A Life in Words Read online

  At first, the two kept a proper distance, chatting idly. But while they talked, the pair was drawn together as if by some all-powerful force. Then, my grandfather, seemingly deeply agitated, took a square of folded paper from his trousers pocket and gave it to her.

  My grandmother flew down like an arrow, made swift by her wrath. When she reached the pair, my grandfather had no room to ponder his next words or actions. He gasped, then closed his mouth tightly and said nothing. Caught red-handed, he took the paper and all the romantic poetry it contained, popped it into his mouth and swallowed it. As the old Chinese saying goes, “When the belly is full of poetry, the breath will naturally be sweet.” My grandfather’s speech had always been seasoned with the classics, and now he’d literally eaten his words—a whole page full of them.

  Despite the lack of physical evidence, my grandmother kept score in her heart. After this, the woman was not allowed to so much as set foot in my grandmother’s house again. Before long, she resigned from my grandfather’s company, and it was as if she completely vanished into thin air.

  My grandmother thought that her nemesis had been expelled. She did not suspect that my grandfather and that woman had resorted to a more clandestine affair, not letting a soul know what was going on. My grandfather left for work every day, and returned home punctually every evening. He was a model husband.

  By the time my grandfather’s continuing extramarital affair came to light, he had already had several children with that woman. Even if my grandmother had had the Monkey King’s legendary cudgel in hand, she would not have been able to break them apart.

  During this time, my grandmother suffered pain, like a knife stabbing her heart over and over. The pain of betrayal enraged her. She found the house in which my grandfather kept his mistress and descended upon it with a group of her female friends. Going into the house, they took every movable object and destroyed them. As for the person in the house, she was grabbed and beaten. They beat her until she was bruised all over. But no matter how my grandmother beat her, that woman never let out a sound and never retaliated, because she knew how much she had wronged my grandmother. It was said that she moved house several times, and my grandmother wrecked her house as many times, allowing her family no peace and making them live in constant fear.

  After many years, my elderly grandfather developed a heart condition. One day, he was hospitalised due to a heart attack, and that woman bravely went with her eldest daughter to visit my grandmother. Tearfully, she begged my grandmother to forgive her. By this time, neither was young. It was uncertain whether my grandfather would pull through so, in the face of his dark misfortune, these two women, who had been the most important people in his life, shook hands and made up. If she did not forgive the other woman, my grandfather, hanging on by a thread, would not have the peace of mind to recover. On the surface, it looked like my grandmother bore enough hatred toward my grandfather to last for thousands of years, but it was equally clear that there was a good place inside her, and her love for my grandfather was still enshrined there. Now, in this difficult time, she weighed one fact against the other and, finally, nodded her assent.

  From that day on, we had to start respectfully calling this woman Er Zumu, meaning “Second Grandmother”. My grandmother and Er Zumu had five children each, ten altogether. There were six boys and four girls. My mother was born of the legal wife, and was second oldest in her family.

  Cracking a Gem with Sincerity

  Everyone said that my mother, Tan Toh Yen, was pretty. Aside from her delicate features, what was most attractive about her was her effortless grace and confident disposition, a temperament shaped by her time spent reading.

  When she was born, my grandfather named her Toh Yen, meaning happy and carefree. His greatest hope for her was that she would be a happy woman, always pleased with life when she grew up, and she did not disappoint him. When life was easy, it was like she was laughing on a bed of roses. When things were more difficult, she walked a narrow path through the brambles, a smile on her face.

  Before she married, having been raised wealthy, Mother seemed to have even the wind and rain at her beck and call. In that age when conventional wisdom said that “a woman’s virtue is to have no talent”, my mother picked up her books and went to school. There was one incident that emphasised her personality and that she took special delight in discussing.

  One day when she was in maths class during Secondary 1, her good friend, who was sitting beside her, had not completed her homework. This offended the teacher, who proceeded to scold the girl fiercely. My mother listened to the tirade until she could stand it no more. She stood up and faced the teacher, saying deliberately, “What are you going on for? My mother is a hundred times more capable than you, and even she doesn’t go on like this.”

  The teacher was shocked into momentary silence. When what my mother had said sank in, she did not get angry, but laughed instead. The whole situation was quickly defused. My mother’s comment spread quickly around the school and soon became a “famous saying” that made everyone laugh.

  My mother was as unfettered as a bird. In her free time after school, she would wear the clothes she liked and ride bicycles with her friends. From a distance, they looked like a ball of green light, pursued with great interest by a group of boys, although my mother never encouraged them. Sometimes, she was the embodiment of a fish in water. As soon as she came into contact with water, it became obedient to her. When she was bobbing along in the current, one would believe she had been born in the water. My mother was quick as a hare, but quiet as a kitten. When she did not go out, she would be lost in the pages of a novel. When she was not reading a book, she took interest in music, her long, thin fingers on the keys producing a flowing melody.

  These happy, idyllic days came to an end in February 1942, when Malaya was invaded. Then, after three years and eight months, when the horror ended, she stumbled across someone hailed as a hero of the War of Resistance: my father.

