My Mother’s Family History

My maternal grandfather, Kai Zhi-Ming(蓋治民) was born in 1911 in Lai-Yang (萊陽) county, Shandong province(山東), the same year the Republic of China was born. He had a brother who is two years older. When he was 10 years old, his father died and he was forced to dropped out at third grade, and that was all the formal educations he had. The Kai family originated from YuenNang(雲南) area in south-western China, they were resettled by the Ming dynasty to Shandong province in the north after the civil war in 1400 AD decimated the population in this area. He was the 16th generation of Kai after the resettlement. The Kai’s live along the banks of Five Dragons River. The river would flood every three years and dry up every 5 years, and devastated the nearby villages in the process.

According to my mom, my great-grandfather was kidnapped by someone in his village in connection with some bandits. My great-grandmother prepared the ransom but unfortunately it was delivered to the wrong address, and as a result my great grandfather was killed. His body was discovered when a fellow villager saw a belt protruding from the river bank. The death of my great-grandfather must have put my great-grandmother in great distress, since she had to raise two young sons by herself. Not much was known about their sufferings because my grand father never talked about it. Eventually he grew to be 6 feet tall, very athletic and also very intelligent, I know because I could never beat him in Chinese Chess, and he could do math in his head and taught himself how to read newspaper. After he and his brother grew up, one night they went to the home of the villager who orchestrated their father’s kidnapping and killed him. This is how people at that time lived. Life was raw, it was Darwinian, and without the entitlements we take for granted today - there were no electricity, no free educations, no hospitals, no governments, and no justice. All you have is your family, and only a strong son can guarantee the continue survival of the family.

Grandfather worked hard and became prosperous. He rotated his crops to maximize yields and to hedge risks. He never grew the same crop in consecutive years, and always grew different crops than his fellow villagers. As a result he often fetched better prices for his products and the crop rotations kept the soil productive. He would also grow peanuts and press oil for cash. He married my grandmother, Sun Shu-yin(孫淑英) who was three years older. They had five children but only two survived: my uncle, Kai Jung-Wen(蓋永文) 1936, my mother, Kai Jung-Hwa(蓋永花) 1938.

In 1949, Chinese communist’s campaign reached the Shandong province. My grandfather was the wealthiest man in his village. Despite he always tilled the land himself and never used any tenant farmer (he owns three acres* of land with his brother’s family, total 15 people), that was enough to get him in trouble. He was arrested by the local communist guerrillas (KMT controlled the cities but the countryside was controlled by the communists). One night a guard him set him free because grandpa had helped his family during a previous famines. He took off and ran all the way to Tsingdao and never went home again.


*To put the three acres in perspective, in 1900, average acreage per US farm was 100 acres. In 1850 an immigrant who landed in California could get 150 acres of farmland with squatter’s right.

When my grandpa was at Tsingdao, he made a living as a construction worker, and my uncle, at that time a teenager, was able to join him. My grandmother was determined to take my mom and joined him in Tsingdao a hundred miles away. However, she was illiterate and had bounded feet so she never left her village before. Because of her husband’s escape, she was already under house arrest. According to mom, the Communist guerrillas would torture grandma by tying her up with ropes and hang her from the cross beam of their house and force her to confess her ‘crime of oppressing the poor’. My mother was 10 years old and would beg them to put her down. Somehow they survived the ordeals and escaped their captor and set out on foot to walk 150Km to join my grandpa. Once during the trip they were completely lost, my grandma prayed and prayed and before long a small whirlwind appeared, they followed it eventually found their way again. In 1949 the family finally managed to unite in Tsingdao, except there was one problem - the Communists are about to capture the city and KMT was leaving for Taiwan. They couldn’t afford the transportation because boat tickets can only be bought by gold bullions and they had lost all their possessions.

One of my grandpa’s friends came up with a brilliant idea - at the time many KMT troops had abandoned their uniforms and weapons while fleeting the communist troops. They decided they would gather these uniforms and weapons and formed a crack KMT unit, and hopefully can take advantage of the chaos and get into some troops transport ships. The plot worked and soon they were scheduled to ship out, except their ranks were so low that their families were not allowed on board. Then another miracle happened - in Tsingdao my grandma came to befriend an old lady and took care of her, turned out the old lady’s son was a high ranking KMT officer and was able to get the entire family on board! Without these miracles, mom often said they would have opted for the last option - at that time communists was recruiting people to joined re-settlement to JiangXi province. She didn’t realized until many years later that many refugees who went to JiangXi were subsequently persecuted and perished. Out of the 400M Chinese people, only 4M, or 1%, fled from China to Taiwan in 1949. By extreme lucks and miracles, my mother’s family not only was able to escape, but unlike most other families, escaped as a whole. My father who also fled China to Taiwan in 1949 as a teenager barely made it out himself and left his parents behind, whom he would not see again until 1983.

