, than everyone else.

So when all of us are commenting on my older cousin’s marriage, on the illness or death of some other family, he stays quiet. He listens. He asks a few words about the facts but doesn’t ever argue for his opinions. He has few opinions. That’s what makes him lovely. Because he has few opinions he can let things be. He can tell me he cried for days after hearing me cry on the phone. He can tell us to come back for the Chinese New Year, year after year, whatever is happening. He can say I’ll miss you, I miss you, more directly than any one else of us does.

Today I said bye to grandpa again, and grandma. The good grandma that does everything and has little complaint. That waits for us, cares for us, argues with grandpa but stays behind with him. My dear grandma and grandpa, when can I see you again? When can I be back at your house? You are where my home is. Wherever I go, the years you lived, with or without me, always, always stays inside me.

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