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 in 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

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.

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 another 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. Heaven also played a little joke on

you—a head injury that would have turned out to be deadly if it had not been for your

cousin and teacher.

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.

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

utilizing your whole being is the first step toward creating unique art. In that unique

confidence, I realize I have a little "Dad" in me after all.