How come Li Yapeng was born in Xinjiang, the wild west of China?
Long story: His grandpa was a Kuomintang man. And in 1949, when the Kuomintang was losing the mainland to the communists, he went from Nanjing to Guangzhou, ahead of his wife and two daughters, with every plan to go back for them as soon as he set everything up. But the Kuomintang lost Nanjing and he was cut off from his girls. And he swam with the tide of the Kuomintang retreat, to Taiwan. His wife was as good as widowed. No, worse. She was a Kuomintang wife in Red China; she and her daughters were pariahs politically; and so the elder girl went into her own exile, taking off for Xinjiang, where she would wed and bear two sons, Yawei and Yapeng.
The boys’ grandpa did go home to their grandma. He flew in from Hong Kong in 1988, when cross-strait relations were warmer than ever. She even went to Taiwan with him and they had one more go at their marriage. After a couple years, however, she moved back to the mainland. It was not to be. She died and he ended up emigrating to the States.
Mr Li and his Mrs Li – née Faye Wong – have been in the States with their baby Yan and he blogs about how he has been getting to know his 92-year-old grandpa. Once Mr Li asked his grandpa whose side he would take now, the Kuomintang or the communists’. His grandpa said, “Doesn’t matter. Next week I have to go sing The Star-Spangled Banner. I’m now an American citizen.”
He hopes, however, to be buried in his homeland. (Li Yapeng’s Blog)
Friday, October 20, 2006
Monday, October 16, 2006
Prince Ah Boy
One sleepy Saturday morning, my brother Fei and I were, as always, readwatching. What I mean is he was readwatching – reading the papers while watching television – and I was sprawled on the same sofa. Miss Mashed Couch Potato. Japan’s newborn prince was on the news and I said to no one, 悠仁, 好名字叻.
悠. In only one Chinese character, you have the hopes that the boy has a leisurely, kingly life and that through him, the empire is everlasting. It’s a stately name.
Fei agreed. But being a smarter arse than me, he said, it was picked by professionals, how many manhours do you think were spent by this committee, that committee to think of one name?
Maybe. As an auntie of Prince Ah Boy – when I met him for the first time last Saturday, he was a handsome two-day-old who had a houseful of grown-ups at his beck and bawl – I have been sitting on such a committee myself, actually. I don’t get to make any decisions, as a non-executive non-blood member. What I get to do, with pleasure, is advise the executive members (his parents) on the names I have helped gather. Sometimes, I report some recommendations from the mentor (my mother).
Many months ago, I made a case for 宁 (calmness – “it’s a boy’s name, 宀 covering 丁, your roof covering your boy”).
Last week, my case was made for 斌 (refinement – “文 and 武, well-versed in arts and martial arts”).
Today, when I wake up to the haze – after the seventh month and the leap seventh month, the attack of polluted air makes this a third seventh month, if you ask me – 彬 springs to mind. Sounds the same as 斌. Refers to a gentleman just as refined. But do you see what I see, the tree, tree and stream in the Chinese character? Once, my friend S and I spoke of what we wanted for our friends’ as-yet-unborns. She said, “Luck.” She meant luck of the Woody Allen Match Point type. I said, “Fresh air? I don’t know…you know…high EQ? That he will weather whatever life casts to him?” I want him to be at ease. I want him to have the ease of a man who, even when life isn’t easy, has kept in his heart the woods and brook. 彬.
悠. In only one Chinese character, you have the hopes that the boy has a leisurely, kingly life and that through him, the empire is everlasting. It’s a stately name.
Fei agreed. But being a smarter arse than me, he said, it was picked by professionals, how many manhours do you think were spent by this committee, that committee to think of one name?
Maybe. As an auntie of Prince Ah Boy – when I met him for the first time last Saturday, he was a handsome two-day-old who had a houseful of grown-ups at his beck and bawl – I have been sitting on such a committee myself, actually. I don’t get to make any decisions, as a non-executive non-blood member. What I get to do, with pleasure, is advise the executive members (his parents) on the names I have helped gather. Sometimes, I report some recommendations from the mentor (my mother).
