A Spider in the Wind: My World, My Time, My Life, My Thoughts

Foreword

This is an account, based on my memory and research, of how I plodded through my life, starting from a war refugee from China, growing up in a closed Chinese community in a backwater corner of the world in Asia, then moving through different countries while countering, and luckily surviving, various roadblocks and other difficulties, and eventually landing in the United States where I struggled to finish my advanced education, build a career, grow a family, and finally settled down in an enjoyable retirement life. This has been as much an unguided journey in the physical sense as a process of the gradual opening of my mind about the world and the opportunities it has to offer.

I wrote this book originally to help my children and grandchildren know me better, considering that they had grown up in a very different time and place than mine. But I also want to offer this book as a case study, if not a cautionary tale, to immigrants all over the world who struggle with difficulties in their new lives in new lands. I also want to offer this book to all the young people of the world who are facing down their life’s journey ahead, perhaps with ambivalence and trepidation.

I’d always been a man of few words. I don’t recall ever having a long talk with my wife or my children about my childhood or my parents. This was mostly because that was the way my father related to me: with very few words; and partly because, for some reason, I had always been more comfortable expressing myself in the written words than in speech. More than my own life story, I want my children and grandchildren, nephews and nieces to know more about our family, which has a long and interesting history.

During my lifetime, in fact even before I was born, Asia in general, and China in particular, had suffered through a series of wars and undergone dramatic changes socially, politically, economically and even culturally. For my children and grandchildren who were born into a much more stable and comfortable world than I was, to know me, they must know the very different world in which I grew up.

Autobiographies and memoirs of celebrities are very popular today. They are entertaining and they satisfy the curious mind. Life stories of ordinary people, while not nearly as exciting or newsworthy, are more aligned with those of most people on earth and can serve as a good source for life’s lessons. Reflecting on my young adulthood with my ignorance of the world and bewilderment about my future, I thought my story could help today’s young people everywhere who are, or will soon be, facing the prospect of choosing a career and stepping onto their own independent life path. Although each individual has a different set of circumstances and everything changes with time, the need to make choices under uncertain or ambiguous situations remains a constant reality. I have made many such choices in my life, some good ones and some bad ones as they are viewed today. I could only thank my lucky stars for keeping me standing at the end.

At my age, many of the memories of my childhood and young adulthood have faded. While accounting for my life’s progress and its many significant events, I have made my best effort to be truthful and accurate, in spirit if not always in fact. Some chronological or factual errors are possible, for which I apologize.

China is probably unique among nations of the world in having a very long history uninterrupted by foreign domination or assimilation. It also has a very strong family institution. As a result, many families have maintained some essential continuity in spite of the many domestic wars and natural disasters causing large-scale migrations. Mine was such a family. This continuity is recorded in our family Jia Pu (or family history, also known as Zu Pu meaning history of the tribe.)

The Jia Pu is a unique Chinese tradition: It is usually either a hand-lettered or block-printed, hand-bound volume that traces a family’s history back to when it was first recorded. Once the book was initially generated, most likely by a member of the family who was either prosperous, or socially or politically powerful, or both. It was handed down from generation to generation via the male heirs, and updated every few generations, or when the clan moved en masse to another location due to wars, famine or other catastrophes. The book records primarily the name of male heads of household in each generation and their spouses, their positions as government officials, if any, the year they died and the locations where they were buried, plus the name of their own male heirs. An updated book would be copied and given to each of the male heirs who would in turn hand it down to their own heirs. Many well-to-do or well-positioned families have kept this tradition, but poor and less educated families were rarely able to do so. For centuries, many Chinese families, including my own, have kept up this tradition. Unfortunately, during wars and major natural disasters, such as the more recent Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, many of these books were burned or otherwise destroyed. Today, ironically, the Genealogy Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Salt Lake City has the world’s largest collection of these books.