At age 38, grandpa started over again in Taiwan. His family lived in tent city set up for the refugees in Taichung(台中) and he found work as a construction worker. Every morning he got up around 4AM, walked up to 10 miles to the construction site, and got home around 9PM, and repeat the cycle again. After WWII Taiwan was short of means of transportation, and because grandpa was 6 feet tall and very strong, he was used as a human mule to haul the construction materials using a wheel-brow. Credits were not available at the time and transactions were often settled by cash. Overtime grandpa earned enough trust of his employer so he would get the cash from his boss in the morning, went to the supplier’s warehouse and paid for the material that day, then haul these materials to the construction site. One day after he paid the materials and was half way to the construction site, he realized the vendor had given him the wrong change - the exact amount is unclear, but something like a $10 bill was mistaken for $50 and he got $45 instead of $5. He hauled the materials back to the vendor’s warehouse (this was after WWII and you cannot simply leave stuff by the roadside unattended) and tried to explained what happened, since he speaks only northern China’s dialect and the vendor only speaks Taiwanese, the vendor thought grandpa came back and asked for more money. He was ready to gather his employees and beat up grandpa when a passers-by who happened to know both dialects clarified the confusions. The vendor, Mr. Chen, was so impressed with grandpa’s honesty, that he told grandpa to start his own construction business, and he would advance him all the materials on credit until his customers pay him. That’s how grandpa started his own construction business with no money to his own. Because he always deliver on budget and on-time, from 1949 to 1969, his business grew from a one-man operation to become one of the largest contractor in Taichung. After WWII the catholic church were expanding in Taiwan and became his main client through word of mouth. One of his job was Viator High School, the largest private Catholic school in Asia that both me and my cousin later attended. Another job was Providence University, a girls-only private catholic college my mother attended. He also built the Catholic church right across the street from my alma mater - Tunghahi University.

My grand mother was a traditional women with bounded feet. She didn’t have formal education. Her often told us stories filled with mysteries. She told me when my mother was young, she once got very sick. One night grandma had a dream that she was fetching a jar from a high shelf and it cracked. The next morning grandma found mother was not breathing and thought she was dead, but while they were preparing for the funeral mother came back alive. Grandma believed that had she broken the jar in the dream instead of cracking it, mother would have been dead. Another time someone in her family got very sick and was almost dead, and a mysterious traveling medicine man came to the village and advise the patient to drink some brew from snake skin, the medicine man refused any payment and left, the next day the patient completely recovered. There’s also the story when they were trying to escape to Tsingtao when mysterious whirlwind appeared and guided them to safety. Her world view is that there are many mysteries in life, and one must always do the right thing in order to build good karma.

From 1949 to 1966, thanks to the steady catholic building contracts, my grandparent had become one of the wealthiest in the city of Taichung. One of his refugee friend was jealous of him and turned him in as a Communist spy. He was arrested by KMT but was later released after paying large sum of money to someone in the government.

At around 1966 grandpa decided to expand his operation from Taichung to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Grandma did not want to move because she was quite content with their lot, but grandpa was very ambitious and wanted to expand his business further. There was also a story of one of grandpa’s best friend, who had died during the chaotic years of 1949 but his spirit had ‘stayed and took care of grandpa’ because they were such good friends in life, according to grandma, the friend’s spirit had ‘guided’ him through many decisions but finally told grandpa in a dream that he was very happy to see his friend had prospered, and he would leave him and go to heaven in peace. In spite of the protests from his wife and the departure of his ‘guardian angel’, grandma still decided to move his business to Taipei. He took on another catholic project that would prove to be his demise. The Chinese cardinal at the time, Yu Bin(于斌樞機主教), wanted to build a junior medical college to train nurses
康寧醫護專科學校. Grandpa got the contract and went ahead with the constructions. But when he completed the school, he did not receive the payment. It was never clear what happened, and when grandpa went to the court he lost his case. After Nixon went to China in 1972 Taiwan became isolated diplomatically, the government did not want a scandal to destabilize the fragile relationships with the Vatican. In the grand scheme of cold war politics he never stood a chance and lost all his money.

Grandpa never liked my dad. When my father was dating my mom in college, he was serving in Taiwan air force. He didn’t graduate from the Air Force Academy and graduated from the Air Force Mechanical School instead. According to dad he wasn’t good enough to become a fighter pilot so he chose to become a mechanic. I suspect he probably was kicked out of the Academy because disciplinary problems. He was famous among his Academy classmates for rebelling. Mother was in the last year of college when she married my father. Their economic status could not have been more different, she was the daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants in Taichung, and he was an air force lieutenant who had no career future. After they got married in 1963, my mother got a job teaching English in a public junior high school. With my grandparent’s help, they purchased a plot of land and dad opened a restaurant with his friends and made a lot of money. In 1976 they torn down the restaurant and on the same spot built a 5 story building and rent it to a hospital(三民醫院). That hospital and building(台中市北區三民路三段124號) is still there in 2009 when I visited.

