Last Semester's Scholarship Essay

Last semester I entered a Chinese essay-writing contest at school in the hopes of winning a scholarship from the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Organization in Los Angeles. I was disqualified for being too close to a native speaker, but I did get recognized as the best non-native Chinese speaker in the department. I got a nice little honorable mention certificate, too. After last week's post, I thought you might like to see what I wrote. I did translate the Chinese for my English readers. So I am posting both. Please excuse the English if it's awkward, there are some concepts that do not translate exactly. The topic was given to us by TECO.

我在台灣的經歷

My Experiences in Taiwan

1982年8月23日當我在台灣第一次下了飛機, 我做夢也想不到台灣對我的人生會有多大的影響, 也不知道我的生活因着台灣會有多少改變。

When I first stepped off the plane in Taiwan on August 23, 1986, I never dreamed how much influence Taiwan would have on my life. I never knew how much Taiwan would change me.

那年我才二十一歲, 大學剛剛畢了業, 到台灣去學中文, 準備一兩年後, 回美國擔任翻譯工作. 真沒想到學習中文是無窮盡的, 要學得徹底, 一兩年的功夫根本不夠. 也沒想到我在台灣會找到歸宿成家, 而等到八年後回美時, 那個單槍匹馬闖台灣的美國小姐, 已經是帶兒攜眷的中國媳婦了.

That year I was twenty-one years old. I had just graduated from university, and I came to Taiwan to study Chinese. I thought that after one or two years, I would return to America to begin working as a translator. It never occurred to me that the study of Chinese is boundless, and if I wanted to learn it well, one or two years would not be enough. I never imagined that I would find a home and a family in Taiwan or that after eight long years, the single woman who arrived alone in Taiwan would return to the US as a Chinese daughter-in-law with a husband and children.

在1982年, 台灣大不如今天那麼繁榮. 那時候, 台灣的經濟奇蹟才剛開始, 美國商店如麥當勞, 7-11等公司, 尚未在台營業. 台灣居民所過的生活跟美國人的比, 實在辛苦得多. 我剛到台灣要學會用洗衣板洗衣服. 要學會去菜市場買菜. 要學會以飯為主食, 減少每天吃的肉量. 還要學會睡硬板床鋪蓆子. 我住的地方是中國人的家庭, 他們不大會說英文, 而我只會用華語說: “謝謝, 再見,” 所以前幾個月感覺非常不方便.

In 1982, Taiwan was not as developed as it is now. In those days, Taiwan’s economic miracle was just beginning. American companies like McDonald’s and 7-11 had not yet started doing business in Taiwan. The lifestyle of the Taiwanese people when compared with that of Americans was much more difficult. When I first arrived in Taiwan, I had to learn to wash my clothes on a washboard. I had to learn to buy food at a market. I had to learn to eat rice as the staple of my diet and decrease my meat intake. And I had to learn to sleep on a board bed with a mat on top. I lived with a Chinese family who did not speak English, and the only Chinese words that I could say were: “Thank you, good-bye.” So the first few months were very difficult.

九月一日, 我在師大國語中心開始上課. 去台灣時, 可以說我太傲慢, 不知道天高地厚, 以為我既然精通英語, 西班牙語, 德語, 又對日語, 法語, 以及拉丁文有一些認識, 所以要學深淵的中國語言文字應該沒什麼問題. 可是我這個想法大錯特錯了. 其實, 國語的四個聲調對西方人很難. 一不小心, 把媽媽說成馬了, 更糟糕的是到教會把主耶穌說成豬. 我才發現, 要把中文學好, 就需要又耐心又認真地讀下去. 我一天天用功讀書, 日積月累, 三年後, 才算是聽說讀寫全通了.

