Grandma Leung:
There is so much I don't know about my grandmother; I don't even really know her name (though it might be Ping, if I caught something she said around Thanksgiving time). This missing knowledge chiefly comes from our generational difference and a very pronounced language barrier: her English is extremely limited, and my Cantonese is poor at best. I posted years back about this very situation, and my dad's urging to listen to her stories.
Since then, my grandma has become a lot more open about her experiences during the war, and in car rides and in simple talks at the dinner table she's told me a lot. My dad has asked her a lot too, and has been slowly collecting her stories in Chinese - in a way, my telling my dad about my annual Remembrance Day posts has actually given him an interest in writing history as well. Well, my mom had initially been a bit hesitant about the way my dad was urging my grandmother - his mother - to talk about such hard times. Today, she's more comfortable with it all, and I think is more happy that I'm spending more time talking with my grandma than anything else.
So here comes the rub: though she is telling me all these life stories, my Cantonese has only gotten so much better. Of all the pieces of her life in 1940s China, I'm perhaps getting about half of the picture - most likely, I'm barely getting a third of it all. I've no dates, no specific locations, and no true chronologies.
What I do have, however, are pieces. And these are pieces I want to share...
My grandma once during a drive quite plainly stated, "The Japanese killed a lot of people back then."
She mentioned Japanese soldiers slashing men from side to navel.
Stories of men forced to drink excessive amounts of water until their stomachs bloated... and then jumped upon, bursting their insides.
She mentioned one of the saddest things she ever witnessed was seeing one of her classmates from school bound, sitting in the back of a truck, transported away to a likely fate as a Japanese "comfort woman"...
She mentioned how her family buried all their money and valuables in the floor under their house before evacuating, and how all that money is still there except the family is having a hard time getting that house back (when I was in China with my dad, he actually pointed out the house when we walked past it - it was essentially a warehouse for squatters now).
She mentioned the escape westward into the Chinese interior, and of river crossings overseen by a woman with one eye and two pistols - a Mauser C96 (I deduced) and a revolver of some sort. Crossings that required refugees to be so silent lest the Japanese hear them and kill them, that if a mother's baby started to cry, she would be forced to smother the infant to death for the sake of everyone else...
...I feel as though I'm doing such a disservice to her by not remembering anything else right now... actually, as she told me these things, now and then my mom would either be in the kitchen or walking through, and at those points she would chime in with quick translations for me so I could better understand my grandmother's story. Yet still, again, here I am forgetting so many other parts...
...there's still hope, though. She knows I'll listen, and she also knows that my dad wants me to listen. Our current plan of practicality is that she'll tell my dad her story and let him write it down. From there, he would then translate the story for me so I can write it down in English. My only hope is that we don't waste too much time in doing so...
Let's face it. My grandma is old. She's still incredibly sharp of mind (which actually amazes me sometimes) and she's still extremely talented in her craft (and is also extremely pleased that I'm sort of taking it up as a hobby myself). Still, it doesn't take much before she's full from eating, and she takes stairs slowly, a step at a time. I don't want her story to go untold.
In fact, that's actually another aspect to my grandma's story.
That same night last week when she was telling me all this stuff, she also mentioned "how funny it is that westerners really want to hear about this stuff from her now." I could only explain that in school you learn about what Canadians did in the war, what other big powers did in the war, and that was about it - in school, you learn very, very little about the Chinese. Heck, it took me ages before I started accepting that a very real war was already on in 1937.
I had to know. "Grandma," I said to her, "it's really good that you're comfortable with talking about this kind of stuff, because a lot of people might find it hard to talk about such difficult times..."
"Of course it's okay!" She said back, quite forcefully, actually. "Why shouldn't I talk about it? What good would it be to not talk about it?" I could only smile, really.
She actually went on to tell me about an older fellow she knew, either here in Canada or over in Hong Kong or somewhere else. She mentioned how often he would try to talk about his experiences during the war; more specifically, she mentioned how the man's son would always cut him off, telling him "not to talk about that stuff." Actually, I think it may have been during a conversation with this man where the "human water balloon" incidents may have come up. She told me someone else chimed up skeptically, feeling there was "no way that could have actually happened." My grandma was there to corroborate the incident.
As I said, I've full intention to one day learn the whole story, and to one day write it all out. My grandma really wants me to as well, so really, how can I not? Every year I scour the internet looking for quick notes and interesting stories to tell.
Oh boy, do I have stories I need to tell...
...now think about it. This is just my grandmother. She is one of millions of grandparents in the world today. Quite clearly, she is not the only one with stories.
If you have never asked and still have the opportunity, ask your own grandparents. They may not be veterans and may never have taken up arms against the Axis - my grandma surely never did - but they lived through it as well in one form or another. A day may come when you won't have that chance again.
My grandma is actually flying back to Calgary today. She intends to bring me a couple pair of trousers she had hemmed up and repaired while I'm at work. She'll likely be off to the airport after that. It'll likely be a quick drop-off and a hug and a wish for a safe trip.
With the language barrier, I really don't know if I'll be able to tell her about everything I shared here today, or if I'll know how to thank her for telling me all these things. I'll try, but we'll have to see.
Beyond that, it's 1:45am right now, and I've been writing for almost two hours now. I'll be extremely disappointed in myself if I sleep in past 11am, so I'd best be off now.
So in case I need to remind myself later... Grandma, thanks for telling me your stories - I promise I'll get to know them all.
For everyone else, I again say what I always say every year: the men and women of our countries gave their all so that we could have our freedom of expression, of peace, and of equality. Some were bomber pilots and resistance members; some were spies and saboteurs. For the stories I told this year, they were born with exotic surnames bu considered themselves wholly Canadian, and by war's end were treated as such that people like myself now get to have freely. Many paid the ultimate sacrifice to give us these things.
The least we can do is offer back a couple minutes of thought.
In honour of the Veterans, in memory of the Armistice... in Remembrance.
Always remember.