Throughout her life, my mother worshiped my grand father. In her eyes grandpa embodied the best qualities of Chinese man - honest, hard working and disciplined. I’ve lived with my grandpa every summer from 9 to 12, and we lived together for 1 year when I was 15. We were not close at all. In fact, I don’t think grandpa was ever closed to anyone. He was the typical Chinese man of 19th century who are loathed to reveal their emotions and affections, and probably made worse by his harsh upbringings. The only occasion when he would talk to us was playing Chess, when my cousin and I were trying to beat him (and never succeeded), he would say ‘watch your rook’ or things like that. He never talked about the past. I didn’t even know he built my high school until I went there, and he never mentioned anything about the Catholic. I do remember he was a man of extraordinary disciplines and always followed the same routines - he got up very early, like 4:30, ate breakfast, read newspaper, had lunch, took a nap, dinner, and went to bed around 8:00.

Grandma’s temperament was the opposite of grandpa. She was one of the most loving and affectionate person I’d ever known. She was also the one that told us all the family stories. When my family immigrated to Canada in 1981, I lived with my grand parent for one year. At that time grandpa was 70 and grandma was 73, and both had long since settled into a regular patterns of simple living. One year later because our family ran out of funds and in order to reduce our living expense, I moved into a school dormitory, and they moved back to live with my uncle and his family. On weekends I’d joined them in uncles place and return to the dorm on Monday. In the 1980s, Grandma was able to visit Canada a few times but somehow grandpa never made the trip. I left Taiwan in 1991 to attend graduate school in Columbia University, when Adrianne and I got married in 1997 we went back to Taiwan to see grandma. She kept saying how happy she was that I married a tall wife (Adrianne is 6 ft).

In 1990, while I was serving in Taiwan army, my grandpa passed away. He was 79. Mother told me that when she was comforting grandpa at his bed, one day he told mom that he’s ready to go to the next world because a newly opened public office awaits him. The next day he passed away. Grandma passed away in 2001 at age 93. Both times mother flew back from Canada to Taiwan and was at their sides.

That was the life of my grandparents. Their life from 1908 to 2001 was the most chaotic times in China, and it requires the fortitude of characters that I’ve rarely seen in my own lifetime. I still vividly remember the one year in 1981 when we lived together, and the simple daily routines we followed - no TV, no radio, no distractions, just simple family meals. I lived a whole year with this man whose escape from China and rise from refugee to prosperity was simply astounding, who built my high school, who once owned an entire city block,, who was wrongfully en-prisoned, who owed his fortune to honesty and lost it because of loyalty, and yet he never spoke one single word about these. The grandpa I know played chess with me and the only thing he ever told me was “your credit is as good as your life(信用比生命重要)”.

Why We Immigrate

We just came back from our two weeks vacation in Taiwan, last time we were there was in 2000, almost 10 years ago, we spent the first week in Taichung where I grew up, and the second week in Taipei where Adrianne grew up. We introduced Tenzin to our friends, relatives and their families, and also learned what they've been up to. In Taipei Tenzin met up with his grandpa and grandma (Adrianne's parents) who also flew in from China, and we had a great time.

There's been a lot of changes in Taiwan since our last visit, although 'change' has become the definitive word since the end of cold war, when the economics open up when political barriers came down, as China and India continued to realize their full potential, their impacts to the rest of the world are only now more visible - Taichung was a sleepy city when I left in 1990, now it's teeming with high rises and department stores and the entire city has turned into a giant shopping mall. Parks and pedestrian spaces are replaced by roads, cars and motorcycles. Entire blocks of shopping districts in front of the old train station (Zheyo road, or Freedom Road) had gone into decline, supplanted by the newly emerged Taichung Harbor Road that were mostly empty 10 years ago. The jobs are mostly tourism related: hotels, shopping malls, restaurants. Most of the the manufacturing industry had moved to mainland China. Two of my friends are working in China, two of them out of work in Taiwan, one has recently started his own company after being laid off. The island is being squeezed by globalization, imported labors from SE Asia, and industrial exodus to China.

Although Taiwan economy had a mild recession, I don't think people are less happier - in Taichung I brought Tenzin to visit my best friend Cody Deng, his parents and two sisters and their children, my uncle, aunt, my cousins (Shiao-yu and Ling-Ren). My uncle and Cody's family basically adopted me when I was living alone in Taiwan in the 1980s. Sitting in their living rooms updating ourselves and watching Tenzin played with their children brought back a lot of happy memories. Even jobs are not as plentiful or as fulfilling as working for Google, you don't need a lot to be happy if you're surrounded by love ones. In fact, I think had I stayed in Taiwan and never left, I would probably have a so-so job but I would certainly have more children, spend more quality time with my family, friends and relatives, and definitely much less stressed-out as I was in the last two decades. Atomic family in Anglo-Saxon society has its down sides: its emphasis on jobs as the only mean for self-realization, and on consumption and materialism have caused a lot of miseries.