On September first I began classes at the Mandarin Training Institute at Taiwan Normal University. When I first went to Taiwan, I was a little bit proud. I did not know about the big world, and I thought that since I was fluent in English, Spanish and German and because I also knew a little Japanese, French, and Latin, I would have no problem learning the deep and ancient Chinese language. But I was really wrong about that! The truth of the matter was that the four tones in Chinese were very hard for Westerners to learn. If I wasn’t careful, I called my mother a horse, and even worse, when I went to church, I called the Lord a pig. I began to discover that if I wanted to learn Chinese well, I needed to keep on studying with patience and diligence. I worked hard at my studies every day, month after month, and after three years, I was able to comprehend, speak, read and write in Mandarin.

除了上中文課以外, 我還常常到教會的出版社, 也就是台灣福音書房, 幫忙校對聖經譯稿. 書房舉辦國際大會時, 我也開始學習做現場中英翻譯. 在書房的一次特殊工作當中, 我認識了一位台灣男孩, 名字叫劉運意. 可以說兩個人是一見鐘情. 經過一年的交往, 也獲得雙方父母的同意與祝福, 我們就在1986年12月25日在台北市地方法院結為夫妻. 我就成了台灣傳統客家人家裡的長媳婦. 那真是我人生的大改變!

In addition to attending Chinese classes, I also went to the church’s publishing company, Taiwan Gospel Bookroom, to help proofread translations of the Bible. When the Bookroom held international conferences, I began to learn how to do simultaneous interpretation of Chinese to English. While working on a special project for the Bookroom, I met a man from Taiwan named Liu Yuni. You could say that it was love at first sight. After dating for a year and obtaining the approval of both sets of parents, we got married on December 25, 1986 at the Municipal Court in Taipei. And I became the eldest daughter-in-law in a traditional Hakka family from Taiwan. That was truly a huge change in my life!

結婚後, 我從台北搬到中壢, 住進婆婆家裡. 除了公公婆婆與丈夫, 家裡還有三個未出嫁的小姑, 以及尚讀初中的小叔. 剛開始我有些不習慣, 可是全家大大小小對我很好. 我和小姑教婆婆說國語, 她們也教我聽懂客家話. 婆媳小姑常常一起做飯一起做家務, 所以覺得很輕鬆愉快. 過了一年多, 我生了一對雙胞胎女兒, 第二年又生了老三. 那時候帶三個寶寶, 要不是三代同堂, 人人合作, 真不知道會把孩子弄成什麼樣子.

After my marriage, I moved out of Taipei to Chungli and lived with my mother-in-law. In addition to my in-laws and my husband, there were three unmarried sisters-in-law and a younger brother-in-law who was still in junior high. In the beginning, it was hard for me to get used to living like that, but everyone in the family was very nice to me. My sisters-in-law and I taught my mother-in-law to speak Mandarin. My sisters-in-law also taught me how to understand Hakka. All of us women would cook together and do the household chores. It made the housework easy and fun. After a year or so, I gave birth to twin daughters, and the next year I had a third child. I do not know how I would have managed with three babies, if we had not been living in a multi-generational household in which everyone helped everyone else.

在台灣令我最難忘的地方已經不存在了, 那就是我丈夫的出生地, 在新竹縣鵝美鄉的老家. 現在政府擴寬了馬路, 原來的三合院被拆了, 大部分的人搬到都市去了. 可是我剛結婚後的那幾年, 三個親伯父幾個堂伯父和他們的兒孫, 都還住在老家那裡. 每逢過年過節以及家族的喜事喪事, 全家人都要回老家. 那個氣氛真熱鬧. 三合院中央的曬穀場上會擺十幾張桌子. 堂兄弟姐妹帶着孩子回來, 大概有一兩百人. 大家說着笑着一起吃飯. 從大門望出去往山谷下看, 都是綠油油的稻田. 過了稻田, 在對面的山坡上有茶園. 房子後面的山上有水果樹和番薯田. 伯母養的雞到處跑. 飯吃完了, 男人就到祖堂旁邊, 阿友伯的客廳閒聊打牌. 有的孩子牽着小狗到後面的山上玩, 另一群孩子到溪邊去捉淡水蝦. 女人都幫忙收食物洗碗盤. 老伯母坐在那裡指揮年輕人. 媳婦把剩菜裝起來, 分給每家帶回去. 年輕少女洗碗, 擦桌子, 掃地. 八九歲的小女孩幫忙帶嬰兒. 大家邊做邊談, 說誰家孩子考上學校, 誰家媳婦剛生小孩. 一轉眼, 事情做完了. 年輕的也出去散步了, 年級大一點的就坐下來跟伯母聊天. 我如果跟她們說話, 她們都會跟我說劉運意小時候有趣的故事. 說到最後, 大家笑得合不攏口.