Many months ago, I made a case for 宁 (calmness – “it’s a boy’s name, 宀 covering 丁, your roof covering your boy”).
Last week, my case was made for 斌 (refinement – “文 and 武, well-versed in arts and martial arts”).
Today, when I wake up to the haze – after the seventh month and the leap seventh month, the attack of polluted air makes this a third seventh month, if you ask me – 彬 springs to mind. Sounds the same as 斌. Refers to a gentleman just as refined. But do you see what I see, the tree, tree and stream in the Chinese character? Once, my friend S and I spoke of what we wanted for our friends’ as-yet-unborns. She said, “Luck.” She meant luck of the Woody Allen Match Point type. I said, “Fresh air? I don’t know…you know…high EQ? That he will weather whatever life casts to him?” I want him to be at ease. I want him to have the ease of a man who, even when life isn’t easy, has kept in his heart the woods and brook. 彬.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Boy Ah Boy
At about half past five, I am typing a review of two restaurants, tingly – the SMS comes, declaring, “You’re an auntie!”
Yes I am. No more Jer Jer.
“What are you thinking?” the mother says, hours after the birth.
The father has stepped out to take the grandparents home. The son is in good hands in the ward. I am fresh – more like old – out of the office. We are alone, hand in hand, stoic mother and silly auntie.
“I am thinking you’re a mommy…and I’m an auntie.” The tears come.
Yes I am. No more Jer Jer.
“What are you thinking?” the mother says, hours after the birth.
The father has stepped out to take the grandparents home. The son is in good hands in the ward. I am fresh – more like old – out of the office. We are alone, hand in hand, stoic mother and silly auntie.
“I am thinking you’re a mommy…and I’m an auntie.” The tears come.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
THE FUNCTIONS OF FICTION | Chapter Eight
“I’m not very smart.” That’s Sugar’s sad-funny refrain in Some Like It Hot, the manic masterpiece, my favourite 50s film which I watched on the big screen for the first time at The Picturehouse the other day. Sugar, played by the one and only boop-boop-de-boop Marilyn Monroe, is a singer who keeps falling for no-good sax players, who love her then leave her with no more than “a pair of old socks and a tube of toothpaste, all squeezed out”. She just can’t help it. So to stay out of harm’s way, she runs off with an all-girl jazz orchestra. To Miami. Where she may meet a Shell Oil millionaire and marry money.
Well she doesn’t. She meets Joe (Tony Curtis), a sax player who dolls up as Josephine to get a job with the orchestra then masquerades as a shell-collecting millionaire to woo her. She’s “not very smart”. That’s why she falls for Shell Oil Junior, not finding it fishy when he says of water polo, “I had two ponies drowned under me.” When she finds out he is a sax player, a no-good one, she falls harder for him. “Not very smart,” she laughs – it isn’t a happy laugh. Conscience-stricken, he tries to tell her he is no better than all her previous sax players.
“That’s right. Pour it on. Talk me out of it,” she purrs. Tremulously.
It amazes me, how I hear Monroe’s smile and tears as she is saying this. Sugar is drunk and drowning, she knows it. She knows romance promises nothing but itself. Happiness? She might as well fish for the moon in a river. For a very insane farce, Some Like It Hot is very sane on the subject of romance. It’s very smart.
Well she doesn’t. She meets Joe (Tony Curtis), a sax player who dolls up as Josephine to get a job with the orchestra then masquerades as a shell-collecting millionaire to woo her. She’s “not very smart”. That’s why she falls for Shell Oil Junior, not finding it fishy when he says of water polo, “I had two ponies drowned under me.” When she finds out he is a sax player, a no-good one, she falls harder for him. “Not very smart,” she laughs – it isn’t a happy laugh. Conscience-stricken, he tries to tell her he is no better than all her previous sax players.
“That’s right. Pour it on. Talk me out of it,” she purrs. Tremulously.
It amazes me, how I hear Monroe’s smile and tears as she is saying this. Sugar is drunk and drowning, she knows it. She knows romance promises nothing but itself. Happiness? She might as well fish for the moon in a river. For a very insane farce, Some Like It Hot is very sane on the subject of romance. It’s very smart.
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