During my stay in Taipei, I had a chance to talk to Mom's best friend: Ling Chen-pu. I called her because when I visited uncle (mom's brother) in Taichung, he did not know Mom had passed away, so I made a point of making sure I talked to mom's friends and they can spread the news. I also want to know if Chen-pu knows why we immigrate: turned out Chen-pu did know because mom did discuss this with her (they were the best friends since freshmen years). According to Chen-pu, mom was the one that decided to immigrate, and she did it for two reasons: to give her children a better future, and to give dad a change of environment, the latter was because dad was day-trading in Taiwan and couldn't hold on to any job, so she hoped by immigrating to Canada he would get a fresh start. This confirmed what I have heard from Mom before. Chen-pu also told me she suspected that had Mom not immigrated, there is a good chance she would still be alive: she would have retired when she's 55, her teacher's pension would set her up for life, Taiwan has universal health care, and during her illness she's more likely to have stayed with one of her children's family instead of being committed to senior care.

Like all immigrants, it is inevitable that we have to re-affirm the decision every time we go back, as least sub-consciously: what made us leave? I've certainly done well financially, but what about the rest? Since Tenzin is born in America, it makes sense for Tenzin to grow up here and I believe America will continue to offer him with more opportunities. I have certainly benefited in many ways by the decision to stay here myself and have grown used to the open space, but now I am more mindful that the ledger has many columns, and happiness may not be as straight forward as solving an equation.

One day you will understand

Mom was here in California with us in February 2008. I remembered when I picked her up from SFO, I was shocked to see her being wheel-chaired out to the luggage area. I didn't recall Rick mention her condition and somehow I thought she was putting on a show, maybe she wanted to come visit us more often, or she was protesting the obvious lack of affections I had shown toward her throughout the years. In any case, when we got home she was able to walk up three flight of stairs by herself. After confirming with Rick that there was nothing wrong with her prior to visiting us, I told her to exercise more, and that the number one factor for longevity is mobility. She insisted she wasn't faking and sometimes she 'just couldn't move'.

I gave her the book by Dr. Oz "Staying Young" and begged her to read it and exercise more, but she would stop after flipping a few pages. Adrianne took her to her school and had her teachers look at her, after they prescribed Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture treatments, she would feel much better and that was very encouraging, but she only stayed with us for a few weeks and we didn't see through the entire process. Her overall mobility was still terrible and I told her, sometimes in very harsh words(because I was stressed out from work), that even her mother had more mobility in her 90s. 2/3 of the time during her visit she was fine, the other 1/3 she would feel bad or became immobile.

Before she went back to Toronto, she also asked me about the idea that each of us (me/Rick/Eddy) give her $20K so she can pay off her $60K mortgage. She also had $100K invested with a friend with 6% interest, so I told her she should pay off the mortgage with the $100K, kept $40K, and each one of us would give her $1200/year, the equivalent of 6% on $20K. She wasn't happy but she obliged. I mention this part because I believe the issue is related to her deteriorating condition later and I will explain.

Starting May 2008, I began to get emails from my brother Rick about Mom's mysterious problems. Sometimes she couldn't move and would wet her bed. Sometimes she could move and function like a normal person, some weekends she could cook big meals for Rick/Tatiana/Eddy/Armin when they gather at her apartment and the family had a great time, but then some weekdays Rick would get calls from her begging him to help her get out of bed. It got to a point where Rick could no longer work without interruptions and was stressed out by having to deal with her and a new job (which he subsequently lost). We considered bringing her to California but she didn't have U.S. health insurance. They tried different hospitals in Toronto and none of the doctors could tell what happened, them tried to cover their ass by prescribing more pills anyway. She was diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis, even though RA symptoms do not come and go away like that, they prescribe her steroids anyway. The steroid had side-effects too, so more prescriptions would follow. Some even caused her to hallucinate. The downward spiral got worse after each hospital visit and more prescriptions. In October she was no longer able to take care of her self so we decided to move her to nursing home so someone can take care of her 24/7. That was not able to halt her decline. During one of the hospital stay she got lung infections and passed away. It's a well-known fact that winter hospital stay are dangerous for seniors whose weaken immune systems are vulnerable to those deadly bacterias strands in hospitals. Sadly she became one of the victims.