  After the war ended in 1945, Tham Sien Yen, an officer who had devoted his life to the Resistance, came down from Meluo Mountain. When he reached Ipoh, he paid a visit to the renowned community leader and head of the Perak Rubber Tree Association, Tan Tock Hong. When Tan Tock Hong learnt that the uniformed man with such a commanding presence was the leader of the much talked about Force 136, he welcomed him with the greatest hospitality. Outside the house, a crowd of neighbours had gathered, whispering and gesturing. As the two of them sat in the living room chatting, a pretty figure at the back of the room caught Lieutenant Tan’s eye and distracted him. It was the oldest daughter of the Tan family, Tan Toh Yen. The young couple’s eyes met. The girl was beautiful, dignified, and stylish, while the boy was strong, heroic, and full of vigour. In that instant, Cupid aimed his arrow at the couple.

  In later years, every time my mother recalled those tender days, she said with a smile, “He visited every night, supposedly to chat with my father so he could gain some understanding of the situation in Ipoh. Each time he came, he would sit for several hours, and eventually everyone figured out that his visits had nothing to do with his interest in Ipoh’s situation.”

  Finally, after much effort, his sincerity paid off. On 13 July 1947, the couple who had fallen in love at first sight were married before a gathering of four or five hundred relatives, friends and associates. The newspaper announcement went on at great length about the event.

  After they were married, my mother, who had been pampered all her life, was faced with severe trials. Once they had settled down to family life, my father’s first job was in mining for mineral resources. Ipoh was an important city in Malaya, rich in tin ore. My father and a friend invested in a plot of land and started mining for tin. They were inexperienced and unlucky. There was only a pitiable amount of tin on that property and, after the whole plot had been thoroughly worked over, they found that all their work had been for nothing. It was a huge loss of capital.

  CHAPTER 2

  Childh
ood in Ipoh

  Days of Hunger

  I PASSED THE first eight years of my life in the lovely mountain town of Ipoh. My memories of those years are seasoned with joy and sorrow, laughter and tears. Our happiness was thorough, and our miseries singular. Facing such vicissitudes in youth prepares one to face the complexities of the world later on. You could say that my family was simultaneously rich and poor. Our wealth was spiritual, while our poverty was material.

  My sister, Yee Ven, was two years older than me. I was the second. My brother, Kok Peng, was a year younger than me.

  We lived in a crude wooden house. Beside it flowed a small, sludgy brook, from which rose an overpowering stench. Sometimes, after the rains, the stream would flood its banks, and water would rise into our house, turning the floor into a muddy, stinking mess. My mother, who took great delight in cleanliness, would sweep the water out with a bamboo broom.

  My older sister, younger brother, and I often squatted beside the brook, entertaining ourselves with paper boats. We folded small squares of paper into boats and gently placed them into the water. They carried our hopes as they floated away.

  We did not have a washroom in the house, so we had to walk to the public toilet for all our needs. The dingy plastic and cement toilet bowls were often so full of fat, wiggling maggots that it was hard to make myself use the facilities. Each time I went to the toilet, I would hold my breath for as long as I could, squatting over the bowl and doing my best to employ “blitzkrieg” tactics. It really was torturous. The worst were those occasions when I had to make a midnight run to the toilet amid frogs’ croaking and insects’ chirping. Candle gripped in one hand, picking my way carefully down the muddy path, I felt the croaks and chirps close in on me as I was surrounded by branches on both sides. In my terror, the insects sounded like ghostly wails and the branches looked like spectral shadows. As soon as I finished, I would rush home. As I ran, it seemed the shadows of all manner of ghosts and spirits darkened the path before me.

  During the worst times, when we had difficulty scraping together the money for rent, our landlord would speak to my mother coldly and cruelly. Though she felt wronged, my mother always answered politely, walking him to the gate. As soon as she closed the door, her tears fell. Having grown up in a wealthy family, she had never imagined her life could be like this.

  We lived in such a horrible environment, and often did not have enough to eat. My father was constantly out looking for a job, but everywhere he went, he was rebuffed. All our savings were gradually used up.

  When my mother recalled this time later in life, she always said bitterly, “With three hungry young children hovering about, and without a single grain in the rice bin, don’t talk about cooking rice—I couldn’t even come up with a pot of porridge. That really was heartbreaking. Once, I had just enough money to buy a single piece of bread. When I’d bought it, I couldn’t bear to eat any myself. I separated it into three portions for you kids. I was really hungry, but just drank water. At night when I slept, I would press my empty stomach to the bed, trying to quell the hungry fire inside.”

  For three growing kids, of course a bit of bread was not enough. When we were especially hungry, it was like the stomach reached out with hands of its own, wanting to grab hold of anything it spied and gobble it up.

  Another thing once happened that is drilled deeply into my memory. With Chinese New Year looming one year, my father was out running here and there late at night as he tried to make some money. My mother had cooked a pot of white porridge, and the three of us gulped it down. My mother sat next to the table, eyebrows wrinkled. She said nothing. The bowl of porridge in front of her had grown cold. It was bland and white, like a sad face drained of all colour. In the distance, there was a sound of firecrackers exploding. But this celebration did not enter our house. My father finally came home, and my parents stared expressionlessly at one another. It goes without saying that this New Year passed very quietly.