The most memorable place for me in Taiwan no longer exists. It is the place where my husband was born, the old family farm in Omei Hsiang, Hsinchu County. The government widened the road, and the old three-sided farm compound was torn down. Most of its inhabitants moved into the city. But just after my marriage, all three of my husband’s uncles and several of their cousins lived in the old homestead with their children and grandchildren. On holidays and special family occasions, the entire clan would return to the old homestead. It was really a bustling scene. More than ten tables would be set up on the threshing floor in the middle of the courtyard. All the cousins would bring their children, and there were more than a hundred people. Everyone ate together, talking and laughing. If you looked out the gate into the valley, you could see the bright green rice paddies. Beyond the paddies, on the hillside across the way, there were tea farms. On the hill behind the house, there were fruit trees and sweet potato fields. The aunts’ chickens ran around everywhere. When the meal was over, the men went into Uncle You’s rooms beside the ancestral hall to play mah-jongg. Some of the children took the dogs up on the hillside to play. Other children went to the creek to catch crawdads. The women began cleaning up the dishes and food. The old aunties sat there giving orders; the daughters-in-law divided the leftovers up for people to take home. The teen-age girls washed the bowls and wiped down the tables. Some of them swept the floor. The eight or nine year old girls helped take care of the babies. Everyone talked as they worked about whose child had passed the college entrance exam or whose daughter-in-law was going to have a baby. In a short time, all the work was done. The young women went out for a walk, and some of the older ones sat down with the aunties to chat. If I spoke to the aunties, they would tell me funny stories of when Yuni was a little boy. At the end of the stories, we would all be laughing till our sides ached.

中國人這樣天倫之樂, 在美國家庭找不到. 目前在台灣和中國, 隨着時代的演變, 這種情形也漸漸沒有了. 我這麼一個美國人能成為傳統中國家庭的一份子, 又能親身經歷中國人古老的氣氛, 實在是我人生中的大幸.

This is the Chinese joy of large families, and you won’t find it here in America. Even today as Taiwan and China modernize and change, it is gradually dying out. For an American like me to become a part of a traditional Chinese family and to be able to experience the atmosphere of ancient Chinese traditions have been some of the greatest blessings of my life.

Pa Liu Shares his Dreams for the Family

The family party celebrating my mom and uncle's visit with gifts of horse-sized prenatal vitamins.















Pa and Ma Liu

















At the upper house of the Liu Family Farm with Liu Yuni's Great-aunt (last living relative of his grandfather's generation)







At the upper house of the Liu Family farm with Yuni's great-great aunt (last living relative of his great-grandparents' generation).










Taking my mom to visit the Gloria English School on my scooter.

After the family knew I was pregnant, Pa Liu began spending much time telling me about the Liu family history. He talked about his grandparents. Great-grandpa Liu had been an herbal veterinarian, and his wife had been a literate midwife and pediatrician. They had been widely respected in the community for their book-learning and skill at healing. Then the Japanese had taken over Taiwan towards the end of the Qing Dynasty as part of the "Unequal Treaties" that gave foreign powers treaty ports and concessions in China. Many Hakka, with their strong sense of tradition and connections to Chinese heritage and culture, opposed Taiwan’s annexation to Japan. They waged guerilla warfare from bases in the hills against the Japanese occupying forces.

