Dad and Me

While you will find much more about Mom in the later chapters of this book, I want to tell

you about Dad. He died in a car accident on October 24th , 1984, just three months after I

started my first job. The accident was covered in the local newspaper. A couple of

months earlier, he had visited my former professors after the college decided to keep

me on as an English teaching assistant. He wanted to ensure that nothing unexpected

would jeopardize my future. In a society that valued strong social connections over

individual achievement, I first learned excellence alone could not guarantee success.

Dad blipped through our lives like a firefly—brilliant, fleeting, and seasonal. Every time

he returned home, he engaged us in something out of the ordinary. During my

elementary school years, he had me bring a stool to the yard to hear him recount the

legend from Outlaws of the Marsh, where Wu Song fought and killed a tiger with his

bare hands; then, he made me retell the story back to him. Another time, he had my

brother and me set up a home library, filling a bookcase with picture books and novels.

He took photos of us and the neighborhood kids reading them, and days later, a story

appeared in the local newspaper about how our young pioneers’ library had brought the

community together. When I was in junior high, he was teaching us how to compose

and capture photos with his Seagull twin-lens camera and develop them in a darkroom.

He eventually left me alone in the Anning Cultural Center to develop, dry, and trim the

photos for his news articles. He also made us practice both fountain pen and brush

calligraphy, expecting us to monitor our own progress in his absence. And when my

brother took up the violin, Dad was there too whenever possible, teaching him how to

decode the musical staff.

Once, when I was still in junior high and my brother in senior high, our school organized

a military march. We carried our own rations, large rice dumplings steamed in weaved

coconut leaves and a green, turtle-shaped thermos, as we trekked in double files for

many kilometers toward a methane-powered village. Along the way, we practiced

“attacking” a hilltop fortress, using firecrackers in a tin bucket to mimic the crackle of

enemy gunfire.

That night, the entire school and all the villagers gathered before an outdoor stage to

watch a play that was, to my surprise, written, cast, and directed by Dad. The

performance showcased a “capitalist roader” who ended up falling into a cesspool

before being lectured by two “advanced-thinking” girls on the dangers of his ways. The

play was full of unexpected twists, suspense, and a sharp, biting humor that triggered

raptures of laughter and applause.

I felt connected to Dad through the media, the stage, and word of mouth, rather than

through time spent together. To me, he was more of a “virtual influencer” than a Dad in

reality.

During the same period, it became apparent there were consequential holes in Dad’s

parenting. On one of his rare visits to the family, he summoned my brother and me to

the open space between our dormitory home and the kitchen. “Dad will reward either of

you ten yuan if your semester average is above ninety, and five yuan for above eighty,”

he promised believing this would be a winning strategy for all. My brother and I received

our report cards on the same day when school ended. My average across all

subjects—Chinese, English, math, physics, chemistry, history, PE, and labor—nearly hit

a perfect one hundred, and I was even elected a “Three-Good Student.” My brother,

however, chose to perform a few Houdini tricks on his grades. With a stroke of magic

under the gaze of the neighbors, he changed a thirty-five to an eighty-five in math

among a few other grades. When he presented the forgery, Dad’s face exhibited a hint

of skepticism but he couldn't prove any foul play, then doled out a ten-yuan Renminbi

note, much to my brother's unearned gloat.

***

Born in the 1930s, Dad had been an overachiever as a pupil and skipped a few grades

growing up. As with many of his professional pursuits, he became a prominent self-

taught lawyer in Hainam shortly after the Cultural Revolution, a time when China was

urgently building a formal legal system from the ground up. Working as a defense

lawyer, he built a reputation for successfully representing clients in high-stakes cases

and significant property disputes.

However, during my high school years, I started noticing gaps in his education. Just to

give one example: when he took me on a work trip as a lawyer to a southeastern

county, the family involved in a property dispute with his neighbor brought a land deed

from Minguo (the Republic of China) era to the inn where we were staying, but Dad

appeared confused as he tried translating the Minguo calendar year to the modern

calendar equivalent.

Despite the flaws, his reputation grew until he became one of the island’s go-to lawyers

for his articulateness, rhetoric skills, and rigorous inquiry. My classmates and I once

stumbled upon a trial held in the open air at the Old Society's county government

compound. I overheard Dad presenting his defense: "If this were construed as a

criminal act, then anyone conducting normal business activities should be sentenced to

imprisonment." I was particularly impressed by his composure and later learned of the

acquittal, though those who told me seemed flabbergasted by the outcome. If Dad were

a generation younger, he would have been a prime target in the 709 Crackdown on

lawyers (July 9th, 2015) who were deemed to have provoked trouble and subverted

state power.

