A Life in Words Read online

  A Life in Words:

  My Writing Journey

  OTHER BOOKS IN THE CULTURAL MEDALLION SERIES

  Other Cities, Other Lives by Chew Kok Chang

  The Tower by Isa Kamari

  Confrontation by Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

  The Widower by Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

  Flowers at Dawn by Singai Ma Elangkannan

  Penghulu by Suratman Markasan

  Under the Bed, Confusion by Wong Meng Voon

  Durians Are Not the Only Fruit by Wong Yoon Wah

  The Earnest Mask by Xi Ni Er

  Trivialities About Me and Myself by Yeng Pway Ngon

  Teaching Cats to Jump Hoops by You Jin

  Death by Perfume by You Jin

  In Time, Out of Place by You Jin

  Copyright © 2016 by Tham Yew Chin

  Translation and poetry translation copyright © 2016 by Shelly Bryant

  All rights reserved. Published in Singapore by Epigram Books.

  www.epigrambooks.sg

  Originally published in 2009 by

  China Youth Publishing House as Wo Shi Yi Wei Chenmo de Yu

  Published with the support of

  National Library Board, Singapore

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  You, Jin, 1950–

  A Life in Words / You Jin ; translated by Shelly Bryant. –

  Singapore : Epigram Books, 2016

  pages cm. – (Cultural medallion)

  ISBN: 978-981-4615-45-7 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-981-4615-44-0 (ebook)

  1. You, Jin, 1950- – Travel – Translations into English.

  I. Title.

  II. Bryant, Shelly, translator.

  III. Series: – Cultural medallion.

  PL2098.N35893

  895.14 -- dc23 OCN883615565

  First Edition: November 2016

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Part One CHAPTER 1 My Parents Meet

  CHAPTER 2 Childhood in Ipoh

  CHAPTER 3 Life in Fire City

  CHAPTER 4 The Limits of a Young Girl’s Loneliness

  Part Two CHAPTER 5 A Turning Point

  CHAPTER 6 Yunnan Gardens

  CHAPTER 7 A Match Made in Heaven

  CHAPTER 8 In the Journalism Field

  Part Three CHAPTER 9 Joy and Sorrow in the Desert

  CHAPTER 10 Like a Willing Ox, I Serve the Children

  CHAPTER 11 The World is My Home

  CHAPTER 12 A Gentle Vibration

  Postscript

  Part One

  CHAPTER 1

  My Parents Meet

  Hero of the Resistance

  IN 1940, MY father, Tham Sien Yen, flew to Chongqing and underwent strict military training to take up arms against the cruel, fierce Japanese, in response to the Nanjing Massacre during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Five years later, my brave, resourceful father had fought in numerous battle zones.

  In February 1942, Malaya was steadily subjected to the Japanese offensive and ultimately brutally occupied. The people were plunged into the most abysmal suffering for a period of three years and eight months. My father and ten other members of the military academy, under the command of resistance fighter Lim Bo Seng, flew from Chongqing to India to work with the British government to organise resistance forces that would enter Malaya and gather intelligence from behind the enemy lines. This unit was the famed Force 136.

  After my father and his troops reached Calcutta, they were sent to a dangerous mountainous region for training. More than a thousand feet above sea level, temperatures were scorching during the day and freezing at night. There was not an inch of vegetation, or a trace of human life. In this harsh environment, they carried out the most arduous training. They knew neither morning nor night as they scaled mountains and crossed chasms, learning all sorts of special battle tactics. Sometimes they sailed to distant places and were left with just a map and a compass and told to survey the military situation in the region. Other times, they infiltrated Bombay or other cities to spy. In this way, whether in mountains, jungle, sea or city, they were thoroughly trained.

  From India, the troops took a submarine to Colombo in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and from there crossed the Indian Ocean to the Malayan jungle. After disembarking, my father established a liaison with Chen Ping and set up a base at Meiluo Mountain.

  At first, my father’s main responsibility was to help Force 136 communicate with the local people in Malaya, forging a cooperative effort in the resistance against Japan. Later, his role was to establish a stricter chain of command so that the troops could be more disciplined and soldierly, and also to train them in firing live ammunition in order to increase their military capabilities.

  My father succeeded as a go-between for ground troops and Indian headquarters, ensuring that headquarters always issued weapons, food and daily supplies. Gradually, they gained more recruits, and the abilities of the troops increased as well. In 1945, just when the combined resistance forces were about to attack Malaya, the Japanese announced their surrender.

  After the war, my father took his wealth of experience and his innate writing talent and wrote a ten-thousand-word report entitled Reflecting on the Resistance in Malaya. When I was a young adult, I took delight in reading this work over and over. It was my first contact with a true historical record. His account is rational, offering accurate details full of feeling; many of the heroes of the resistance come to life again in my father’s writing. In his public conduct, he was unassuming and dependable, both in word and thought; his writings mirror his person. Because his writing is so honest and open, it is especially moving.