The Liu family farm was nestled up in the hills in the north-central part of the island. Great-grandpa and great-grandma Liu sheltered guerillas and used their medical skills in support of the anti-Japanese cause. The result was that the family had been blacklisted. None of their children and grandchildren was allowed an education. Pa was the youngest boy of his generation, and I think he was even the youngest child among all his cousins. He was his grandmother’s special charge until she died when he was around ten. Great-grandmother saw to it that towards the end of the Japanese occupation, when things were a little looser and Grandpa Liu had made friends with the Japanese by paying regular and frequent bribes, Pa Liu was allowed to go to school. He went to three years of Japanese school, and then the war was over and the Chinese retook Taiwan. So Pa Liu went to fourth through sixth grade in Chinese, and had to learn to read all over again.

As she got older Great-grandmother Liu kept telling Pa that the Liu family had been a great family. They were not just peasants. They had been literate, gentlemen farmers. Since he was the only one of his generation to go to school, he needed to find a way to restore the family honor. He made a death-bed promise to his grandmother that he would find a way for his children and grandchildren to get an education.

All his children went to school through junior high, which was as far as they could go without an exam in those days. Four of his children went to high school, three of them graduating from it. And Yuni went to college, even though the family had to sacrifice a lot to keep him there. Now that Pa Liu had a college-educated daughter-in-law, he spent much time discussing the future of his unborn grandchildren. His grandchildren needed to be literate. They needed to speak Hakka, Mandarin, and English. They needed to go to college. I agreed with him on all those counts.

Then we had the problem of the names. The "came-to-Taiwan" ancestor had brought a poem or a list of generational names through Yuni’s generation. The second character of all the men in Yuni’s generation is Yun. (The first character is the family name: Liu). All the girls have the second character Hsiu. But the list stopped with Yun. Others in the family had tried to find out, but in the late 80s not many Taiwanese were able to get to the mainland, especially if they were not rich businessmen. I had friends in America and Hong Kong who made frequent trips into mainland China. So Pa and I went back to the old family farm to see if we could figure out a way to find the next generational character in the list. We found out that the family came from Mei County in Guangdong Province, from a place called Peng City. I found a friend who was going to visit that area of Guangdong, and they offered to help me look. But it was of no avail. Peng City had been destroyed long ago, and although there were several Liu families in the area, no one had the same generational character list. So we were stuck.

In the end, we decided to choose our own generational character for Yuni and Yuntian’s children. We chose the character "Yung" (pronounced yong), which means "eternal". Yuntian agreed that his kids would use that character when the time came. This search for the generational character took place over several months. By the time we knew that we would not be able to find it, we pretty much just needed to sit back and wait for the birth of the twins. We knew that one would be a girl, and we thought we would call her Yungai (Eternal Love). If the other twin was a girl, we would call her Yungjun (Eternal Truth), and if it was a boy we would call him Yunghsin (Eternal Faith). I chose some English names, and we went back to watching my stomach grow as we waited for the birth.

The Dark Underbelly of Modern Confucian-style Families

The Liu Household during my first 16 months of marriage

As I made more friends in my status of Chinese daughter-in-law, I began to learn the real situation of my female friends’ home lives. In the Chinese culture, a person is not truly considered grown up until after he or she is married. For a woman this means that prior to marriage, no married woman will discuss sex, marital problems, or any other difficulties at home with you. Once you are married, you are ushered into what can probably best be called the “suffering sisterhood.” I have to say that many marriages are happy. When I lived with the families in Taipei, they did not seem to be any more or less unhappy than solid American marriages. But when I moved out of Taipei, into a more rural setting, where most women were living with their in-laws like I was, I quickly learned that I had married into a remarkable family. Many of the tales that I heard were shocking. They were recounted to me by co-workers, relatives, and friends. As I repeat them, I am not going to mention the sources of the stories because they were told in the confidence of the women’s circles in the kitchens at family dinners or in the teachers’ lounges or over lunch or tea with friends. These stories were never meant for general consumption and certainly were not to be told in front of men.

