Steamed Fish and Vegetable Buns Let’s start with a morbid fact. In David and Goliath, author Malcolm Gladwell writes about how sometimes, disadvantages can become advantages and drive people towards success. In one instance, he uses statistical data about famous people compiled by Marvin Eisenstadt, a psychologist in the 1960s: “Of the 573 [noteworthy] people for whom Eisenstadt could find reliable biographical information, a quarter had lost at least one parent before the age of ten. By age fifteen, 34.5 percent had had at least one parent die, and by the age of twenty, 45 percent” (Gladwell 141). It seems very counterintuitive that parental death could be correlated with success, but it depends on how you look at death. One of these eminent people was Sonya Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court in history. Her father died when she was nine years old. In an NPR article, Robert Krulwich writes, “For her, [her father’s death] was a turning point. Without a father, with a mother numb from grief, she writes, ‘the only way I’d survive was to do it myself ’” (Krulwich). My grandfather, Tsai Xianfu (Tsoi Hinfuk), had a similar mindset to Sotomayor. He, too, lost his parents very early on and endured considerable hardship. He was very poor and because of his family history, he was denounced and criticized throughout the Cultural Revolution. However, through a great deal of hard work, perseverance, and adaptability, he was able to fight towards a better life for himself and his family. Xianfu was born in the town of Chaoyang, within the city of Chaozhou (Teochew) in October 1933, the third of four children. His mother passed away after the fourth. His father owned some land in this town, so his family was relatively well off. If there wasn’t a revolution happening in China, my grandpa would have been very lucky. However, when he was around ten years old, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was gaining control. His father, a landowner in Chaoyang, was considered to be part of the “black class”:the lowest of the low in the eyes of the CCP. Because of the violent persecution against landowners at the time, his father fled to Hong Kong and left him behind. He couldn’t go to Hong Kong because he was not yet old enough to work and support the family, but he was old enough to survive–he would have been extra baggage. During this time, he had no money. Sometimes, his uncle would support him, but he still could not afford to eat enough or dress himself, and he had to quit secondary school because he could not afford the tuition. He even
by Victoria Lam
contracted jaundice because he was so weak and underfed. For a short while after that, he went to a tuition-free vocational fishing school, or a “seafood school,” as my grandma called it. Soon, he found an opportunity to live without worrying about money; he applied for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for the promise of getting free food and lodging. He was desperate to get in. Because he was so underweight, he sneaked stones into his pockets so he could pass the entry requirements. He considered his time in the PLA to be the best part of his life. He was assigned to the health services unit, where he was able to continue his studies. He had friends to talk to, and he could go see concerts and ball games in his spare time. Because he no longer had to worry about food, he gained a lot of weight. His friends started to call him cai bao zi, or “vegetable bun,” because his last name sounds like the word for vegetable and he was round like a bun. Then, the PLA sent him to a naval academy in Sichuan. Meanwhile, the politics within the Communist Party was heating up, and they shut down the naval academy and removed the academy’s head from the CCP. On top of that, because my grandfather’s family was doing
My grandpa when he was in the PLA