During 2008 I also developed great pains in my back and neck. I went through all kinds of treatments: orthopedics, physical therapy, acupuncture, massage therapy, inversion table, stand-up workstation, and nothing could lessen the pain. At one point I gave up and thinking I may not live long enough to see my son grow up. The problem lasted until June 2009, when I stumbled upon John Sarnos book: The Divided Mind. According to John Sarnos, my back pains was not caused by any physical anomaly, but by the 'unexpressed rage'. The pain was just the way my unconscious mind trying to distract me. I was very skeptical at first so I began to read more about it. Almost immediately my back began to improve and by the time I finished all his books in a few weeks and became a convert, the pain is almost gone. John Sarnos' s theory is built on Freud's theory that our mind is divided by the conscious(ego) and unconscious(id). The id registers its 'unexpressed rage' to ego by mis-interpreting signals and causing pain. As soon as we (the ego) understand the source of rage, even the simple act of acknowledgment could cause the pain to go away because the id had already accomplish its goal - letting the ego know that we cannot continue like this. His claims was also backed by recent findings that when orthopedic doctors were presented with X-rays from people with and without back pains, they could not tell one from the other. The fact is everyone is born with some physical defects and yet many could live pain free. One other John Sarnos finding was 'symptom imperative', in that if you fix the pathology for the pain without fixing the underlying rage, the pain will show up somewhere else. Someone went through surgery to 'fix' the back pain will simply transfer the problem to some other places, like insomnia or anorexia.

In my case, I believe my un-expressed rage was caused by the work politics and the lack of support from my teammates and managers, and my (unconscious) anger of having to support the family all by myself. I believe Mom's physical problem was also caused by the unexpressed rage. There was no real pathology and that was why it was so elusive - it could be knee pains, yet as soon as she started taking steroid, the muscle began to fail, then it's some other things else. I tried to empathize her situation and I could not help but feeling the sheer rage, horror and isolation she felt - her failure of marriage at such old age and lack of stable companionships. Her failure to be financially independent (I could never stopped wondering that had all of us send her $100/month through automatic transfer instead of sending her $1200 check upon her request, what that would do to her health). She always fear that she will not be able to be close to her children and grand children, and that she would end up alone in senior homes, which she kept mentioning over the years and was ultimately realized.

Mom often said to us when we were young and did bad things: "One day you will understand". I did not understand back then, but now I begin to understand after we have Tenzin. A month ago he started kindergarten, and Adrianne and I took him to the school on the first day and he wouldn't let us go. As we were standing there hugging each other, I couldn't help but feeling the deepest sadness, that the wheel of motion has been set in place and he is now on the path to leave us in 13 years. He is such an important part of our life now, I wonder how Adrianne and I could ever let him go.

Did mom ever let us go? I looked back when Mom took me to kindergarten, that seemed so long ago and she seemed so young. Did she plan for her old age? Did she plan for her retirement, her mortgage, her health, her being able to live independently and yet close to her children? Maybe she did plan for those, but nothing worked out the way she expected. Had I been able to see through her rage, I would have done something totally different, but it is too late now.

Reflections on My Mother's Life

During the time when I was writing the eulogy for my mother, I had to ask my brothers and sister many questions about the family. I had to ask because I was not there - we had been living separately since I was 15 and we only saw each other maybe once a year afterwards. Since it was very painful for me to be separated from my family at that age, I had since subconsciously removed some, if not all the emotional attachments to my parents as part of my self-defense. The writing of the eulogy was a way for me to find out and rationalize what had happened, and to restore my emotional connections to them and the rest of my family.

Looking at your family can be both a terrifying and a rewarding experiences- for the same reason we look at primates and fossils, it tells us a lot about ourselves. In particular, I want to know the answers to these questions: Why did my parents decide to immigrate to Canada? Why did they decide to leave me behind in Taiwan? Did my parent really love each other? What had happened to my family since they immigrated? I was hoping the answers will not only help me understand myself, but will also help me reconnect with the the emotions that I've since lost.

While researching my mother's life, a distinct pattern had emerged and kept repeating itself - that is, my mother made decisions mainly based on her concerns of others, and that most of these decisions were wrong for herself, and she would spent enormous efforts to try to make them right.

From the very beginning, she decided to marry and to stay married to my dad, even though her parents are against him and that my dad was never a marriage material. She could have walked away after she found out, but chose to stay and tried to turn him around. She failed and never loved the same man again. For the rest of her life she was so exhausted from being the main provider for the family, that she would pay the ultimate price for not having either the time or the energy to nurture the affections between her and her own children.

In 1981, she decided to immigrated to Canada even though all but one of her children are doing well in Taiwan. She quit her tenured teaching job even though she was only 6 years away from a pension that guarantee financial security for the rest of her life. She left behind her 15 year old son in Taiwan due to the government age limit on immigration, and forever severed his relationships with the rest of the family. She decided to lend and lose a significant portion of our family assets to her friend, even though she knew their business was in trouble and they were paying her an unsustainable 20% interest rate.

In 1984, because a fortune teller told her that if she stayed in her current house, one of her sons would die, she decided to put the rest of the family assets into a bigger house, despite all but one of her children had left for college. At the time she should have down-sized, simplified, and invested more time with her youngest child, she took on more financial burdens and had to work for the next 20 years, while missing yet another of her child growing up.