A common theme was male infidelity. China did not make concubinage illegal until after 1949, so men in the 1980s frequently felt entitled to the enjoyment of more than one woman. Although they were limited to one legal wife, men with enough money often set up a concubine in a nearby house and supported two households. A man who could afford this kind of arrangement was thought to have “great face.” Men expected that according to the rules of concubinage under the imperial laws, their main wives should allow any children born to the concubines to be registered as legitimate on the man’s household register as adopted children of the main wife. Many of my friends and relatives in this kind of situation got into huge fights with their husbands and in-laws for insisting on adhering to modern law and refusing to register the concubine’s kids. Of course, the real victims of these struggles were the concubine’s children because they would have to take their mothers’ surnames and be registered without a father. They would be looked down on at school and would suffer teasing and bullying for being illegitimate. A few of my friends eventually gave in and let their husbands register children born outside the home, mainly because they felt sorry for the children. This kind of problem was particularly common among women who had failed to produce one or more sons to carry on the family lineage. When it was a matter of carrying on the family name, the parents-in-law would usually support their son in having an outside woman because according to Confucian logic, the greatest sin is dying without a son to carry on your line.

Another common problem was an over-demanding mother-in-law or a mother-in-law who was so tied to her son that she could not bear to see him married to another woman. I had one friend whose mother-in-law drove her out of the house with a broom every month or so because she got jealous of the time her son was spending with his wife and child. Other women had problems with mothers-in-law who would insist on taking most of the month’s grocery money to the mah-jongg tables and losing the household’s food allowance. The daughter-in-law was expected to obey the mother-in-law and frequently could not come out and directly say that there was no meat for dinner because Mama had lost the money gambling. Mama would often blame the poor meals on the daughter-in-law, and it wasn’t until the gambling addiction went beyond grocery money and Mama was asking all her sons and her husband for money every couple of days that the truth would come out. Until the men discovered the truth for themselves, the daughter-in-law was in a very tight spot because she seemed to be wasting family resources, but if she openly blamed her mother-in-law, her husband and father-in-law would be obligated to take Mama’s side against her.

Another problem was wife beating. Most business deals were made over banquets in which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. The men would come home drunk, and if the woman looked at her husband the wrong way, she could be brutally beaten. There were laws on the books against wife beating, but most people did not use the court system. There was a distrust of the government and a lack of faith in the legal system. Plus the woman needed her own money to hire a lawyer. What usually happened after a particularly brutal beating was that the wife would have her own parents and brothers pick her up at the hospital emergency room. She would go home to recuperate, and her father and brothers would renegotiate the terms for her continued presence in her married family. I do not know what the divorce laws are like now, but in those days, a woman who got divorced walked away with her jewelry and clothing. The children stayed with their father’s family to carry on the family line. Many of my friends would have left their husbands in a heartbeat, regardless of the money, but they did not want to be cut off from their children, and they were afraid that the children might be harmed by vindictive grandmothers or step-mothers in the absence of their birth mother.

The harmony of a multi-generational household depended a lot on the father-in-law. If the father-in-law was reasonable and kept the mother-in-law from abusing her position, life was usually pretty good for the daughters-in-law. If the father-in-law was dead or hen-pecked, the mothers-in-law could terrorize anyone they chose. Some mothers-in-law recognized the need for family harmony and did their best to create harmony among all the women in the home. Many were bitter about what they had suffered as young women and decided that their daughters-in-law presented the opportunity for them to get their revenge. When a mother-in-law was a bully, the siblings of the husband would frequently join their mother in persecuting the poor wife. Sometimes the siblings would even steal anything of value that was not hidden and locked away.

In the 1980s there was not much the women could do. They would get together in the sisterhood at work or among their natal relatives and air their grievances. Women would share stories of tricks for keeping husbands faithful or gaining the respect of parents-in-law. One of my favorite stories was about the woman who shadowed her husband to his trysting place with his mistress, waited until both had removed their pants, and then rushed in and began spanking them with a bamboo carrying pole. Word got around that the wife was not someone to be trifled with, and her husband was unable to ever find another mistress.

