A Story of Bear Grandma

Every night since last Friday, I have been reading about the massacre.  Sadly, journalists start to cool off.  But I truly wish that we do not put this behind so fast.  We should hope for some good things come out of this horror, such as establishing more stringent gun control laws.  I am so disappointed to know some people in this country have such a strong resistance to better gun control laws.  I am so worried about the fact that in this country, 9 out 10 people own a gun!  Guns are so deadly, why they should be carried around by people whose jobs have nothing to do with guns?  I am from China and used to seeing that guns are carried around everywhere, but those are carried by security providers, such as the police, who are trained to use guns safely.  Chinese army soldiers are not allowed to access guns unless they are at their training fields.  It's scary to think about guns in this country really.  Last time I went a dinner party and met one of the guests carrying a hand gun.  The party had plenty alcohol, what if he drank too much and then lost his control...It bothered me quite a bit.  Not only did it bother me that someone carries a gun to a alcohol-served gathering, but also this mentality - why in the world some people feel so strongly that they need self-protection at friends' party where only friends are invited?!

Anyway, let's take a break from these serious issues, shall we?  It's holiday and I am in a relatively relaxed mood.  I wanted to tell you a story which haunted me for life.  Consider yourself warned. 

My brother and I grew up without seeing much of our parents.  Mom and Dad had always been very busy with their jobs when we needed them the most.  They both were members of The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which means on the top of working full time, 6 days per week, from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, they also needed to go back to work after dinner, say around 7:30 pm to 10 pm or later.  The nightly meetings were for those special CCP members to learn government's top secrets or to study The Works of Mao in order to build a strongest socialist country in the world - the biggest ambition of Mao.  Sorry, I mean Mom and Dad went to have their brains washed nightly, pretty much like every religious person here in the U.S. who goes to Church every Sunday.  Except my parents worshiped Mao, instead of God.  They were absolutely devoted to follow Mao's CCP party to march towards ultimate happiness!

China as a country was quite poor 40 years ago.  Majority of the countryside did not have sufficient electricity.  Imagine that you need to pass one whole night without electricity here?  Well, let me tell you, that was our life almost every night at that time.  When night comes, older kids would lid oil-lamps or candles to do their home works.  The younger ones including me would just play hide-and-seek until we saw absolutely nothing outside.  

It was then I came to know Aunt Tang, my nightly "Mom".  She was a very diligent and kind woman who worked every night to my knowledge.  She sew buttons on clothes.  Aunt Tang had 4 kids of her own, two girls older and one boy and one girl younger than me.  Since Aunt Tang's husband was also a CCP member, he was not home at night either.  Aunt Tang and her children thus were a perfect sitters and companies for my older brother Bing and me*.  After dark, Bing and I would come by her house sitting or lying in a big bed beside Aunt Tang's working station together with her younger children who often already fell in asleep at that time.  Bing and I loved to listen to her endless stories and I also loved to watch her sewing buttons.  Night after night, her stories never failed to keep us entertained.  She knew so many interesting stories that Mom and Dad never seemed to know, classic Chinese folk tales, European classic children stories, maybe even few American ones.  I believe I know of pre-Disney versions of Mulan, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping beauty, and Mermaids from her.

One of the stories that I heard from Aunt Tang is "A Bear Grandma" that every little Chinese of my age would know.  It has many versions with small differences - you can google with these words: 熊外婆的故事.  As I said, it has haunted me for life.  Test yourself and see whether you will be scared.

Here is goes.

"I am going to visit grandma and I'll be back until morning, so you two be good at home.  Don't open doors if anyone knocks.  There is a bear in the forest and she often comes to hunt children when their parents are not home.  So, remember what I said.  Do not open the door!"  The mother told her two children, Lan and Hu, while they were eating dinner.  After the dinner, she left home and shut the door tightly behind her.

The bear was hiding under the window at the dinner time outside, so she heard all what the mother said to Lan and Hu.  As soon as the mother left, she went back to her cave, put on some clothes and a hat to cover her fur and then came to knock on the door.

"Xiao Lan and Xiao Hu, open the door, please.  I am your Grandma and your Mom told me to come to look after you while she is away."  The bear said. 