She supported her daughter's marriage and help raised her grandchildren, despite her son-in-law never wanted the family burden to begin with. As a result, she had to care for her grandchildren, Mimi until she was almost 2, with minimum help from either her daughter or son-in-law. Later she would also play a significant part of taking care of all her other grandchildren at the expense of her own health.

Ironically, the closest person I can think of that exhibits the same character traits is the famous German general Erwin Rommel – like my mother, Rommel tend to make decisions alone and seldom consulted with others. He often made the wrong strategic decisions (e. g. ignore Tripoli in 1942 or built Atlantic Wall in 1944), and would stick to the wrong decision despite enormous human sufferings, only to fail in the end due to the impossibility of the situation. Not only my mother's decision making traits paralleled that with Rommel's, their personality are also quite similar, for both are very stubborn.

Most people in life would prefer status-quo and refrain from making the same kind of decisions my mother made. Less than 1% of Taiwanese chose to immigrate, and we were probably the only family that left a child behind. She was probably the only teacher in Taiwan to walk away from life-time pension that was only 6 years away. I don't know the percentage of mothers that would advise their daughter to marry someone who didn't believe in marriage, but it can't be very high.

Before my mother passed away, I asked her why she made those decisions: instead of complicated analysis, she would say simple things like: I did it so so and so will be better off, etc. While making those decisions, my father or other family members are never consulted. For example, they didn't tell me I will be left behind until 1 month before they got on the airplane. This would be the reason that she was often the only one left to pick up the pieces, in spite of those decisions are intended for the benefits of others.

I discovered the pattern after talking to various family members and reflecting on the flight back to California. It was quite painful since had I known these earlier, I probably could have done something about it. But could I? I wasn't even around most of the time. Also as I mentioned earlier, I had either consciously or subconsciously detached myself emotionally with my family to protect myself, and I had not even tried to reconnect with the my family until the time of my mother's funeral.

Ultimately, what does family mean? Unlike an economic or military unit – family has no objectives to achieve. Even if there is such a list, life is probably too short and unpredictable to accomplish them. A family is started because of love, and its sole purpose is to sustain, to nurture, and to teach the love to the next generation. When the love is gone, nothing else matters: be it the number of children, the number of degrees, or the size of bank account. In my mother's case, love was lost 45 years ago. What had happened since was a woman's quest for love that she should have had all along: the love between a mother and all her children.

My Mother's Eulogy

My mother, Martha Chang, was born Kai Jung-Hwa, in Octobor 16, 1938, in a small rural village in Shandong province, northern China. When she was born, her mother didn't have milk so she was fed only gruels. Luckily she survived but it left her with poor health for the rest of her life. My mother's last name, Kai, was quite rare amongst the Chinese last names. According to family legend, her ancestors migrated to Shandong in the late Ming dynasty from YuenNang province, and she's the 16^th generations of Kai living in the area.

Her father Kai Che-ming and mother Sun Shu-ying had 5 children, but only she and her older brother: Kai Jung-Wen survived. Together with her father's extended families, 15 people in total, they led a simple peasant life on a small farm about 3 acres, with no electricity, running water, access to basic medical services or even education.

In 1949, the tiny 3 acre farm was big enough to classify her family as land owners, and they had to flee to Taiwan in order to escape from the Communist persecutions. They began a new life in Taiwan as penniless refugees, however, the exodus also brought new opportunities to her and her family: at age 12, she finally got her chance to start her formal education starting from the 2nd grade. Her father, who lost everything at age 39 and had to start from scratch as a construction worker, would eventually build a successful construction business and built many catholic churches and schools in Taiwan. The junior high school that my brother and I attended was one of his projects.

Since my mother started school very late, she was three years older than her average classmates. She always excelled in school and became the first person from her village to get a college education. The formation of my mother's personality was heavily influenced by her father's refugee success story and her own schooling experiences. From early on in her life, she would carry herself with extreme self-confidence and seldom second-guessed her own ability to dictate her own destiny, in spite of life's many unpredictabilities. For my mother, the challenges in life often mean new opportunities.

In 1963, during the last year of her college, she married my father, her first boyfriend and an air force officer at the time. She graduated one year later and became an English teacher. Together they started a family and had 4 children: first a daughter: my sister Linda, followed by three sons: myself, Rick, and Eddy.

In 1981, after 18 years of tranquil middle-class life, my mother gave up her tenured teaching job and immigrated to Canada, so her children can have a better future. Like many immigrants, she had to re-invent herself at age 44. She held various jobs in order to support her family, and see to it that her four children got 4 college and 1 graduate degrees. She saw all her children marry, and played an active role in helping bring up her 5 grandchildren. 