When I was growing up, my grandmother had a copy of our family’s "Jia Pu" and she let me flip through it from time to time. I didn’t understand a thing in it but was quite fascinated: A half-an-inch thick volume with a dark blue cover and bound with white thread and Chinese characters hand-lettered on yellowish rice paper. This family heirloom was lost during a move. Luckily, in 2013, in my constant outreach to reconnect with my far-flung relatives, I located the daughter of a long-lost cousin of mine in Singapore who has a copy of the book from her father. This unbelievably lucky discovery allows me to finally trace the history of my family, the Chu clan, all the way back to the Zhou dynasty (1066 BCE to 475 BC,) with the name of over a hundred generations of my ancestors listed.

To make the story of my family and my life more interesting and easier to understand, I have taken the liberty of recreating some of the scenes and conversations based on my recollection. I have also borrowed my paternal grandmother’s voice to tell the history of my family as recorded in my family’s Jia Pu and from findings from my research.

A word about my family name: Chinese is an ideographic language and Chinese names can only be translated into English phonetically. There are different systems to translate Chinese names into English and each one could result in a different English spelling for the same Chinese character. My Chinese family name spells Chu in the Wade-Giles Romanization system that has been used in the western world for decades, whereas the Pingyin system used in China today spells that same character Zhu. In order to avoid confusion, I use the Chu spelling in this book throughout.

I have to thank four people for their priceless guidance: Ms. Cathy Bao Bean, author of her memoirs The Chopsticks-Fork Principle and a scholar and frequent lecturer on Chinese culture, who gave me a three-word piece of advice about writing this book: Tell a Story. Mr. William Greenleaf, book editor, gave me some sound and honest advice after reading the first version of my manuscript and caused me to rework it. Mr. Alan Rinzler, book developmental editor and consultant, who made a detailed reading of my second draft and, again, told me to go back to square one because I was giving a report on my life instead of telling stories about it. Finally, Ms. Ellen Schmidt, writing coach and a personal friend, who gave my new draft a thorough and thoughtful review and editing.

Here’s my warm welcome to all to join me on my life’s journey, re-enacted.

Albert Liang-Chung Chu

Randolph, NJ,

May 2016

Dedication

I am proud to dedicate this book to my parents, Mr. Chi-Yang Chu and Mme. King-Yuk Law, who created me and nurtured me; to my brothers Lionel and Lewis and my sister Christine, who shared a good part of my early life and have been my best friends ever since; to my sweetheart Mindanila Eugenio Chu, who shared a life with me for 48 years and counting, and who co-built our beautiful family; to my three children: Prescille Cernosia, Shamsi Gravel, and Jehan Chu who are my life’s pride and joy. Last but not least, I dedicate this book to my six grandchildren who made my life complete.

Most of all, I dedicate this book to people from all parts of the world who have the courage to brave all sort of difficulties and uncertainties to seek a better life in a foreign land.

Part I:

My Early Childhood

Ah Chung, you were not quite three years old when we came to Annam in the autumn of 1938, my mother said to me one day while she was walking me to school. I was about six then. Mother spoke slowly and softly as if she were talking to herself, and staring ahead as if in a dream walk. Even as a small child, I could feel the sadness in her voice.

(Before today’s Vietnam became part of French Indochina in 1887, the country had been a protectorate of China for centuries and was referred to as Annam, meaning the pacified south. During the French colonial rule, Vietnam consisted of three parts, Tonkin in the north, Annam in the middle, and Cochinchine in the south. But Chinese continued to refer to the whole country as Annam long afterward. )

Refugee at three

There were four of us: you, your Papa, your five-month-old baby brother Ah Ngo and me, Mother continued. We were lucky to be able to catch a cargo ship in Hong Kong with a dozen other people, all jammed into a room. But it was a terrible trip. The sea was so rough. Several times, I feared we weren’t going to make it.

I looked up to her face, not knowing what to say. She looked somber. She’d never talked to me that way before.

Poor you, you kept throwing up. You couldn’t keep anything in your tummy, she continued. You looked so pale, you didn’t even have the strength to cry. You just whimpered and kept clinging to your Papa day and night like a scared little cat. I was afraid you might not survive the trip. I myself didn’t feel that much better either, and I had to carry your baby brother in my arms the whole time.

Mama, why didn’t you take sister Chin with us? I asked because that was something that had been bothering me. Chin was born in Guangzhou only 16 months after me. She was my only playmate. Brother Ah Ngo was born in Hong Kong just a few months before we left.