Hu was excited so he ran up to the door and ready to let the bear in.  But Lan was a bit older and more cautious.  So she asked the bear before letting Hu to open the door, "Grandma's voice is a lot prettier.  You sounded rough."  

The bear said, "Oh, that was because I caught a cold."

Lan then asked the bear, "Could you put your hand in and let me check." and then she opened the door just wide enough for the bear to stick her hand in.  Lan touched the wrist of the bear and said, "You are not our Grandma, because she has a jade bracelet." 

The bear went to the crop field and got a long bean circling around her wrist to made herself a bracelet.  And then she came back said, "Oh, the bracelet was on the other hand.  Here it is."

Lan checked and confirmed that the bear had a bracelet so she let her in.  While Lan was offering the bear grandma a chair to sit down, the bear refused.  "Grandma hurt the back and cannot sit on a chair."  The bear said to Lan and requested for a cage with holes.  Lan gave the bear a chicken cage.  The hear sat on the top of the cage and let her long tail sticking into a hole of the cage.  This woke up the chickens inside.  

Lan and Hu asked why the chickens were making noises.  The bear said, "Oh, they are just like you happy to see me here."

Lan was still a bit skeptical so she went to light a lamp.  The bear said, "Oh, grandma is very old and the light would hurt my eyesI"  So, she stopped Lan. 

Then it was time for bed.  The bear and Hu slept on one side and Lan slept on another.  

In the middle of the night, Lan woke up and asked the bear why the bed was wet.  It was the blood of her brother Hu but the bear told her that was Hu's pee and Lan went back to sleep.

Soon Lan woke up again, because she felt a soft and long rope-like stuff tangled her feet.  It was the interesting of Hu, but the bear told her that was a rope that she used to tied Hu to her so that he won't fall out of the bed. 

Lan then went back to sleep and soon she woke up again.  This time, she heard some crunchy sound as if someone was chewing bones.  She could not go back to sleep anymore.  She was totally scared this time, and nervously asked the bear, " Grandma, what are you eating?"  The bear said, "Oh, I am eating some fried beans."

Well, I cannot remember how this story ended now.  If you are Chinese and interested in finding out the end, you can read it here.  For English readers, you are out of luck, because this story is so scary, nobody is willing to retell it.  To brief you here, Lan lost her little brother to the bear but herself did not die.  She had found many ways to escape and finally, she lured the bear to a well in the yard outside.  The bear fell in the deep well and died. 

Again, because this story is passed on by word of mouth, many versions exist.  So I only can tell you my version.  I wanted to tell my kids this story so many times, but I never managed to do so because they are only 5 and 3 and still are afraid of going to the toilet in the house alone.

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* Aunt Tang did not get paid to take care of us.  She did that out of her kindness - that was common in China.  We all helped each others out based on our kindness.  

Tiger mother - Part IV, Mom's cry

Like all mothers in the world, Mom almost never cried in front of us.  So when she did cry, that made an impression.  I remember seeing Mom cried only twice in my entire life.

The first time was when she thought that she'd lost my brother Bing and I.  When we were in elementary schools, we did not need to attend schools everyday for full days.  Wednesday and Saturday afternoons we got to stay home (we had 6 work days prior to year 2000).  At those times, the little kids usually played within the boundary of the work unit where their parents worked and lived - the work unit in China also means "live unit" for many families.  Chinese government provides housing to its employees*.  At the time, Mom and Dad worked for the same unit, which allowed one of them to check on us on their breaks**. Although kids playing free of supervision usually were not longer than 2 hours per session, the free time, was sufficient for us to get in some serious troubles.  We would escape to go outside the boundary, exploring flee markets along the streets, shops, food courts, and even railways watching the passing trains - one of our favorite activities: I still remember our skipping over the railway logs, losing balance while walking on the metal rails, and jumping out of the way for the passing trains whenever we heard the train whistles... thinking about these now sends a chill down my spine!  How and why those passing trains did not kill any of us then is beyond me.