Throughout her life, my mother was the bedrock and the main provider to her family, and she worked hard to see to it that our large family never had concerns about financial security. Between her job and the duties of raising four children, she tended to her own parents' last days in Taiwan while surviving her own breast cancer. She accomplished so many amazing things, and it wasn't until we got married years later and started our own families, that we began to realize the sheer number of challenges she had to overcome so we can grow up carefree.

Those of your who knew my mother well, also know her devotion is not limited to her family. Throughout her life she has helped countless friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. Sometimes she can be loyal to people to a fault. Despite occasional disappointments, she never lost her faith in the goodness of people and continued to offer her help to whoever came asking for it.

We often wonder how my mother, as a woman, can summon so much strength and energy and sacrifice so much for others for so long. The truth is, she couldn't, and she was simply drawing the last buckets from her well. Her youthful look not only disguised her age, but also helped to conceal her deteriorating physical condition.

In recent years, although she survived her breast cancer and a broken hip, she never regained her strength. Starting this year, she began to have a series of mysterious ailments that whose origins doctors failed to conclusively identify. The resulting prescriptions caused further health damages and made her even worse. Starting in May she was hospitalized many times due to sudden weakness, anemia, fever, and by September, she has lost the ability to live independently.  In her most recent and last hospital stay, her lung suddenly developed problems and she was admitted to the ICU at Mount Sinai hospital on November 28. On Tuesday, December 9, the Lord chose to take her back. She was 70.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, and going through the emails where we discussed her conditions since the summer, I cannot help but wonder that had any of us kids taken time off and tended to her medical conditions, would the outcome have been any different, and would she have therefore had the chance to live to the same old age as her parents. That question will remain with us for the rest of our days.

My mother had both lasting and positive influences on all of her children and grand children: whether it's taking our kids to the Library; spending the afternoon reading books instead of watching TV; or reading to our children during bedtime when we're dog-tired from work, it is because we remember growing up she would do the same things for us. We may not have the prettiest clothes, but we *always* have the books we want. Whenever we encounter difficulties in life, whether it be stress from school or work, or going through lay-offs, we did not have to look far for inspirations - all we had to do is to look at our mother, for we only needed one-tenth of her strength and courage to persevere in life.

While raising us, my mother had also make sure to instill in us the values passed down through her parents: her unfailing optimism on the goodness of human nature, that you should always work hard and be honest; and that knowledge, not money, is the most important asset in life. My mother is the very essence of selfless devotion, of duty, and of compassion.

We miss you, Mom. You are in God's hands now, and we know you'll be watching us from above. We love you, and we want to say: "Thank you for everything you did for us"

Many Lives I've Had

Sometimes I feel that I've had many lives. By that I mean my live had been segmented into many periods with little resemblances to each other. Some periods could have belonged to a total stranger. The only common thread among these periods is me, but even that part did not stay constant. Otherwise I would have been content to stay at one place, and settle for one live.

These periods are the results of migrations. Each migration was either by necessities or motivated by my own ambitions. Although each one has brought more fulfillment, challenges, satisfactions and more prosperity, each also severe some of the old relationships and memories, which became very difficult to maintain because of the vast physical distances between them.

I grew up in Taichung, Taiwan. A medium size city with a population of 600,000, located in central Taiwan. I remember when I was in my third grade (1976), I still walked by a rice fields everyday to go to school, which is 1 mile away. My mom also walked to work - she taught English at a middle school that's also a mile away. Our home was a 2 stories concrete building that shared common walls with neighbors. Each building is about 12 feet wide and maybe 40 feet long. The entire block had maybe 20 houses, all had a tiny front and backyards. If I came home and the door was locked, I would just go into my neighbor's home. They would give me sweet green been soup while I awaited for my parents to come home.

One hot summer night when the electricity was out, our entire neighborhood emptied out to the front yards spontaneously. We brought out the benches and sat chatting, kids were playing, watching the stars in the night sky. That was a magical night. I could live that night forever.

Our family moved when I was in the fourth grade in 1977 and I transfered to another school 3 miles away. The new teacher, Mrs. Hsiu Jung-Shu, liked me a lot. Our family friend, Uncle Chang taught sixth grade there. He would eventually become my 6th grade teacher.

My grade was good and normally I am the No. 3 in the class without much efforts, the two girls before me always took their studies very seriously. Me, on the other hand, was always absent-minded and not sure what I wanted to do in life. My cousin, Kai Jien-An, also in my class, was my best friend. We just want to play everyday.

At my first exam in 6th grade, Uncle Chang correct one minor mistake in my math exam so I became No. 1, otherwise I would have been No. 3 as usual. I was so ashamed but I didn't tell anyone. After that I worked harder and became No. 1, to avoid the same from happening again. Uncle Chang was a close family friend and around our family often. He was even in my wedding 17 years later. We never discussed that incident.