I think a large part of the problem was the rapid change in societal customs and values with modernization and the influence of Western movies and television. For thousands of years, China was an agrarian society with nearly self-sufficient household units. Confucianism set up the parameters for household members to know their place in the household and what they should do to contribute to the survival of the family. Individual achievement was not as important as the family. With the advent of industrialization and the introduction of Western values, the individual became important, but no one knew how to be an individual. The old rules don’t work, and the translation of Western values has come through skewed. Being an individual has come to mean being selfish. When everyone in the household just thinks of himself or herself, the whole Confucian system breaks down. I was fortunate that my in-laws had such a high level of traditional integrity and sensibility. I don’t know what I would have done with some of the mothers-in-law of women that I knew. They were truly living in a nightmare.

Diagnosis: "You Have Joy"

In April the unit commanders took their English test, and my regular Wednesday night English lessons ended. The base was still on high alert, and all leaves were cancelled. One afternoon in May, Liu Yuni came home while his unit was watching a movie. I was back from Taipei and getting ready to go teach at the Gloria English School. We all sat and talked in the living room, and then I hopped on my red scooter and headed off for class. When I got back, Liu Yuni was still home. I was surprised because when he had movie leave, he was supposed to return before the unit headed back to the base from the theater. He said that he was tired of not being able to see his family, and he was planning to go AWOL. He wanted me to get on a midnight bus with him and head to the South of the island. My parents-in-law and I told him that it would be foolish for us to flee together because I was such a noticeable target. We suggested that he return to the base. Finally, we all went to bed. I suspect my father-in-law called the base and spoke to a commander, but I will never know for sure. In any event, Pa Liu was not terribly surprised when early the next morning, Yuni’s Company Counselor (something like a chaplain/psychologist) and his Unit Commander showed up on our doorstep before breakfast. We all finally convinced Yuni that it would be better for him to return with them to base with no consequences besides extra KP duty, than to let them go back alone and have to send the MPs after him. They also told him that the commanders had already received word from the high brass that the state of emergency would soon be ending and that all military personnel would be given make-up leave for the preceding months. The officers said they could not guarantee that Yuni would get an entire week of leave at one time, but he would have several three-day weekends over the next few months. With that assurance, the three of them drove back to base.

The commanders had not been lying; in June the state of emergency was cancelled, and all personnel began to have leave again. For the next few months, Liu Yuni got three days at stretch every other week. He would come home and sleep for the first 24 to 36 hours, but then he would still have two days when he was well-rested and could interact with the family. He was in a Guard Company, and they had to stand watch for two hours at a time 24 hours a day. He is not a person who does well on interrupted sleep. It took him more than ten years after his tour of duty was over to recover from that kind of a schedule.

I began my all-day teaching schedule in July when school let out. (Taiwanese schools usually started their summer vacation on July 1.) Life was good. I had a great job. I enjoyed being with the family. I was seeing my husband several times a month. I had lots of new friends among the teachers. I enjoyed my students. And then, I started getting this horrible lower back ache and my arms and chest began to ache. I didn’t throw up, but I was definitely queasy, and I kept burping at the most inopportune times. I told one of my TAs, who was older and married. She said it sounded like I was pregnant. I grabbed a calendar and counted off days, and sure enough, that was a strong possibility.

My friend suggested that I get my mother-in-law or sisters-in-law to take me to the doctor. I really did not want to do that. After the brouhaha with the aunties and the family’s reaction to my vomiting after eating food cooked in pork lard (they had the nearest sister-in-law take me to the clinic immediately for a pregnancy test), I was afraid that if this was a false alarm I was in for more lectures about how terrible it was for a woman to be infertile. Finally, my friend offered to come spend the night with me and go with me to the clinic early in the morning before our first class. We made the appointment and got our number the evening before on our way back to my house. Then very early the next morning, we went to the clinic and I peed in a cup. Several minutes later, the doctor came back into the examining room and told me: “You have joy.” That is the literal translation of the Chinese euphemism for “You are pregnant.” He figured that I was about 6 weeks pregnant.