  For instance, the details in passages such as this absorbed my younger self:

  Living deep in the jungle, food is not easy to come by, so we must scavenge to supplement our meals. We take it in shifts for several hours each day to go to the neighbouring fields and dig up tapioca roots to stave off the hunger. In the mountains, there is a sort of lettuce that has a foul smell and a bitter flavour. The first time we tried it, we had to hold our noses just to get it down. Later we ate it often, but it was still hard to get it down without gagging.

  There is one other food that is readily available, and that’s bamboo. It grows wild in the jungle, and not only are the shoots edible, even the bamboo tips of two or three feet can be used for food, as long as it has not yet grown branches, though it is difficult to harvest. When the tree is shaken vigorously, the tip will break off and shoot like an arrow plunging into the earth. If you don’t dodge it quickly, it’s likely to kill you. After peeling off layers of hard shell, pieces of white flesh are left. Soaking these in boiling water for ten minutes will take away the bitterness. When fried with shrimp paste, the taste is not bad.

  There are also lemon trees, about twelve or fifteen metres tall, which have a tender twig that can be eaten. The tree is full of thorns, and its bark is quite hard. When you try to chop it down, it echoes sonorously, its vibrations making the hands ache. After that, we still have to expend a lot of effort to remove the branches and leaves, in order to get to the tender core. They taste very good when cooked with curry powder.

  There are also bamboo rats in the jungle, weighing about a pound and with tails half a metre long. They are the favourite food of the local tribes. The local people will set grains of corn in the corner of the house, then wait quietly on one side. As soon as they see a shadow, they throw a spear. They never miss. They roast the whole animal, fur and all, over the fire, then carefully scrape the fur off, and cut open the rat’s stomach. Using their fingers, they pluck out the innards and pop them into the mouth. Seeing this, we were openly repulsed. They dried the tails, then twined them around their upper arms, saying it would keep the evil spirits away.

&nb
sp; To me, who had not yet seen the world, this sort of life was as exciting as The Arabian Nights. When I got older and read my father’s writing again, what moved me was the moral force running through the work.

  The memoir reports that Lim Bo Seng took great risks to go into the city and collect emergency funds. Setting out in the evening, he left my father in charge. Every time I read the section about their late-night conversation, I gain a deeper understanding. He writes:

  It was late, and our comrades were all asleep. Lim Bo Seng and I were still sitting up, talking. He said, “If we can complete our duties honourably, I still have one more dream to achieve in peacetime. I want to organise our comrades and start a work project together, a professional network. We can all work together like a big family, and do justice to the hardships we’ve been through together.”

  Saying this, he picked up a piece of wood and tossed it into the fire, making the flames glow red. As the fire flared, sparks danced upward. He rubbed his hands together and continued with passion and optimism, “Gaining profits, besides improving one’s own life and bringing in a bit more money, is for the purpose of improving society. We should set up various charities so that we can build up our country and serve society. That will be a peaceful, meaningful life.”

  As I listened, I became intoxicated with this vision of the future, my mind taken up with the idea of this beautiful scene. People would feel no more dread or hatred, each doing what she or he could, and each receiving what he or she needed. It would be a beautiful world.

  After joining the resistance, what made my father suffer most was that his family was under constant surveillance by the enemy. Hoping to locate some trace of my father, Japanese soldiers arrested his second brother and imprisoned him, torturing him cruelly to force a confession. Because his brother’s knowledge was limited, the soldiers could force nothing out of him, so they took him out to a bridge over Ipoh’s Anshun River to behead him. There were about twenty people lined up for execution. When each of the other victims was executed, my uncle was so startled that he turned to watch. Furious, a Japanese soldier kicked him, knocking him off the bridge and into the river. When he went under water, the soldier fired his gun but, fortunately, missed his target. My uncle was wearing a jacket and when the water flooded over him, it became inflated and the ropes around his wrists came loose. He swam to the bank, retreated to a small, secluded place and, under an assumed identity, stayed there and farmed until peacetime.

  Having gone through the baptism of war, my father knew exactly what sort of scourge war is. Because of this, when he was teaching his children in later years, there was one point he was very explicit about—he wanted us to grow up placing a great importance on moral character. He wanted us to be strong and disciplined, upright and frank. He wanted us to be considerate of others, to give proper attention to our personal matters, and to take an interest in the affairs of the nation.

  A Lifetime of Love and Hate

  My maternal grandfather, Tan Tock Hong, left China’s Fujian province when he was thirteen, heading south to work as a rubber tapper. He was clever and eager to learn. When he was not hard at work, he read books and newspapers diligently, and was very studious in learning languages. His mind was razor-sharp, honed through continual use. His knowledge snowballed, growing steadily as he matured. Relying on tireless self-study, he went from being an illiterate youth to an educated young man who excelled in life. His work ethic won the approval of his superiors. From life as an unassuming rubber tapper, he improved his prospects until, at the age of twenty two, he became the Chen Jiageng Company’s chief foreman. After that, he started his own rubber business, and eventually he was voted president of the Perak Rubber Association.