Ah Chung, you are still too little. You don’t understand. You see, in Annam, we don’t have any relatives except Papa’s two distant cousins; and we hardly knew them. We didn’t have very much money; we couldn’t possibly take care of all three of you kids and still hope to start making a living in the new place. But don’t worry, Ah Mah (my paternal grandmother) and Ah Yeh (my grandfather) will take care of Sister and they will come here to join us soon.

Why didn’t we just stay in Hong Kong? Why did we have to go far away? I wouldn’t let go.

Because the Japanese were coming.

Why? Are the Japanese bad, Mama?

They are very, very bad. They have killed many people in China. That’s why we had to run away.

When the Japanese come, what will happen to Ah Mah and Ah Yeh and sister Chin?

She didn’t answer.

Welcome to the world

According to my mother, I was born into a large extended family that once boasted a huge commercial fortune in Southeast Asia. She made a big point in telling me that I was delivered in a large bedroom in a block-long, fancy European-style brick-and-masonry building, located on Duo Bao Road in the prestigious Xi Guan District on the west side of Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong Province. The building was part of the two private compounds of the Chu family of tobacco and trading fame in the 19th century. The room in which you were delivered was larger than this whole apartment we are now living in, she would add years later when we lived in Hong Kong.

I was born on the 20th day of the fourth month in the year of Yi Hai according to the Chinese Lunar calendar; that year corresponded to 1935 in the western calendar. I don’t have a birth certificate that shows my date of birth because there wasn’t such a thing in Guangzhou at the time. There was no hospital or municipal record of my birth either because a midwife delivered me at home, as it was with most babies then. Hospitals were still a relatively new institution in China at the time and they were, in any case, only for treating very sick people. Besides my mother, the midwife was the only eyewitness to my birth. My family, of course, noted the date and even the hour of my birth in the Chinese way.

Were you and Papa happy that I was born? Did you have a big dinner with a lot of food for relatives and friends? I asked.

Of course the whole family was happy and grateful that you were born and that both you and I were safe, she said. But we did not have a celebration right away because we weren’t sure whether you were going to stay with us long. Also, your Papa always said that the day a child was born was the day of suffering for the mother, and therefore was no cause for celebration. People also said that a newborn should keep a low profile so as not to arouse the jealousy of gods who might cause the child to get sick and perish. Only when a child had survived the first full month would they celebrate.

And then?

"So when you were one month old, we celebrated your birth. We had a big dinner for our relatives. We cooked a lot of eggs and dyed them red, and we cooked a tub of pig’s feet in ginger and sweet vinegar. We shared the eggs and pig’s feet with all the relatives and close friends to tell them we had a son. They all came to see you and gave you lei xi." (Lei xi is a common form of gift in Chinese communities consisting of money in a red envelop.)

Papa proudly shows off his first born son

The family might be happy to have a first-born son, but as I found out later, they also worried about bad times coming to China. I was born in a country with a long and glorious history. However, for over a century, the country as a whole had been enmeshed in a prolonged but losing social, political and economic struggle.

Externally, several western European powers, fresh out of the Industrial Revolution and emboldened by their modern weaponry and steel warships, were eager to explore and exploit natural resources all over the world to feed their new machinery. As they salivated over the vast and mysterious land called China, it didn’t take them long to realize that the fabled Middle Kingdom was actually a sick old man living in the dreams of its past glories. During the 18th and 19th centuries, through a series of unequal treaties imposed on China following their gunboat invasions and diplomatic coercions, at least 10 European nations plus Japan had carved out some three dozen small territories called concessions in several Chinese coastal cities where they administered their own laws. But Japan had even a grander ambition: the little island nation wanted to swallow up China.

Internally, the people of China have long loathed the bumbling Manchurian Qing Dynasty that had ruled the country for over 200 years. They were doubly humiliated by the country’s defeats in the hands of foreigners so the time was ripe for another dynastic change. A popular revolution, led by Dr. Sun Yat Sen’s Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), finally broke out and toppled the Qing Dynasty in 1911. But the victory was bittersweet. Beset by internal struggles among regional warlords and ambitious politicians on top of interferences by foreign powers, the inexperienced new Nationalist government was unable to solidify its control and the country spent the next 20 years wallowing in financial chaos, domestic warfare, official corruption and political uncertainty. The fact that the Soviet-bred Chinese Communist Party made its debut at this time only further muddied the water.