One day, Bing asked me to get out the unit to the roads again.  He told me that some new roads were being made and it would be constructed with a new and cool material called asphalt.  We heard of asphalt before because some kids at school had used those asphalt-headed sticks as weapons to fight, which got them in troubles.  Bing was a famous trouble maker at school and he must have felt left out without those sticks.  Thus, he wanted to make his own asphalt-headed weapons.  At that time, most of the roads in our city were covered by pebble gravels or cements.  Asphalt was something totally new and sounded fascinating to me.  It did not take much to convince me to play naughty anyways, since at that age, I often needed to beg him to take me to those mischievous "adventures".  If you have a sibling who is two years older, you may remember that he/she does not like you to follow him/her around, particularly when she/he is a teller?

So, it was the very first time that we saw asphalt was being laid down.  The big heavy dumping truck looked so amazing and the new roads smelled so wonderful.  Bing and I were watching and following the trucks and workers along the newly paved roads.  We completely forgot about the time.  When the sun went down, the workers were long gone, and numerous asphalt-headed sticks were made and hid in safely in between the folds of our sweater (I know, we were little and kind of dumb, you see), we thought about home, Mom, and Dad.  They must have been looking all over the world for us!  Bing and I tried to get home as fast as we could, but only one problem: our hands were completely black and we could not wash the stains off!  Now we left "evidence" for our misconduct and we knew we would be punished if Mom and Dad saw those black hands.  Bing suggested that we could wait until it became completely dark.  With no other better ideas, I followed his lead.  We hid close to home behind the bushes, listening our names were called by Mom and Dad, watching them passing in front of us countless cycles...

Finally, my hunger and fear of Mom and Dad became increasingly larger than my obedience and fear of Bing, I caved and came out crying when Mom and Dad once again were passing in front of us.  Mom and Dad did not say anything.  They might be contemplating their next move, or they might be having hard time to decide which was better: finding us back alive or losing us to those passing trains - they knew of our habits by then.  They had warned us the dangers repeatedly and made us promise not to do that ever again!).  They quietly took us home and shut the door.  As soon as we went inside the house (apartment, I mean), and Mom picked a wood long stick starting to whip Bing's butt with it.  Bing is someone who never ever cries.  He did make any sound, he would not say a word either.  Mom asked him whether he would still do such things ever again, he would not answer.  Mom, while whipping her son, she mumbled some words like, "I hit you, naughty boy.  You are the older one, you must be the one led your little sister to this.  You could have been killed by those passing cars.  If this happen again, I'll beat you to death..."

I was about 7 years old at that time, as far as I remember, I was never whipped by any of my parents.  Bing was the one who often got the blame for every naughty things that we did together.  Of course, I was the one who always cried when he was whipped.

Those whips were not the ones that Bing was afraid of.  It was Mom's tears, I later found out.

After the Mom's whipping, my crying, and Bing's silent admitting his fault, we had our dinner and bath.  Then we were sent to bed.  While in bed, we saw Mom cleaning our sweaters with the black stains in the living room.  What's shocking was that we saw tears running down her face.

She was not mad about what we did any longer.  Instead, she was sad, she cried.

Mom cried. Why?

Mom never cries!

Shortly followed puzzled, I was scared.

Bing did not say a word, still, but that sure was the last time ever he was whipped!

The next afternoon after our nap, each of us had one big red apple*** beside us.  We usually did not take naps.  Often, we wait for our parents to fall in sleep, and then we would sneak out to play.

I knew then that Mom was saying "sorry" to Bing and "I love you" to us.  It was the most beautiful and delicious apple that I have ever had!
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* It was more than 40 years ago. At that time, almost everyone in the cities works for the government since all work units were owned by the government then.  Each work unit is demarcated by brick walls covered with sharp glass pieces at the top to prevent kids or thieves from climbing over.  People get in and out of the unit through only guarded gates.   

** The chinese has 3 breaks at any given working day: 9:30 - 9:45 am, 11:30 am - 2:20 pm, and then 3:30 - 3:45 pm. The noon break is long since we need to eat a formal lunch and a nap following that! No wonder we do not get much done, right?! Fabrice said the best time to invade China is at noon, every time he goes to China, he was amazed about the fact that the whole city is in silence from 12-2 pm! We Chinese do not work hard at all.

***  Apples in Southern China were very expensive since they were "imported" from Northern part of China, which took days at that time.  Most of the apples could not stand the abuse of long distance travel.  People like Mom and Dad would only purchase those expensive apples as special treats to us.

