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
Party. However, even though he was treated very poorly, he didn’t necessarily disagree with the CCP’s philosophy. When my mom and I asked my grandmother whether or not he believed the philosophy, she said, “At that time, he believed it. I did too, because they constantly brainwashed us. We really believed it.” He didn’t disagree with the Communist Party because he couldn’t. With his peers constantly criticizing him and the Party constantly inundating his brain with propaganda, he had to believe them. Out of all the suffering the CCP put my grandpa through, brainwashing him, making him feel like his suffering was for the good of the country was likely the most unjust. His difficult circumstances could not stop him, though. He was constantly learning, and as My grandma and grandpa, Cheng Kitwa and Tsoi Hinfuk he worked he gained new skills and became a business in Hong Kong, he was considered to have “bad heart surgeon. overseas relationships,” and he was not allowed to join the In that rural town, he married my grandma and Communist Party or rejoin the PLA. Nevertheless, he still had my uncle Vitus and my mom, Louise. When Deng wanted to become a doctor, so he used the little money he Xiaoping came to power a few years after my mom was had saved up from being in the army to buy textbooks and born, the Communist Party became more lenient, and self-study. He later passed the medical school exam and got their family was able to move to Guilin, the big city in the into Guangxi Medical School. Starting from his time in Guangxi province. It was difficult for him to leave though, the PLA, he taught himself the entirety of high school and because he was one of the only qualified surgeons in the what was needed to enter medical school, which was no town and the people needed him. easy feat. One of the few memories my mom had from her He spent five years in medical school. During this childhood was from their time in Guilin. My mom was time, on top of his medical school work, he was required to riding on the back of her dad’s bicycle, heading towards attend meetings for at least two hours a day to learn about one of the rivers that Guilin was famous for. Her dad was the Communist Party and how to behave in the Communist going to meet with a fisherman, one of her dad’s past society. At these meetings, he was denounced and criticized patients. When they got there, the fisherman greeted them for his “black party” relatives, and outside of the meetings, and gave her dad a gleaming fresh fish, thanking him he was criticized for his actions and anything that seemed profusely for saving his life. My mom, at the time, didn’t to go against the Communist Party’s philosophy. It was a fully understand her dad’s life-saving profession or why the very draining time. Here, he met my grandmother, Cheng fisherman was so grateful, but she was elated anyway. She Kitwa, who was also from Chaoyang and also had bad laughed on the ride home as she held the slippery, flopping overseas relationships. Because of their shared situation and bass in her arms, thinking about the steamed, seafood the oppression from the rest of his peers, he felt that she dinner her mom was going to make that night. It was was one of the few, if not the only, people he could trust. times like these that my grandparents found the medical After medical school, he was assigned to a rural profession to be so fulfilling. hospital in the Guangxi province that had very little While they were in Guilin, my mom’s parents were funding. My grandmother went with him. He contracted making plans to immigrate to Hong Kong. In the 1970s, Hepatitis B when he pricked himself because of the lack of Mao was trying to regain control over the Communist protective gear, and he was the only surgeon there who had Party and China, and the level of violence was increasing. graduated from a medical school. All of his classmates were The worst of it was in Guangxi. About the violence and assigned to bigger cities. The reason behind this assignment hypocrisy of the government, my grandmother recalled, was that he had to be close to the farms to do physical labor “Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution, there was there as part of the reeducation program, again because his physical fighting with guns and cannons. A lot of people father was a landowner. He felt that it was incredibly unfair. were killed… I became very scared and started to realize Even though he was never a landowner, had very little that something was not right. When the Gang of Four privilege throughout most of his life, and even served in was in power, they did a lot of terrible things, and then I the army, he was still seen as an enemy by the Communist
realized that something was wrong with the Communist English, but my grandma says that he didn’t. Either way, as Party.” Though my grandparents were growing disdainful my mom put it, “even if it’s not night school, he self-studied of the government, there was no way that they could show [and worked hard] to do that. Otherwise, deem sik je (how it. My mom told me that when she was a child in China, else would he know how to do that)?” He started a garment she always wore a red neckerchief, one of the symbols of trading company with one of the family aunties, and he was loyalty to the CCP. In China, my grandparents always able to make a decent living for his family. I find it amazing had to lie and pretend that even though he had to love a government to quit his career and that had wronged completely start over in them. They wanted to the middle of his life, leave China as soon as he was still able to learn possible so that their and be successful. kids, my mom and Another of my uncle, would not have mom’s childhood to go through the same memories was also from suffering they did. their time in China. Her dad wanted to teach When they her and her brother arrived in Hong English. Somehow, he Kong in 1978, my had brought home a grandparents had radio, though it was around eight thousand not functioning very dollars in total. With well. He ran around that money, they opened the house trying to find up a clinic on Nathan My mom Louise, uncle Vitus, grandma, and grandpa in reception and fiddled Road, in the Tsim Sa Canada with the antennae and Tsui