While the hungry wolves from Europe had to travel a long way to come to China, Japan sat just across the Yellow Sea. Between 1884 and 1928, Japan had defeated China and Russia in several sea battles and annexed the island of Formosa (today’s Taiwan) and the Korean peninsula, and had set up a puppet government in China’s Manchuria region. By the time I was born, with several beachheads in place, Japan saw its time had come to make its big move to conquer the country. All it needed to start the open invasion was a flimsy excuse, which presented itself the night of July 7, 1937. I was two years old then.

That night, the Japanese army stationed in Manchuria conducted some military exercise in a suburb of Beijing (then called Peiping,) and claimed that one of its soldiers was missing. It demanded that the Chinese military authority help find him. Although the soldier in question soon turned up safe and sound, the Japanese Army used his brief absence as an excuse to declare war on China. After occupying the Lugou Bridge and a nearby strategic railway connecting point, the Japanese army, in the face of weak Chinese defense, pushed its way southward along the coast. Fresh Japanese troops were also dispatched from home to take Shanghai and on to Nanjing, the Chinese capital where, within a few weeks, they savagely slaughtered over 300,000 people, mostly civilians, in what is known as the Rape of Nanjing.

As Nanjing fell and the Japanese marauders continued to push their way south, the prosperous but normally noisy people of Guangzhou became alarmed and many people there sought to run away. By early 1938, as the Japanese were beginning to lob shells into the city, more people decided to flee. That’s when my parents decided to move to Hong Kong, the British colony where my grandfather managed the family business. My brother Ngo was born during that time. But as the war drum sounded louder and louder, my parents, like many other Chinese in Hong Kong, decided to move further south to Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh city,) the capital of French Indochina.

So, Annam became my adopted land.

My little world at Pineapple Alley

At the point where ships sailing into this Pearl of France in the Orient, as Saigon was known, leave the Saigon River in the Mekong Delta and turn into the narrow China Creek heading west, on the right bank stood a big and boxy yellow and white building that was the home of the French Chamber of Commerce. Behind this building and across a vast meadow, the first street one encounters was what local Chinese residents used to call Teochow Street, but is now called Nguyen Cong Tru Street. As one headed west on this street, on the right side there was a long block of two-story red brick row houses. The house number 138 had only the second floor. Where the first floor should be was an underpass that led to an alley behind the row houses. The Chinese called this little alley Pineapple Alley. The name might have been the phonetic translation of a French name but nobody knew what the original name was. The alley wasn’t even indicated on the city map.

There were 24 two-story row houses in the alley, 12 on each side of a red brick roadway about 30 ft wide, which tended to bulge up in the middle and taper down on either side to facilitate drainage. The alley was supposed to be dead-ended, but at the end of the alley, someone had knocked out a narrow opening in the brick wall. Through this opening, one could cross over to another, even smaller alley with small, and rather run-down single-story houses. We called this place Bread Alley because there was a little bakery shop there. Upon arriving in Saigon, our family settled at No. 16, Pineapple Alley.

All the houses in the Alley looked identical on the outside: about 18 feet in width with an open porch about four feet deep, fronted by a three-foot-high, five-foot-long brick balustrade on either side. Separating the porch from the living quarters behind, was a brick wall with a wooden front door in the middle and a four-foot-wide window with wooden shutters on either side. As customary with housing in Vietnam, the downstairs came as just an empty shell in which the occupants would have to build their own partitions to provide the various kinds of room they desired. In our case, my parents partitioned the downstairs into a business office/ workshop in front, with a living area at the back.

Behind the living quarters there was a large utilities area. The kitchen was at the far left side of the area. It consisted of a redbrick cooking platform designed for using dry wood sticks or charcoal as fuel. At the near-left corner was an open-air atrium where stood a wooden shed that served as a shower room. A large cement tub in front of the shed was used to catch and store water from the only faucet in the house. When taking a bath, one would go into the shed, use a wooden bowl to fetch water from the tub and douse oneself. A crouching-style toilet was on a raised platform at the far right corner. Every few days, someone would come to the narrow passageway behind the house and empty the wooden tub underneath the toilet. I was too small to use that toilet.