  Despite his great wealth, my grandfather did not neglect the importance of education. What was rare was that he was not only proficient in the Chinese classics, but had also mastered the English language. His written English was quite fluent, and he thoroughly mastered written Chinese. His exquisite calligraphy was powerful and unforgettable. He read widely, including works of literature, science, medicine, ancient and modern fables, and current events in China and abroad. In the eyes of his family, he was a walking encyclopaedia. There were always many books at home, arranged tidily throughout the entire house.

  When Malaya was occupied by Japan, horrifying rumours flew all about. One persistent rumour was: “If they don’t destroy a man, they’ll destroy his books; if they don’t destroy the books, they’ll destroy the man.” Every family that had hidden books would be exterminated on the spot. Once my grandfather weighed the options, he painfully took each book and laid them one by one in the fire he had lit in the garden. While each page burned in the flames, my grandfather’s eyes filled with tears of indignation and remorse. This story still makes me gnash my teeth.

  My maternal grandfather was a handsome man, with a refined, scholarly air. He was tall, with broad shoulders, a straight back and long legs. He listened attentively while others spoke, his bright eyes exuding a tenderness that melted the heart. Because his nose was high and sharp, many people said he looked like he was of mixed race. With his cultivated manner and tendency to always find just the right thing to say, he presented himself as an elegant gentleman.

  My grandmother, Pan Jun’e, was his first wife. The two were what is often termed “a perfect match”.

  Objectively speaking, my grandmother was not beautiful. Her eyes were not big nor her nose high, and her features generally not well-defined. But when she smiled, her eyes were like the charming crescent moon, and her cherry-red lips turned up in a beautiful, fluid curve.

  My grandmother was, just like my grandfather, a real bibliophile. Raised in an era when convention said that education was wasted on a girl, my grandmother did not have a chance to go to school. When she reached marriageable age, the matchmaker married her to an extraordinary man, and she plunged herself wholeheartedly into supporting him and raising their children. But she was not complacent. She worked hard to improve herself, expending sweat, tears, and energy to study. While other wealthy wives spent their time calling on friends and playing mahjong, she buried herself in books, learning all the good things in life from what she read. She read Dream of the Red Mansion over and over with great delight, so that the names of the book’s many characters were always on the tip of her tongue. I was often sick when I was small, and often full of anxiety. At such times, she would playfully call me “Little Lin Daiyu”. One of my relatives was quite a smooth talker, always quick to make friends with people. My grandmother called her “Xue Baochai”. Another was snobbish and glib, so Grandmother would purse her lips and refer to that relative as “Wang Xifeng”. Under the gradual tutelage of great works of literature, her thinking became quick and agile. Even her most mundane conversations were seasoned with idioms. She did not write much, but those few articles she published are all of good quality.

  To my grandmother, my grandfather was her whole world. Every night she prepared his herbal tonics of ginseng and cordyceps, serving him herself, even though there were plenty of servants in the house. She cooked for him with her own hands, lovingly ladling his meal into a bowl and serving it to him.

  My grandmother was a woman with an independent mind and a strong personality, but if my grandfather said just one time that he wanted her to stand, she would not sit down. She felt a reverential love for him. It was because she loved him so deeply and completely that when she found out about his affair, it was like a thousand daggers stabbing so far into her heart that they could never be extracted again.

  It was only after I was married and had a family of my own that I really understood. That deep love my grandmother had felt for my grandfather was engraved on her bones, and it gnawed at her insides. If her love had not been so deep, her hatred would not have been so passionately felt, nor held for so long.

  My grandfather’s lover was a clerk from his office, a woman with fine, delicate features. She had large eyes and large dimples. Her lot in lif
e incited sympathy; when she was only three, her mother died and, after her father remarried, the younger siblings came one after the other until there were seven of them. Later, the family business failed and, being the oldest daughter, she had to quit school and work to support the household.

  When she met my grandfather, she was not yet twenty years old. When my grandmother heard about her difficult home life, she felt great tenderness and so took her under her wing, treating her like her own younger sister. She would often invite her over for a sumptuous afternoon tea. In this way, there were many opportunities for my grandfather and her to be in contact.

  My grandfather was in the prime of his life, and was exceptionally good-looking. It started with flirtatious looks, a sort of silent communication that spoke volumes. But in all that was communicated, there was really only one message. By this time, my grandmother’s mother had got an inkling of what was happening and warned my grandmother, “Those two are always looking at each other. You need to wise up. Don’t be left in the dark about this. Someone’s going to get hurt. You’ve got to look out for yourself. You really shouldn’t invite her to the house anymore.”

  My stubborn, confident grandmother shook off these comments, retorting, “Mother, I treat her like a little sister, so how could she stab me in the back like that? And anyway, Tong Hock wouldn’t be interested in her. Don’t say such things so carelessly. Don’t look for faults, or you’ll be sure to find them.”

  “If you don’t listen to your elders, it’s your own loss.” My great grandmother’s face darkened. “If you carry on like this, you will surely regret it.”

  Eventually, it was carelessness that was their undoing. When the tiny thread of love in the couples’ eyes had grown thicker, deeper and longer, grandmother came to see the truth, despite her great trust.

  One day, that woman was again invited to the house for afternoon tea. My grandmother excused herself and went upstairs. Then she peeped through a crack in the wooden floorboards.