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The second time Mom cried was when she received a telegram, which informed her that Aunt Er, her oldest sister who raised her like her mother, passed away. But that, my friend, you will need to wait for me to find time to tell the story in details. 

Discovery of manhood

Today at bath time, I noticed that our 3 yr old son Niuniu was scratching/playing with his private part.  Concerned about his spreading bumps (molluscum contagiosum) from his upper tight to his genital area, I asked what did he have down there. He answered with his signature mischievous smile, "I have a ball in my Zizi" (penis in French).  His tone was playful and even a bit of proud.  Niuniu cannot speak as clearly as his sister, worst of all, he has this thick Southern accent that often confuses me.  I was so convinced that these bumps of molluscum contagiosum have developed so big that he thought they were little balls.  "Oh no, can I see what does it look like?" I requested with such obvious worries.  "Yea," he answered dutifully, "it moves!" he added.  From his curious/trying-to-understand look, I suddenly realized that our little man was fiddling his balls, those moving testicles, inside!  So, I told him to go and tell his daddy what he found down there.  He went and proudly announced, "Daddy, I have a ball in my Zizi!"

What a discovery of his manhood!

My imperfect father - Part III, the stroke

According to my father, there is no need for doctors.  He teases everyone who believes in doctors, "why go to see doctors?  For serious diseases, they cannot cure, yet for general problems, we don't need them."  When people fall ill, he says to them, "Drink water, plenty water.  It is the best medicine!"  It is with this belief that he rarely goes to see real doctors.  I said "real" because, in China, doctors in hospitals are usually the ones who see patients.  My father does not go to see them.  Instead, he often goes to see the ones in small clinics that are owned by the workplace, and "doctor(s)" in such unit-owned clinics are usually can hardly make any true diagnosis due to out of practice.  Their job mainly is to hand out cheap medicines to people in need.  Unfortunately, when it comes to hypertension, cheap medicines may not do the trick and my father recently found this out at a great price.

In early September last year, I received a suspicious email from my young stepmother Hui. "Father fell a few days ago.  He had a bit of hematoma on the forehead above the right eye but that is mostly gone.  He is in the hospital now but nothing is serious, don't worry".  Hui never writes me an email in her own voice, she only sends me emails from time to time in my father's tone - he dictates and she writes.  I smelled things must have been more serious than sounded.  A simple fall would not require a hospital stay, especially for my father.  I made my intercontinental phone call at once and got my older brother Bing who was at the hospital taking care of the old man.  Bing told me that a few days ago, our father got up with a bit of dizziness but since he had experienced such dizziness before, and decided to go ahead with his routine morning exercise.  Just a few steps outside the main gate of the residence, he fainted and hit a stone.  Fortunately, he was sent to the hospital immediately and he gained his consciousness now.  "The doctor found a small leak in the brain blood vessel, which was caused by the high blood pressure and led to the fainting.  The bleeding is under control now," Bing said.

I called every day in the next few days monitoring the recovery process.  My father could speak through the phone to me, although his voice was very weak and barely audible at the first, it progressively became louder and clearer from one call to the next.  Soon, he sounded like a normal, healthy, and strong father who I knew again.  "We are going home next week," he told me confidently.  The doctors told him as soon as he could stand up on his feet to walk few steps, he could go home, since his blood pressure was already under control with the new medication that they prescribed him.  "We are expecting a full recovery."  The doctors told my father.  They were optimistic.

True, I trusted the doctors based on the amazing clarity and strength in my father's voice when I talked to him on the phone.  It improved so much in just a few days.  It's just a matter of time now to have him walk again, I believed.  I felt safe and went to a conference in Canada.  The conference was intense, I did not call my father until I returned to the U.S. 6 days later.

"He lost memory, could not recognize Hui, me, or anyone anymore," Bing told me this when I called.  I asked to talk to my father, Bing said, "He has not opened his eyes in the last two days.  He has not had much food lately."  I was in disbelieve.  His condition had gotten much worse.  It was not at all the direction it should go.  "What went wrong?" I demanded to know.  "We don't exactly know. We are transferring him to GXMU today," my brother said.  That was not a good sign because that meant the current hospital was not good enough for his condition. "MRI revealed a big hole in the center of the brain," Bing continued, "The doctor thought there was a clot that blocked the fluid in the brain to circulate.  The clot could be caused by the anticoagulant used earlier to stop his bleeding."  I could tell that he tried very hard to control his fear of the worst consequence.  "The hole (hydrocephalus) had been seen before but we thought it had been resolved since father had seemed so much better. However, it has a size of an apple now."