My friend and I went on to class, and I continued with my life as usual. I decided to wait for Joshua’s next leave and tell the family all together. Needless to say, they were quite excited. These would be the first “inner” grandchildren for my parents-in-law. (“Inner grandchildren” have the same last name and carry on the family line.) Then after getting everyone so excited, I started bleeding the very next week. I took a day off school and went back to the doctor’s. He did an ultra-sound to see what was wrong, and he discovered not one, but two pulsating blobs with heart-beats. I was not only pregnant I was making up for lost time and was going to have twins. The local doctor suggested that I transfer my file to a major hospital because twins were considered a “high-risk” pregnancy. So the following week, my in-laws took me to the Chang Geng Memorial Hospital for my first official pre-natal exam. The doctors there pronounced me healthy, and the excitement in the home was palpable. My mother and uncle from the States made arrangements to come visit me and bring American prenatal vitamins (the kind that are big enough for horses).

And the following week “morning” sickness set in for real. But it was not just morning sickness, it was morning, noon, evening, and night sickness, and it lasted for the rest of the pregnancy. I continued teaching, but I had to develop a strategy. We had breaks on the hour, but the line for the bathrooms was quite long. So I would will myself not to vomit until 5 minutes before break time. Then I would give my students a quiz, rush out of the classroom into the nearest bathroom, empty my stomach before the bell rang, and run into the teachers’ lounge for a cup of tea to settle my nerves and stomach. The owners were quite accommodating, and they even instructed the managers to hold off on ringing the bell for break time until I was safely out of the bathroom. Later ultrasounds and exams showed that the problem was the placenta of Twin B pressing upwards on my stomach. There was nothing I could do but eat frequent, small meals; drink lots of fluids; and make sure I always had a clear path to the restroom. Aside from this one minor matter, the pregnancy went pretty smoothly. I worked up until the week before the babies were born, and for the most part, I felt wonderful. The Chinese term for “morning sickness” translates literally as “harmed by joy.” And I guess that’s a good term for it.

Book Launch

Calligraphy by the Dalai Lama for the cover of Chinese dissident poet Jiang Pinchao's latest anthology: Poems from Exile

My good friend, Chinese dissident poet Jiang Pinchao, has compiled yet another anthology of his and other dissident poets' works. This volume is entitled "Poems from Exile." It includes the work of 42 Chinese and Tibetan poets, most of whom write from exile around the world. My thesis committee chairman, Dr. Teri Shaffer Yamada (Professor of Asian literature, CSULB Asian and Asian American Studies), wrote the intro for this volume. A friend of mine, Fanyi Yang (MA in Asian Studies, 2009 CSULB), and I translated the intro into Chinese with the help of another professor in our department: Dr. Feng-ying Ming. The book launch will be held at CSULB later this month with several notable Chinese dissidents and poets in attendance. Jiang Pinchao will be there, as will 吴宏达先生、黄翔先生、傅希秋、周锋锁 (Hongda Wu, Poet Huang Xiang, Bob Fu of China Aid Association, and Fengsuo Zhou). The launch will be in Chinese and English with poetry readings of some of the poets' work in Chinese with English translation. If any of you are in southern California, you are more than welcome to attend. Fanyi and I will be emceeing and interpreting for the event. There will be light refreshments and admission is free, but parking on campus costs $4.

Event: "Poems from Exile" Book Launch

Date: October 28, 2009

Time: 5-6:30 pm

Place: California State University, Long Beach, Karl Anatol Center (AS 110)

A foretaste:

"All of the poets represented in this anthology provide an insight into the resiliency of the human spirit and the courage required to maintain artistic integrity in the face of censorship and violent repression. They represent the power of creative expression to overcome the most crushing obstacles and the determination to make our world a better place. We are blessed by their presence and poetry. " ---Teri Shaffer Yamada, "Introduction to Poems from Exile"

"本詩集的所有詩人，都讓我們看出人心靈的適應力，以及他們面臨審查和暴力壓制時為保有其藝術創作而產生的勇氣。他們證明了創造性的表達有能力克服最壓迫人的障礙，也讓我們看見他們要改善世界的堅定決心。我們因他們的存在與詩歌受到心靈上的恩惠。" --Teresa Zimmerman-Liu 與 楊凡儀 譯

PS I will resume posting my memoirs on Sunday, October 4, 2009. The title of the next post is "You Have Joy."