  My maternal grandparents were certainly not unaware of their daughter’s situation, but my mother had been very insistent that she would not accept any financial assistance from her childhood home once she was married. My father, who was extremely sentimental, however, had only the vaguest concept of money. But they were determined they would work together to get the family through this bitter, dark period in life.

  One moonlit night in 1954, my father walked home, his expression relaxed and an unfamiliar happy expression on his face. He whistled a light tune as he walked. When he stepped into the house, he picked us kids up and cried, “Daddy’s going to run a newspaper!”

  The Glitzy Life

  After my father started Xun Bao, we left that hideous place. We moved into another rental house, which we shared with our landlord’s family; they stayed in the front of the house, while we occupied the back. Like before, it was a simple wooden house, but the rooms were spacious and, along with beds and a wardrobe, we had a large writing desk and several chairs. What really made us jump for joy was the fact that there was an indoor washroom, which was very clean. Going to the toilet no longer needed to be such a hair-raising experience.

  It was also at this time that the written word became a major part of our lives. The head and foot of the bed, the top of the desk and below it, and every corner of the house were completely filled with reading materials. On the shelves and in every bit of free space, all you could see were books.

  Every day when my mother finished her housework, she would place a stack of children’s magazines on the floor for us three kids to read at our leisure. At the same time, she would seat herself at the desk with a stack of paper at hand and set about writing a series of romance stories for Xun Bao.

  Many years later, when my mother talked to me about her writing, her whole face lit up with a smile. She said, “I have no idea where my inspiration came from back then. I wrote romances and family dramas, pieces full of conflict, passion and tension, the sort of stories young urbanites loved, and they were widely read at the time. Once when I was too busy to write and missed one episode, many people called the publisher asking the reason for the halt in publication. On another occasion, as the story neared its climax, many readers said they couldn’t wait to find out what happened, so they called the publisher to ask what the next development in the story would be.”

  Even though we lacked luxuries, it was obvious that my mother was happy during that time. Writing nourished her, giving her a rich inner life. Sometimes, I read until I was tired, but when I looked at her, the image of her head bent over the desk and her ballpoint pen clutched in her hand as she filled reams of blank paper with her writing, the passion surging to brighten her dark eyes, she was a vision of unparalleled beauty.

  Each night before we went to bed, my mother would tell us a story. This was always my favourite time of the day. Aesop’s Fables, Anderson’s Fairy Tales, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and The Arabian Nights were all part of her repertoire. She would select a different story from one of them to tell each night. Every story was completely engrossing and full of wild flights of fancy. I absolutely loved hearing them. As my mother tirelessly recited these stories to me every night, without even realising it, she planted a love of literature inside of me.

  Although my daily life passed in rather bland fashion, the world contained in books was one of unmatched splendour, a sparkling, glittery realm. Every time my mother took out a book, each heartfelt telling of a story from it was intoxicating for me. Like a magical box, as soon as she opened it, the stories seemed to vie amongst themselves, each striving to be the first one to leap out. The characters filled me with curiosity and wonder.

  When I was seven, it was with high expectations that I put on my school uniform and shouldered my bag, happily setting out for school. I attended the famous Yuk Chai Primary School. My Chinese teacher was Mr Cheong, an old friend of my father’s who loved Chinese culture, and taught his students quite passionately.

  Mr Cheong often wrote several especially meaningful char
acters on the blackboard in blockish script, asking us to study them carefully, then explaining their meaning to us. At the time we learned complex characters; although there are more strokes, they contain more of the language’s beauty. Some words are even like simple pictures of the thing they stand for. For instance, the top of the character for “smile” (笑) looks like eyebrows scrunched up over bright eyes, and the character for “person” (人) is like a simple stick figure. The character for “female” (女) has a little feminine shape, while that for “male” (男) looks dauntless. The word for “father” (父) is meek but powerful, while “mother” (母) has a warm, comforting look.

  When Mr Cheong had written and explained each one, these characters seemed to come to life, each one unforgettable and full of vitality. I was completely absorbed, looking with intense interest and listening as if under a spell.

  I began to have a rudimentary knowledge of the most common characters. By pouring myself into it wholeheartedly, scratching away with my pencil, my characters started to look something like the square style of the characters Mr Cheong had written. It was a life skill I had learned, one that would never abandon me.

  I learned at an astonishing rate, devouring everything the teacher taught. Because of the many stories my mother had read to me in my early years, many of the words were familiar to me. The teacher only needed to guide me a little, and I would understand. When I got home, I would immediately take out a book and start reading, perhaps only half understanding what I read, leaving me a little muddled. When I could understand, I was elated, but when I could not understand what I read, I guessed at the meaning. In this way, I read through one entire set of fairy tales, then started another, joyfully making my way through every book I could get my hands on.