Happy 100th birthday to Granddad

If my grandfather, Tung Wan Yan—Colonel, Chinese Constitutional Army, retired—was still alive, this would have been his 100th birthday.
   On December 15, 1907, he was born in Toishan, the eldest son of Jackson Yan, my great-grandfather. As a lad, he was sent to the United States after Jackson had arrived there and set up a farm, and travelled, as most did in those days, by boat to California.
   By this time, Jackson was a well established businessman and a wealthy landowner in southern California, and Granddad would tell us stories about how it would take a day to survey the place with a horse and cart.
   He was also involved heavily with the Association named after the first member of our family to go from central China to the south, Gin Sun Hall, a few centuries ago. History has it that we got into a bit of trouble with the Emperor. This family has been a thorn in the side of ruling parties for quite some time.
   The Gin Sun Hall Benevolent Association of San Francisco helps families—then, it was to assist with immigration. Today, the Association still exists as a charity.
   Jackson wanted respectability, and in those days that only came from the Republic. So, he sent his American-schooled son back to the old country to seek a job with the government. Tung Wan’s teacher promised to intervene if he did not wish to leave California. He declined, putting his father’s wishes first.
   As a teenager, my grandfather spoke little Toishanese after his years in the States. He had to become accustomed to his native tongue again after he got back home. A marriage was arranged, and before long, there were two new arrivals. However, both children—a boy and a girl—died in their infancy.
   By the mid-1920s, my grandfather had sought a job with the army, and other children were on the way. Between then and 1957, they had six children who survived their infancy.
   However, in the meantime, Jackson was murdered in California. Granddad tells a story where he heard the sound of motorcars at the end of his bed—even though he was in the old country and there weren’t any cars. He knew something was up, and soon received the news. It was his responsibility to get his father’s body back from California for burial in the old country. (The Communists eventually destroyed the tomb after 1949. Well, maybe not intentionally the tomb. They took out the mountain.)
   When the Japanese invaded, Granddad had steadily risen in the Constitutional Army to the rank of colonel, and was charged with dealing with Customs’ matters. Who knows? He might even have met one of John Kerry’s opium-selling dope-trading ancestors. There were stories of Lai, the family dog, who seemed to have a command of human language—taking my aunt to another village, swimming alongside a boat, and returning home.
   He did see active service in World War II. He told the story of being in a shelter with a friend, listening to the bombs being dropped by the Japanese. The bombs got closer and closer. His friend remarked, ‘They are getting close.’ After the next bomb, he said to his friend, ‘That was the closest of all.’ There was no reply: the shock waves had plastered his friend against the wall. They had been standing next to one another.
   Another close shave was hiding back at the farm when the Japs advanced. Granddad had found himself on a hit-list. A regiment of Japanese troops fired at him while he hid in trees. They all missed. Oh, he was unarmed in this episode—and got away.
   My grandmother did recall how his dress uniform was rather grand, complete with sword, and how, while taking her on a tour, many men saluted him. But I do not think she knew just what rank he was.
   I never heard many stories of actual front-line battles, though he was involved in his share. He also spent years in Malaya—Penang and Kuala Lumpur—with stories to tell about fights in gambling dens during the War. Since Asians place a good game of mah jong and other forms of gambling ahead of killing one another, it was not uncommon to see Chinese and Japanese play side by side there. One tale was about a Japanese general starting a fight. I must get someone in the family to tell it to me again so I can get it recorded.
   After the cease-fire, he helped stranded Japanese soldiers get jobs as street-sweepers or refuse collectors in postwar Malaya. I admire that: one day your sworn enemy, the next day, your ally.
   There was not too much time for sitting back before the Communists began revolting, or being revolting. He found himself having to give up the family lands in the old country in favour of a tiny room in Hong Kong, sharing it with a family of six kids, his mother and his wife. The family made it out in two waves. It would be fair to say that he was an absent father for most of the duration of World War II, so the children were mostly raised by their mother and grandmother.
   He retained great mana as a community leader among those from the old country, regularly drafted in as a mediator or trouble-shooter when problems arose. But being an army officer did not necessarily mean a high-ranking job in Hong Kong. He started again from the bottom career-wise.
   He had a penchant for painting in oil, calligraphy with a proper brush, and publishing, working on a self-owned private press.
   He had some security jobs, and had one story about seeing a ghost while keeping an eye on some property. Seeing a figure there, he called out to advise that he was trespassing. When he held his lamp up to identify the trespasser, he noticed he had no face.
   Granddad did suffer from some form of PTSD, which would plague him for most of the postwar years.
   He and my grandmother lived in a comfortable flat in Hong Kong by the time I was around. My love for cars was signalled early. He had found a toy car that same day—a model of a ’55 Chevy Nomad—and gave it to me. You could say I have owned cars since the day I was born.
   He was a generous man, once taking me to a toy store prepared to buy whatever I wanted. My parents had said to me that it was acceptable for him to buy me one thing. I settled on a single Jaguar XJ6 toy car from Corgi. He insisted he buy more. I declined. He was so impressed by my principled nature—I would have been around two, three at most—that he mentioned this to my parents. ‘He’s very fair about things,’ he said.
   In a visit to his youngest son in New Zealand in 1976, he fell critically ill. Wellington Hospital diagnosed him as being in the advanced stages of liver cancer and he had a fortnight to live. We came over in September armed with herbs, which we had him drink daily. As expected, the cancer disappeared.
   In those early, dark days in Wellington, I stayed with him and Grandma most days. My parents did not know there was such a thing as preschool, so I spent 1976–7 watching Play School, The Brothers and Days of Our Lives. Sometimes Des Britten would come on with a cooking show. Max Bygraves had a variety show. Granddad was a chain smoker and had a penchant for peanuts and dried apricots. He painted when he could, and usually stayed in a dressing gown and wore a cap.
   I had many talks with him over the years, and brought him meals on a weekly basis after he was widowed. There were the odd cracks—his paranoia began showing, and would insist on changing doctors regularly. By and large he held it together, but I think he knew that he had some hangovers from the War. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, he was prepared to open up with some of the tales of the period, and for the younger grandchildren, there was always the stories of Lai the Wonder Dog. He managed to give up smoking in 1992. 
   He moved into an old folks’ home in the mid-1990s, and in July 1996 he fell ill from a stroke, diagnosed by a clumsy doctor as ’flu. (I will not name him, but the rest of us could see that he had had a stroke.) This did cause some delirium. Eventually, after a second of lucidity and seeing my father and aunt in the room, he shut his eyes for the last time. By the Chinese system of counting (at birth, you are one year old), he had made it to 90, and the wake was considered auspicious. His service was at the Chinese Baptist Church: while he identified with the Anglican faith in Hong Kong, he supported both the Anglican and Baptist churches when he got to New Zealand. The connection to the latter was the Rev Samuel Lau, one of the most respected Chinese priests in Wellington, who, like my grandfather, served in the Constitutional Army. (It was a conversation in passing with Rev Lau that I worked out Granddad’s rank.)
   I paid him, and others, a visit at Makara Cemetery today. I remembered December 15, but did not realize it was his centenary till I got there and saw 1907 on the tombstone, which I co-designed with my father. So: happy birthday, Granddad. And you know, we are still kicking up a fuss whenever we see injustice, even putting ourselves on the line to uncover the truth. Freedom has to be protected, and the forces that try to diminish it have to be nipped in the bud.