Dad was eventually retained by a Reservoir Bureau for a high-stakes land dispute with

a local village. It was during the consultation stage of this case, on October 24, 1984, that he died while traveling with the Bureau’s leadership in a van. The driver was trying to overtake a slow-moving tractor going up a hill where he couldn't see if there was any vehicle coming from the other side. Just before the van reached the top, a long-distance bus appeared in the oncoming lane. In a moment of panic or self-protection, the driver swerved further left to avoid a head-on collision. In doing so, the broadside impact crushed into Dad, who was sitting behind the front passenger next to the sliding door, causing severe head injuries. He was killed instantly.

We were told by the reservoir leader that Dad had originally been sitting behind the

driver before the group stopped for a meal. When they returned to the van, Dad offered

to trade seats with a young man who had been sitting by the door; Dad was agile for his

48 years and grew impatient with how slowly the young man got on and off the vehicle.

That small gesture, in fact, traded life for death.

In a sense, his personal ambition to carve out a path independent from the rigid state

system after decades of working within it led to his unusual success. But that very

success also led to his demise. The powerful irony of his life trajectory is difficult to

reconcile with the reality of our family life. While others saw an accomplished,

pioneering lawyer, his long time absence at home makes it hard for me, even now, to

simply acknowledge his “achievement” without recognizing its profound cost.

Due to his passing, the loss of our family's social status was felt immediately. On a

personal level, my departmental supervisors never showed an inkling of empathy; they

didn't even ask about my father, despite him having visited them just months earlier. Our

family also noticed a shift in Dad’s former friends and colleagues. Though he had often

hosted them as honorable guests—cooking up a storm with premium ingredients he

would never even use for us, these "uncles and aunts" began to distance themselves

just when Mom needed their connections most. It's worth noting that cooking was a

trivial matter to Dad, who only got off his high horse for important people. Most of all, we

lost access to Dad’s danwei, work unit's jeep for trips to our ancestral villages. Instead,

the three of us had to adapt to taking long-distance buses. But there was one

bittersweet change: my brother no longer had to bicker with Dad for the entire trip over

the front passenger seat to satisfy his vanity.

The afternoon he died a hundred miles away, a heavy anxiety weighed on me under a

gray sky which I couldn’t explain. I skipped basketball and my usual nightly hangout,

opting instead for an unusual campus walk with my roommate. The walk didn’t lift my

mood, so I went to bed early, around 8:00 p.m., hoping solitude within a mosquito net

could make a difference. After midnight, a panicky knock and shout against my window

by Second Uncle’s son, who was training nearby at the Party School, confirmed my

fears. I told my roommate to inform my department lingdao (leaders) of an emergency

and headed outside. In the dark waiting inside the vehicle was Big Bo, accompanied by

his third son, Jun, my old village schoolmate. “Home has a little matter,” Big Bo spoke

solemnly. I felt it must be Dad, his younger brother. Relieved by the certainty, I didn’t ask

a single question. During the trip, nobody spoke a word, but I could feel my cousin

sobbing inside him.

In the early morning light, we spotted Mom buying breakfast with her usual smile at a

vendor outside the hospital dormitory compound. “There’s Third Aunt,” Big Bo and my

cousin uttered as our vehicle drove by. The driver pulled over and we all got out.

Looking around, Mom asked, “Funny what are you guys doing here so early?” Big Bo

answered gently, “There’s a matter we need to talk about at home.” I watched Mom

carefully, wondering how she could be so oblivious. Not long after I had secured my

college teaching job, she had casually dropped a bombshell: “Let’s just call it quits and

divorce.” I totally understood her. Now, Dad’s sudden death would solve that potentially

messy problem once and for all. I stared at her, wondering what her reaction would be

once she was given the news.

Big Bo sat himself next to Mom in our living area while she glanced around curiously. I

took a seat across from them, watching her closely. The moment Big Bo officially

delivered the news, my cousin standing behind me started howling, as if he had finally

been given permission to explode; for years Dad had carefully groomed his nephew,

transforming him from a country boy into a government cadre. At the same time

devastation washed over Mom’s face. “What are we supposed to do now?” she burst

into tears. In her weak voice, Mom recounted incidents what showed how brilliant a man

Dad had been in front of the people who had gathered to offer their condolences.