region. However, knobs until he could hear, faintly, the English radio station. their medical certifications from China did not translate What he learned, he turned around and taught my mom over into Hong Kong, since it was a British colony. They and her brother. both tried and failed to get a Over time, my Hong Kong medical license, grandfather’s health since the license exam was deteriorated. Because of the all in English, and the little farm work that he did during English they knew from the the reeducation program, radio in China was not quite he developed spinal disc up to the medical level. My herniation, which caused grandfather decided that it him a lot of pain. He also would take too long (with developed cirrhosis, or the little resources they had) scarring of the liver. These health problems, in addition for him to relearn medicine in English to get a license, to the Tiananmen Square massacre and the imminent so he quit medicine and followed his brothers, who had return of Hong Kong to China, led him and my grandma left him thirty years prior, into the field of business. My to retire and immigrate to Canada in 1993. They lived in grandmother kept working at the clinic, though, even Richmond, British Columbia, which some people say is without a license. She said that she wasn’t alone: “At that just like Hong Kong but with cleaner air. I have visited my time, a lot of mainland Chinese doctors opened up clinics in Hong Kong. There were a lot of clinics there and doctors grandparents many times there, and I can say with certainty that a majority of the city speaks Cantonese. Needless to without licenses.” Since the Chinese government was say, since Canada is a great place, they really enjoyed life in mainly chasing after (and chasing away) educated people, many doctors left the country and had to make do however the West. A few years after they moved to Canada, my they could. After a couple years of running the clinic, my grandfather developed colon cancer. By the time that he grandmother was arrested for practicing without a license, got it diagnosed, the tumor had grown so large that the and after that, she had to shut it down. surgeons had to cut three quarters of his stomach out to get My grandfather worked and studied hard to learn rid of the cancer. Alongside his liver problems, this left him how to run a business. My mom claims that he worked very weak and skinny, as if he were a kid again. Only this in the day and went to night school to study trading and
“He self-studied and worked hard to do that. Otherwise, deem sik je?”
time, he had his family with him to help. He later developed Parkinson’s disease and pneumonia, and he passed away on August 15th, 2015. Near the end, when my grandpa was in the hospital, my mom visited him and asked him what made him happy. And he said that he was happy when he was in the PLA in Beijing, because at that time, he was carefree and without worry. The next period of time that he was happy was the short few years between his retirement and his cancer, when he could travel and relax with my grandma. In total, he had only a few years that were worryfree, and the rest of his life he spent trying to survive in a world that seemed to be rooting against him. His life was, undeniably, very tough. We have to remember that part of the reason why my grandparents left China was that they did not want their children to have to go through what they did. In China, they had no freedom of speech: They could not say anything that went against the CCP, for fear of denouncement and physical violence. China under the CCP was then and still is very reminiscent of the dystopian world of George Orwell’s 1984, where people would denounce and expose others and had no possibility of rebelling. Even now, the Chinese government is incredibly secretive and hides a lot of important information (namely, a lot of the coronavirus data) from the public. That’s why so many people in Hong Kong have been protesting against
Chinese control: They all know that whatever freedoms they have now will be stripped away if they do not keep the CCP out of Hong Kong. When my mom and I asked my grandma if she believed that the Chinese people would stand up and fight against the CCP, she said without hesitation, “Yes. I bet Chinese people have already lost confidence in the Communist party” (Cheng). I agree. Even with heavy censorship, the Chinese government cannot hide its hypocrisy and shady business from a billion pairs of eyes. For example, in February, Li Wenliang, the doctor who discovered COVID-19 but was immediately silenced by the Chinese government, died from the coronavirus. The hospital he was treated at made an announcement about his death on Weibo, and one person commented, “We will not forget the doctor who spoke up about an illness that was called rumor… What else can we do? The only thing is not to forget” (Buckley). Like Li Wenliang, my grandfather stood up and found his way in the face of oppression from the Chinese government. From when he was a child to his retirement, my grandpa’s life was plagued by oppression from the Chinese government. It was through his perseverance, though, that he brought with him that gave him the opportunity for a better life.
My grandpa, my brother, and me in Richmond, BC
About the Author
Victoria Lam is a junior at Freestyle Academy and Mountain View High School. Of course, she is deeply inspired by her grandfather’s life story, and she brings the philosophy of hard work and perserverance wherever she goes. She frequently complains about how difficult the Animation class at Freestyle is, but she tries her best anyway. Aside from drawing, her favorite thing to do is play violin. Victoria is a first violinist and the pianist in the Senior Orchestra of California Youth Symphony– something that she is very proud of. She has also won a few competitions for violin and will be playing at Carnegie Hall next summer, if the COVID-19 crisis dies out by then. In her free time, of which she has very little, she relaxes by sewing while listening to Bon Appetit Youtube videos. In college, Victoria hopes to continue studying music, but she also wants to explore the STEM field, since she is interested in making and building things that could help people in the future.
Victoria playing a tiny violin at West Valley Music in Mountain View