Bing is usually calm and confident.  He is the oldest among us three siblings and the only one currently living close to our father.  He had been taking care of the old man for a whole month now by sleeping/resting in a chair beside our father's hospital bed every single night ever since the stroke.  When he goes to work the day, Hui, the wife of my father, was taking over since she does not have a job anymore, she quit her job in order to accompany my father to come to the U.S. at the end of 2009.  My younger brother YH was/is living in Xingjiang province, which is 36 hours plane and train ride away.  Bing did not let either of us know about our father's stroke at the beginning since he did not want us to worry about it.  The situation now was clearly different.

"I am coming back home," I said.  I was worried to death.  The GXMU is the best in the city and it is the same hospital at which my mother had been in and out for 4 years and then eventually died 24 years ago.  I started to imagine that my father was dying there soon.  I needed to go home immediately to see him for the last time.

Later Bing told me that he had noticed that my father's condition took a turn from okay to bad because his dizziness had not gone away and he could never stand up on his feet without assistance.  He had looked for new doctors in GXMU before but was not in any big hurry to move my father since my father was treated like a King in the current hospital.  First of all, people in his rank don't usually come to this hospital.  Second and most importantly, the head of this hospital is my little sister-in-law's father.  He came by to check on our daddy frequently.  It was him who had suggested and helped Bing to transfer the old man to GXMU once he found a bigger hole in his brain.

By the time my father arrived at the new hospital, he had lost consciousness completely and was directly admitted to the neurological ICU.  New doctors seemed great, they told Bing the doctors in the previous hospital did everything correctly.  The big hole in the brain indeed was excess cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and it needed immediate attention - "It had to be drained surgically."  They told Bing.  They offered few options, such as drilling a tiny hole in the skull to drain the CSF.  But this wouldn't last.  If the clot could not be resolved after that, the CSF would build up again.  Another way was to put in a shunt to drain the excess CSF from the brain to the belly.  The shunt would remain inside of my father.  My brother thought this latter choice was more sensible.  But the doctors thought it could be too invasive to someone of my father's age. "He is already 79 years old, you need to decide whether this surgery is necessary."  The doctor told Bing.  "What are you suggesting, do you have other better ways to save his life?"  Bing began to be upset by the coldness of the neurosurgeon.  Seeing my older brother was so determined to save the old man's life, the surgeon agreed to schedule his surgery as soon as my father's general health condition was confirmed to be able to sustain such an invasive procedure.  "It might take a few days for us to schedule him."  The surgeon said. "Could it be sooner, the old man could die anytime from now!" Bing was desperate and angry at this point.  The surgeon did not seem to be willing to negotiate.  "Well, your father is not the only patient in this hospital.  Plus, we will have to check his heart, kidney, and other vital organs to make sure there won't be any surprises."

After ending the phone with my brother, I called the Continental and booked my ticket right away, and then I called back to tell Hui and Bing my detailed itinerary.

"We were told to get ready for Daddy's surgery, the first thing tomorrow morning!" My brother was excited to inform me.  "What? did you bribe him?!"  I was certain that he finally caved.  The longer we waited, the more damage the CSF would do to the neurons inside my father's skull.  "No, your sister-in-law called someone," Bing told me.  That, someone, called someone else, and then that someone else finally reached the very top of the hospital, and then the top person told the neurosurgeon that this patient (my father) could not die.  If that had happened, he (the surgeon) would be fully responsible.

I am sure that the details are a bit different.  Because my little sister-in-law's father, the head of another hospital, was also calling everywhere to help at the same time.  Although he was out of town for a business trip then, his connections just a phone call away.  I believe the surgeon may have received pressure from multiple sources.  I also would like to believe that moving my father's surgery ahead was a medical necessity not just a simple result of these phone calls.  The surgeon should have made this decision at the begin with.