Happy Birthday PRC!

Today is the 60th birthday of the People's Republic of China, and in its honor I am printing a fourth poem by Chinese dissident poet Jiang Pingchao from his Chinese poetry anthology June Fourth Poems. He included my English translation of this poem in his June Fourth Tiananmen Masscre 20th Anniversary Memorial booklet that was published April 13, 2009. The English editing was done by my cousin Brian E. Hansen, to whom I am very grateful.

This poem is in some ways the most shocking because it reflects the terrible effects that Jiang's imprisonment had on the rest of his family. I have been going back and forth about posting it, but when I got up this morning and read in the New York Times online that our own US government is working on legislation to curb the rights of investigative reporters to keep their sources confidential, and after all our own human rights abuses and torturing, albeit on foreign soil, I decided that the message of this poem is too crucial to hide. We run the risk of losing our traditional freedoms, if we do not face the unpleasantness of what is happening in the world around us. We need to see it; we need to consider it; and we need to take a stand against all callousness, brutality, torture, and insensitivity to our fellow human beings.

I am also posting the Chinese version for my readers who like to practice their Chinese.

Tiananmen Aftershocks
By Jiang Pinchao

I fell into fog in the summer of 1991
thinking in my prison cell of
China and my little sister—
hanged by her own hand in the house where we grew up.
Her eyes and tongue protruded,
blood, urine, excrement dripped from her corpse for a week.
No one noticed, no one heard her sighs for me,
no one saw my tears, I could not go home to mourn for her.

That same ghastly summer, the blades
on the plastic toy machine mangled my finger.
My elder sister waited outside the prison thinking of me
not knowing that my chopped finger
gave the warden an excuse to prohibit visitation, a joy
denied my first two years in Hanyang.
My broken-off finger kept bleeding,
the prison doctors operated without anesthesia
but my finger could not be sewn back on,
I yelped like a dog in the prison operating room.

In my summer of anguish, my elder sister could not visit me.
She stayed with a farm family outside the prison and was
a stranger in the wilderness,
thinking of me. Long-serving felons freely
passed in and out of prison because they were
the government’s model prisoners,
thinking of my sister.

In the summer of 1991
my finger broke off
and I was thinking of China
but China was not thinking of me.
My finger was broken off
and I was broken off from people I loved.
Los Angeles, 11/18/2002

漢陽監獄的那座吹塑車間裡我不知道我的斷指還有沒有在想着中國

1991年夏天，我是坠在关于中国的云雾里

我在想着中国，年轻的妹妹上吊了

在我们一同长大的家中，她想着关于我

她的尸首瞪圆眼吐出长长的舌头

尸水一星期在房间里滴，没有人注意

没有人听到她断气时因我绝望的最后一声叹息

我在监狱流泪，不能回去哭

1991年夏天，是我进监两年第一次允许被接见

吹塑机的割刀，想到了我的手指

姐姐在狱外想着关于我

她不知道割刀，给了政府我仍不可以被探监的理由

我的手指断着，太不雅观

我的手指断着，血流不止

狱医的手术不用麻药我在手术室里象狗一样尖嚎

1991年夏天，我的手指

没法缝合，姐姐不能看我

我的手指没法缝合 姐姐在监狱外的农舍求宿

她在陌生的郊野里，想着我

几个被囚数年的歹徒，狱内狱外

自由出入，是政府授予的模范囚犯想着她

1991年夏天 我的手指断着

我想着中国

中国没有想到我

我断着手指

断掉了我连心连肉的亲人

汉阳监狱的那座吹塑车间里

我的手指断着我不知道我的断指

还会不会在那里，在如我从前

想着中国

2002/11/8洛杉矶