Dad’s body had been transported to the hospital's taipingjian, peaceful hall, which sat

next to a sandy back road between a small pond and a vast crop field. It was decided

that we needed to prepare his body properly for the journey back to his laojia, native

home—fallen leaves return to roots. I said, “Mom, Elder Brother and I will do it, but you

need to take your medication before the final viewing.” Her blood pressure reading

could sometimes spike over 200. After watching her swallow the tablets, my brother and

I began walking toward the morgue, him shadowing me closely at my four o’clock

position In the distance, hundreds of onlookers crowded together. Before we turned left

towards the dreadful-looking brick structure with its miniature pitched roof, its yellowish

paint peeling away to expose the underneath white plaster, the assembly surged ahead

of us to position itself at the curve like one inseparable blob, finally halting about 50

meters away. The tiny room had witnessed countless families coming to collect the

bodies of loved ones claimed by disease or injury.

Dad lay inside on a narrow concrete bed with his feet near the entry, his sharp, upturned

nose was visible beyond the cloth covering his body—the last symbol of his pride and

confidence, soon to vanish with the rest of his flesh. His temple had been thrust open,

the large wound obscured by brain matter and bodily fluids, with fresh blood having

surged from his ears and nostrils. Less than a month earlier, during Guoqing Jie, the

National Day holiday, this man stood up for me for the first and only time in my life

against my brother’s verbal abuse, stating, “Being human requires respecting others.”

He probably never knew how much those words meant to me. Now, this was my

moment to honor him, a mostly absent parent, in the best way I knew how.

I placed the olive-green, insignia-free military uniform and cap on the side table, then

pulled the sheet away from Dad's body. “We need to clean Dad up before dressing him,”

I told my brother, who appeared hesitant as if his hands were tied. I wiped away the

stains, moving with the slow reverence of a ritual; his skin as white and smooth as it

was cold, like the concrete bed. We finally managed to ease Dad into the uniform. The

cap did its job, completely concealing the gaping wound. I still don't understand why

they chose this outfit; Mom had been a military hospital nurse when they met, but Dad

was never a soldier himself.

A close family friend later told me that during those moments, I was the one acting like

the elder brother. In truth, I felt connected to Dad on a deep intellectual and spiritual

level through the few interactions we shared, a connection attested by the deep

sadness I felt in his last few seconds across a large space. The scarcity of his presence

only made his impact more concentrated. In that moment, my desire to honor him

overrode any fear of handling his corpse, and fulfilling this final duty became the natural

completion of our silent bond.

Now in 2026, there’s a café 40 minutes from our home that my spouse and I frequent

where the restroom code is 1024, and I totally buy into Carl Jung’s theory of

synchronicity.

***

My subconscious drive to understand myself has persisted for decades. I recently took

an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) test and scored an overall 6.75 out of 7, which places

me in the “Orchid” group—roughly 15-20% of the population. I don’t know scientifically

what has caused my high sensitivity, but I presume I had been the fly on the wall for too

long and often fallen victim to the egoistic family dynamics and Mom's overly

conciliatory tendency. The fact that I am highly alert to my environments explains why I

can pick up nuances and connect dots that may elude many people. This finding has

helped me feel at ease with how I observe and think, which is extraordinarily

empowering.

I began making art as a hobby in 2018, in my fifties, working first with graphite,

charcoal, and ink before moving into watercolor and acrylic. By studying the lives of

artists like Da Vinci, Rodin, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Eakins, Hopper, and Zao Wou-Ki, I

gained insight into the “why” and “how” behind their creations. I also find their “misfit”

mindsets relatable and it has emboldened me to capture flashes of my inner voice and

project them into an image, reaching beyond mere technicality.

Recently, I have rekindled my Chinese calligraphy roots thanks to Dad, who also used

this art form to express his inner self though my intrinsicness might be quite different

from his, applying Taoist principles to my characters—the deep contemplation that

precedes execution, the movement of Chi, and the economy of effort. Accepting and

integrating your whole being is the first step toward creating unique art: to accept your

imperfections, to embrace your personal history and culture, and to align your body and

soul. In that unique confidence, I realize I have a little "Dad" in me after all.