Climbing the wooden staircase along the right side of the living quarters, I could go up to the second floor, which was partitioned into several bedrooms. Windows with wooden shutters occupied the entire wall facing the street. At the back, above the kitchen, was a large covered balcony open on two sides, from which I could see a similar one at the next house. That was the place where we kids were allowed to do some messy things that were forbidden inside.

All but two of the houses in the Alley were residences with Chinese families. Most of the residents were Cantonese with a few Hakkas and Hainanese. Chinese immigrants in Vietnam consisted of five ethnic groups: Cantonese, Teochows, Fukienese, Hakkas and Hainanese. Cantonese are people from the Guangzhou area, they formed the largest ethnic group. Hakkas and Teochows are also from other parts of the Guangdong province with their own distinct dialects. Hainaneses are people from the Hainan Island south of the Guangdong province, and Fukienese came from the neighboring Fukien Province. Each of these ethnic groups had its own community organizations and schools.

Houses numbered 22 and 24, at the end of the Alley on our side, were occupied by a private elementary school. The owner of the school, Mr. Mak, was known to the kids as The Bearded Man because of his robust black beard, rare among middle-aged Chinese men at that time. A wooden fence blocked off half of the width of the roadway in front of the school to create a playground for the pupils. Mr. Mak had two sons: the older one named Mak Ly Ni and the younger one named Mak Toh Fu. I was too small to realize it at the time, but in later years I realized Mak Ly Ni is the Chinese phonetic translation of Mussolini, and Mak Toh Fu is for Molotov. They sounded odd as Chinese names go. Perhaps Mr. Mak was impressed by these two Axis leaders from seeing their names often appearing in the news.

Pineapple Alley was like an enclosed little corner somewhat hidden from the outside world. It was a cozy place for me as a small child and a newcomer to the neighborhood. Being an almost dead-end alley, there was no traffic except a few occasional bicycles and food peddlers with their rickety carts. I felt very safe living there. Since my brother Ah Ngo was only an infant when we first moved to Saigon, we had an amah, whom we called Sister Silver, to take care of both of us. She also did most of the cooking, shopping, laundry and cleaning.

The amahs at the time were mostly middle-aged women from Shunde County of Guangdong Province, where there was a local sub-culture that encouraged women to remain single and self-dependent, rather than getting married and depending on their husbands for their livelihood. They swore to spinsterhood and wore their hair in braids, and clothed themselves in black garments made of a special shiny fabric called jiao cho, a special product of their hometown in China. They often worked as nannies and comprehensive household help, with some working for the same families for many years, even providing childcare for two generations. For their loyalty, their employers often treated them as family.

My three siblings in front of 16 Pineapple Alley

There were quite a few kids in the Alley, but I was rarely allowed to go out so I hardly knew any of them. I always looked out the window as I watched them playing house, buying sweets from the peddlers, running up and down the Alley shouting. I felt jealous.

Mama, can I play outside? I often implored after watching kids my size playing together on the street, making a lot of happy noises. I didn’t have anyone to play with at home.

Ah Chung, don’t go outside by yourself. You don’t know how those kids are. Chung is my first name. Ah Chung was how everyone called me at home.

But I want to play with them. I don’t have anyone to play with.

We don’t know those kids. They look dirty; they may hurt you. Some other day, Sister Silver will take you for a walk in the Alley.

I was hoping Brother Ngo would grow up faster so I had someone to play with. I missed my sister too. She was left behind in China. Now I couldn’t even make new friends. I had no choice but to learn to play by myself. I often sat alone and made up stories in my head. Sometimes I just stood by the front door listening to those kids and I imagined playing with them.

The neon sign workshop

"Uncle Kin, when are you going to take me to Yum Cha again?" I asked the dark skinned, middle-aged man with a mustache who came to the house every day to work with Father. (Yum Cha, literally meaning drink tea, is the Cantonese way of indicating a dim sum meal.)