"The neurosurgeon obviously was trying to make me pay him extra," Bing said this to me when he was on his way to meet the surgeon to go over the details of the procedure the next morning. "Why do you say that?"  "Well, otherwise, why did he ask me what do I do for a living?  He must have wanted to know whether I have the means to pay him."  "Or he wanted to know why you suddenly could get so many people to give him order."  I offered a different explanation since I imagined the surgeon must have been annoyed by those phone calls that he had received.  "I would have reported him if he had delayed father procedure," Bing said to me angrily.  He had not changed a bit.  My brother Bing was a very successful computer engineer/businessman in the early 90s.  He belonged to the first generation of rich people in China.  It was him who paid my first semester's tuition for my graduate study 19 years ago when I first arrived in the U. S..  Unfortunately, his richness was short-lived because he refused to follow the "codes" - he did not bribe anyone above him at work and he also had not taken any money from his customers, while most of the other "successful" ones did both.  "Give the money to sister-in-law and let her give it to the surgeon after he is out of the operation room."  I tried to persuade him.  He did not answer me directly.  "Ok, I am at the hospital now, the surgeon will come soon.  Call back later."  He was going to hang up. "Could you please leave the line open so that I can hear what the surgeon has to say?" I begged and Bing agreed.

Love modern technology.

The surgeon sounded quite neutral and objective to me.  After explaining what kind of a procedure it was and how it would be done, the surgeon said to Bing, "As I said before, nothing is guaranteed.  He may or may not recover completely after the surgery.  Given your father's age, we cannot promise anything."  He then asked Bing to choose which type of shunt to use.  "Some of them need to be paid by the patient, regardless of which type of insurance policy the patients have."  The doctor said. "Choose the best you think it's necessary."  My brother Bing answered quickly with a clear willingness to donate one of his kidneys.

The surgeon might have left soon after that to get the procedure started.  Bing said to me, "The surgery is going to finish by the end of today and your coming back now may not be that useful."  Bing was right.  It would have been a big hassle for me since it would be just 20 days away from our scheduled vacation to China.  My husband and I had already planned this trip long ago.  If I went home now, that would mean I would have needed to fly back to the U.S. again to get the kids in two weeks.  "Should we hold our trip to China this year?"  Fabrice asked carefully when he saw me torn by the dilemma.  He was also worried about if my father had passed away, it would not be a good idea to have the kids home only to experience the sadness.

I have to admit that I was not at all ready to accept the fact that my father, a strong and healthy man who was just here a year ago living with us for 5 months, would die anytime soon.  To calm me down, I consulted a neurosurgeon in Fabrice's swimming team on a Saturday morning.  "The surgery itself is simple, safe, and the best way to reverse the situation."  The neurosurgeon told me.  He was still in his swimming trunk; I caught him right after his swimming training.  "Clearly, the fact that your father is 80-year-old and in ICU now indicates that his risk is quite high."  He was not willing to advise me whether I should go back to China immediately.  But it was important for me to know from an expert in the U.S., a country that has the best medical doctors in the world, that he was confident that our Chinese surgeons had made the best treatment plan for my father.

After that, I decided to call my cousin, who is the family member that I can rely on in such situations.  She echoed Bing.  So, I decided to take the chance and trust my instinct.  My cousin and brother were right, I would have missed him anyway if he would have not survived the operation.  "Okay, I will cancel today's ticket to China."  I told my older brother Bing and Hui, "Please tell Daddy that ZhuZhu and NiuNiu are on their way to see him."  Hui was then living full time in the hospital with my father ever since he was transferred to the new hospital.  I was wishing that my Daddy would hold himself for his two lovely grandchildren.  "Be sure to show him the photos of ZhuZhu and NiuNiu when he wakes up,"  I begged them.

The next week following the surgery was the slowest day of my life.  We were told that the surgery went very smoothly and my father survived.  Bing, Hui, my two sisters-in-law, my father's youngest brother and his oldest son who all came that very day from Hunan province were all anxiously waiting outside the OR. But they were asked to go home staying by the phone after the surgery.  "We will let you know when you can come back to visit him."  The surgeon said.  My father was in a critical condition and would be wheeled back to the ICU after a stop by MRI.  At that point, only trained nurses could go into the room. He turned to Bing and my cousin (my uncle's son) that they could follow the nurse to get the MRI done since they may help move him.