I was a happy kid. I was never as serious as some other kids. Maybe that's because I was born in November and always the youngest in my class.

I wasn't very athletic and I became near-sighted since my 5th grade. My brother Pei-Chung and my cousin are very, very good, so we kicked ass playing baseball with the neighborhood kids.

My brother Pei-Chung was playing baseball for our school team and was the lead pitcher and 4th at bat, but the practice became longer when the team decided to go after the World's Little League Championships. My mom didn't like the extra hours of practice and withdrew my brother from the team. I still remember the coach came by several times pleading but she wouldn't change her mind. The team later went on to win the Little League World Champion. My brother always excelled in every sports he played, unfortunately playing sports wasn't a viable way to make a living so the parents discouraged that. The professional leagues for basketball or baseball would not be established in Taiwan for another 15 years.

We didn't have much but so did everyone else. I think our entire class of 60 had two rich kids, one is my cousin. Families back then normally had black-and-white TV (it had 3 hours program every night), electric fan (air conditioning was 10 years away), motor cycles. No one that I know of has cars, except my uncle. I think he owned the first Buick in Taichung city. But my uncle didn't seem that wealthy to me. They have meat every dinner, and can afford foreign travel (to Hong Kong) every few years, that's it. We all wear canvas sneakers. When my cousin told me he's getting a pair of leather sneakers (Nike), I thought that was odd - how can you run in those leather shoes?

Evey summer we spent our vacation at our maternal grandparents' place in Yung-he, a suburb of Taipei. Me, my bother, my sister, and my cousins, maybe 5-6 children in total, would go to Taipei on a train and stayed 3 months there. Every morning around 7AM my grandma would take us to the Youth's Park, where we played until 9AM, then we come back and my grandpa would take us to eat breakfast at a roadside stand. Then we played chess with grandpa. In the afternoon they take a nap, and my cousin, me and my brother would roam the streets in Yung-he, doing nothing particular, then come home for dinner.

I went to junior high school with my cousin. It's called Viator High School, a private catholic high school established by the Canadian Jesuit priests. It began in 1920s in mainland China and moved to Taiwan after 1949. My maternal grand father was the contractor that built the high school, so we were able to get in despite applicants far outnumbered the slots. The tuition wasn't that expensive, maybe $200 USD a year (in 1977's dollar).

We all live in the dorm during the first year. Since my cousin was sharing a two level bunk with me, it wasn't that big a deal to be away from home. There were 12 kids in the room, all cried during the first night except me and my cousin. We were just talking.

Viator high school had the largest campus for a junior high school in Asia. It has two soccer fields, 2 baseball fields, 1 full size swimming pool, couple of dozens basketball and volleyball courts, and a chapel. Each grade has six classes, and about 60 students per class. It also had a high school and each year had three classes. So there weren't that many and the campus is huge! It left a deep imprint in me since it was reputed to be the best junior high school in Taichung. 10 of my classmates later went on to Taichung First High School, the best high school in Taichung that required a placement examine to get in, similar to Stuyvansant High School in NYC. I still have friends from Viator High.

The Way They Lived (and we live..)

Last year during my father-in-law's visit, we were chatting after dinner about how they used to live when he grew up in China. The story he told was very fascinating! It was around year 1920, Nanjing, China:

"We have no electricity. At night, we lit kerosene lamps. There's no toilet or sewage, instead we use wooden basins in an out-house shared by adjacent families in the same quarter. Every day before dawn, peasants from the countryside will arrive with mull cart and collect those wastes. In exchange, they give us firewoods that we use to cook. Those wastes were turned into composts that fertilize their fields."

"There was no running water and we used two different sources of waters - from the well and from the river. Well water is only good for washing and bathing. For cooking and drinking, we boil water from the river."

Since China already have cities of similar population like Nanjing in 800 AD, the mechanisms needed to support urban life must have already existed by then. How different was a life in 800 AD, compared with 1920? I suspect not very much. I forgot to ask him how they started a fire, perhaps using matches? And perhaps using matches to start a fire was the one of the few things that had changed since. Other changes would be kerosene and the new world crops that were introduced to China around 1700 AD - vegetables with funny names in Chinese (sometimes in English too), like potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts and corns.

No change is not necessarily a bad thing. A way of life that does not change for a thousand years can probably last another thousand years, although not necessarily on an upward path. According to a Cambridge economic historian, China today's GDP finally matches up its previous record, set at 800 AD. Go figure what had happened between 800 and 2007.

How does our our modern live compare? The energy sources it depends on will be gone in 30 or 150 years, based on the most pessimistic or optimistic estimates, not to mention global warming, rising population, depleted resources and food supplies. If we get rid of the things we can live without - air conditioners, big screen TVs, dryers and only keep one car, how many years can we add to the 30, or 150 years estimate? Another 100? Are we willing to sacrifice a little, so our children and their children can have a comparable living standard like ours?