Maybe next Sunday, if you are a good boy, he replied. "I will buy you a big Dai Bao." Uncle Kin would say while looking at me, narrowing his eyes as if he were sharing a secret with me. One time, Uncle Kin took me to a coffee shop down the street to have dim sum. That was the first time I had the Dai Bao, a big steamed bun with juicy roast pork, egg, mushroom and some other stuff inside. That was the best treat for me, and I also got to get out of the house and the Alley to see what was outside my little cocoon.

The workshop at the front part of the house where Uncle Kin worked was one of my earliest memories of life at Pineapple Alley. It was outfitted with a large workbench that measured about 10 ft. by 5 ft. That workbench was always a mystery to me because it was so high I could hardly see what was on top of it.

Uncle Kin, whose full name was Wong Kin Loi, was about 40 or so but his mustache and his weathered dark skin made him look much older. Despite his rather stern look, Uncle Kin was a kind person. He was not my real uncle, but in the Chinese community, kids were told to call their parents’ adult friends or close associates uncles and aunties.

As the carpenter/electrician working for Father, Uncle Kin would sit on a tall stool by the bench and, wearing thick gloves and dark goggles, turn on a blowtorch and aim the blue and orange flame at a long length of glass tube about as fat as a man’s finger. After a while, he was able to bend the tube like noodles and form a string of Chinese characters or English letters, and some other shapes like a star, a heart or a human profile. He also made wood frames and strung wires across the frames. Father worked on the other end of the bench from Uncle Kin with several cylinders containing different gases. I didn’t understand what they were actually doing, but I heard Father call his business Asia-America Electrical Workshop.

Uncle Kin, what are you making? I asked one morning, out of boredom and seeing that Father wasn’t around.

I am making colorful neon signs that light up at night. When your Papa brings you to the movie house or a restaurant, you will see these signs. They are very pretty, he said. After he finished bending those glass tubes into letters or designs, he carefully tied them up on the wire mesh of a wood frame. I never got to see those neon signs light up because I never got a chance to go out at night. Then, Uncle Kin disappeared from my life when Father closed up his neon sign business.

My rich uncles

The first time I remember going outside of the Alley, Papa and Mama took the two of us, me and baby Ah Ngo, to our uncle’s house. We took two cyclos, the ubiquitous tricycles that, together with the rickshaws, were the most common form of public transportation in Saigon. On a cyclo, the two front wheels supported a cab that accommodated up to two passengers and maybe with a little child in between them. The driver peddled behind. The cab had a canvas canopy. When it rained, there was a piece of canvas flap that covered the front. The driver had no cover.

Uncle Chi King was the son of a brother of my grandfather. He was a little older than Papa. Uncle Chi King had studied in France and could speak fluent French. He seemed to be rich for he owned a soap factory named Savon La Jonque in French or Junk Brand Soap in English. We called him Ye Bak (Uncle number two). He married a Vietnamese woman who spoke fluent Cantonese, the dialect that my family spoke. We called her Ye Bak Mo (Aunt number two). They had two daughters, Helene and Suzanne, who were about my age. They lived quite a way from us in a nice villa with a courtyard in front, which was much nicer than our house.

When Papa took me to visit the soap factory, Uncle Chi King didn’t talk to me much, but he gave me something I would never forget: several sheets of heavy paper on which were printed black-and-orange-colored shapes of several parts of a Chinese junk. A junk is common Chinese sailboat used in fishing and transporting cargo. By tearing off these pieces along the perforated lines one could fit the pieces together and make a little three-dimensional model junk. That was the nicest toy for me after I learned how to put it together.

There I also met Uncle Chi Wing, the son of yet another brother of my grandfather. Because he was younger than my father, we called him Ye Suk and his wife Ye Sum. Chinese have a very detailed way to delineate relationships of members within an extended family: the uncles older than one’s father are called Bak and their wives Bak Mo; the uncles younger than one’s father are Suk and their wives Sum. Uncle Chi Wing ran an import-export company. He was rather lanky and seemed to be very nice and talkative. He had two sons and three daughters who were a little younger than me. They wore nice clothes.

I watched the adults