The hospital's phone call was delivered to Hui 18 long hours later.  She needed to change her cloth and wear protective masks to avoid bringing bacteria to the ICU room.  "He was in his deep sleep. I did not wake him."  Hui told me.  Bing and sisters-in-law were also allowed to see him later that day, but only a few minutes per person and one person at a time.  They said that my father could open his eyes, move his lips, but no sound, still.  Two days later, he could eat a tiny amount of liquid food.  Three days after, he was transferred from the neurological ICU to the cardiovascular ICU.  The doctors allowed him to stay in N-ICU longer than regular patients because he was then with a new label as an important figure.  The cardiovascular ICU was not medically justified.  The nurses told Hui.  But regular hospital rooms don't provide specially trained nurses, the hospital allowed him to stay few more days there, just in case.

It turned out that our Chinese doctors did a great job in saving my father's life.  My father slowly gained his senses.  He even could tell stories to his visitors few days after he was out of the N-ICU.  "He made up a lot of childhood stories.  He also told us that his youngest son was on a farm in Beijing to grow cotton." Hui told me.  My little sister-in-law said, "Daddy said 1+1 equals 5."  She is an elementary school art teacher who likes to tease the old man.  Her job was to teach him simple maths.  About a week after the surgery, I heard my father's voice again on the phone, but he could not tell who I was at that time.  I put ZhuZhu and NiuNiu on the phone, to the "Lao Yie (grandpa in Chinese)" from them, he surprisingly showed his excitement.  However, he did not remember their names.

Three weeks after the surgery while everyone in the U.S. celebrating their Thanksgiving holidays, our little family of 4 showed up in front of my father in China.  He was lying in the hospital bed, peacefully.  We did not want to wake him, but he heard us and opened his eyes, slightly.  It was 1 a.m. and we retreated soon after the quick stop by.  The next morning we went back, he was already cleaned and lifted to a sitting position trying to eat his food in bed.  He had not gained back his appetite for food yet.  He looked much older than he had been a year ago while in the U.S..  He lost tons of weight and his legs became two sticks wrapped in dry skin.  Hui told us the details of their adventures in the last few weeks, "We have moved from neurological ICU to cardiovascular ICU, then to regular hospital room (two patients per room) and finally this luxury suite in the hospital rehab center."  I was so used to the U.S. hospital rooms that did not even notice how "luxury" the suite was!  It is huge and has one bed for the patient, one sofa bed for one family caregiver (Hui), a shower and a toilet room, a TV, a dining table, two quest chairs, a large and tall dresser, a nightstand.  These rehab rooms are not open to the general population, as you can easily imagine.  If it were not my sisters-in-law's connection or his social ranking (we don't know which one was more important), my father would have been sent home to recover all by himself.

So our vacation to China in 2010 was spent mostly in a rehab center to witness my 79-year-old father transforming from a zombie to a semi-healthy person.  He went back home the second day after we left China for the U.S. to continue to learn how to walk by himself.  The little ones did not know what grandpa was doing in the bed all the time, but both of them loved running in the corridor of the rehab center.  The hospital doctors and nurses were thrilled to have these two little hybrids showing up energetically every morning.  If one day we came late, they would come to ask my father when we were coming.  The doctors even spoke to Fabrice in English whenever he was in the room.  They had become a family!  ZhuZhu occasionally would ask Lao Yie to go home with her, but NiuNiu always requested him to go back to sleep.  "Do Do, (sleep in French), Lao Yie!"  He commanded each time Lao Yie was practicing his walk in the hallway.

My father spent more than 3 months in the hospital.  He survived.  "The only thing that bothers me now," he said to me, "is the shunt that I am carrying.  I was not born with this tube and I want to get rid of it."

It's almost a year ago since my father had his stroke.  Knock on wood that he won't have another one any time soon.  He is now able to walk quite a distance without any assistance.  He also can talk and argue with people, two things he enjoyed the most.  Thanks to the neurosurgeon and the medical advances, we are enjoying having him back! 

"I started to write a book.  I dictate and Hui is typing for me."  He said to me last time when I called.  I requested him to write about his childhood stories.  I also asked him to write about my childhood stories.  I need these stories so that I can tell them to ZhuZhu and NiuNiu.  He no longer can hold a pen steadily to write.  This may not be a problem for many other 79-year-old man.  But for him, a pen was his best friend and sharpest weapon.  Although a stroke did not cripple him, it certainly ended his ability to write with his own hands.

P.S., Bing finally gave 3000 yuan to thank the surgeon a few days after the surgery.  He said that was his first and hopefully last "misconduct".  I confess that I pushed hard for this since our Chinese doctors are not nearly as well paid as American ones.   

Naming your baby - Imperfect father, part II

We Chinese give babies small names (XiaoMing, 小名)" or milk names (NaiMing, 奶名) at birth, which is used at home by parents and close relatives.  In the past, a formal name sometimes was not given to a baby until months even years after birth at the time when the parents felt the need, such as enrolling a child to school.  Therefore, a small name could associate with a person for life and even be better known than the formal name by the family.  A baby's name was often an animal, especially a bad and ugly one, since it is believed that ugly names could make a baby strong enough to survive to fight the high rate of infant mortality.  Nowadays however, every infant is required to be registered at birth so a formal name is usually picked early in one's life.  Accordingly, the last character of a formal name becomes a small name for the baby and this character is often called twice.  You may know of some common ones: Lingling (bell sound), Maomao (hairy), Doudou (little bean), Zhuzhu (pearl or little pig), Niuniu (cow), Xiaohu (little tiger), Datou (big head)... I remember that I loved it when the first and only small name of mine was once called Lili by one of my father's female friends.  Unfortunately, no one else followed her, not even my parents.  Modern Chinese also prefer to pick a small name matching a baby's look, personality, or what the parents wish it to be.  Also, like in the Western world, a name also comes in fashion, you often can guess at which time-period someone was born by his/her name.

Regardless small or formal names, old or modern times, naming a baby in China is nothing trivial.  We believe that one's name influences everything that happens in life, therefore, the baby's name, especially the formal one, is often picked carefully by grandparents or other knowledgeable and wise people, such as fortune-tellers.

Like Westerners, we also have nicknames for kids. We call it a flower name (Huaming, 花名). The difference is that nickname in China is more like name-calling in the Western world.  Look what my nicknames once were:

"African" - to make fun of my dark skin; we Chinese consider a fair-skinned woman beautiful;

"Lai Ku Mao, 赖哭猫" - crying cat; Mia, you may get this from your mama, sorry;

"Da Shuan Bi, 大蒜鼻" - garlic nose; to laugh at my flat nasal bridge; 

"Mouse eyes, 老鼠眼" - mouse eyes to ridicule my small Chinese eyes;

"Ma Da Ha, 马大哈" - to describe my taitailielie (dadalielie) or careless personality;

"Guangxi Lao, 广西老" - to mock the lovely persona that resembles the locals (my parents are from Hunan province but I was born and brought up in Guangxi.)

Do you have an image of what I was/am like now knowing these "nick" names?  Can you believe all those names were called exclusively by my loving father or evil older brother Bing?

Little girls are dumb.  I did not figure out it was I who encouraged those name-calling games until years later.  I had/have no sense of humor and could not know why they were laughing when I was so mad each time hearing one of those names, yet the madder I got, the more it was called.  It also didn't seem strange to me that Bing beat other kids to death if they dared to call me any names at school.

Now when I have become a parent, I find it funny too when I see my lovely kids inherited some of our features, and spontaneously I have the urge to call them funny names.

"Your nose looks funny," and "You have elephant ears," I said those to Mia when I first noticed that she has gotten his father's square nose and big ears.  After hearing that few times, the daddy rolled eyes at me so I stopped.

"You got your daddy's teeth," I shouted out loud one day when I suddenly noticed Remy's two front teeth tilted to the right. "They both did." the daddy added.  I guess this is not considered to be name-calling, although I find it equally funny to Mia's square nose and big ears.

It might not be too late now to give small names to Mia and Remy.  I used to call Mia Xiaozhu (little pig) or Zhuzhu since she was born in the year of pig and Remy Niuniu as he was born in the year of cow.  Can I still call them these names now, you think?  Starting from tomorrow, I'll insist to call Mia Zhuzhu and Remy Niuniu.  I hope they stick.

What about you, do you have funny nicknames?  Dare to share some?