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Overview
Growing up Chinese in Virginia in the Fifties, Evelina Chao's sense of historical or cultural context was colored by the images contained in her grandfather Yeh-Yeh's letters and news of his life as an eminent poet, philosopher, and theologian in Beijing. Her geologist father and biologist mother suffered a kind of cultural dyslexia in the American South, having fled Beijing after the Maoist Revolution in 1949. The young Evelina, foreign and isolated, believed that in China she would find the meaning of her life.
And then she found music. The rigors of training to become a professional classical musician seduced her into thinking she no longer required Yeh-Yeh's benediction, that her Chinese heritage was secondary. When Yeh-Yeh died at 92, she realized that her mythical notions of China had died with him. All that reminded her were her uncles and aunts who still lived in the family house in Beijing.
Accompanied by her mother, acting as her interpreter and all-around passport, she traveled to Beijing when China was undergoing rapid transformation following the Cultural Revolution in the early 1980s, two years before the Tiananmen uprising. Every trace of old China was being expunged, the ancient neighborhoods plowed under. Yeh-Yeh's House is a voyage of self-discovery and mother-daughter understanding set against the backdrop of a China that no longer exists.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429902724 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2007 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 573 KB |
About the Author
Evelina Chao currently holds the chair of Assistant Principal Viola with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra where she performs frequently as a soloist. She has published a novel, Gates of Grace, in 1985. She has written a series of articles for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Read an Excerpt
Yeh Yeh's House
A Memoir
By Evelina Chao
St. Mrtin's Press
Copyright © 2004 Evelina ChaoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0272-4
CHAPTER 1
YEH YEH, 1974
Though my family has been in America for over half a century, we still have Peking duck for Christmas. For this holiday, in 1974, two five-pounders are roasting in the oven, sputtering and popping like firecrackers, filling the house with smoke. It is my job to make the pancakes that go with them, and I stir boiling water into flour and roll out rounds, spreading sesame-seed oil between the layers. My father and brother discuss the Redskins' chances of making it to the Super Bowl while they count out chopsticks and set the table. In the next room, my sister's young daughters make plans to go sledding the next morning as it is snowing, unusual for this time of year in Virginia. When I finish the pancakes, my mother approaches me. "Yeh Yeh told me to give this to you," she says. She has already dispensed other small gifts: a pincushion made of tangerine-colored silk, a pair of miniature Chinese scissors that fold ingeniously into the shape of a peanut. It is not lost on me that she has saved the letter for last. I take it and put it in my pocket, hardly glancing at it. My mother forgets herself for a moment, stares at me, frowning, making that small noise of exasperation in her throat.
It is more than three years since I was last home for Christmas, in 1971. We come together this time not only because of the holidays, but to celebrate my mother and younger brother's return from China. My brother was on a six-month study trip; my mother went over at the end to escort him home. Now I hardly recognize my brother. He is wearing a blue Chinese jacket and trousers, black Chinese slippers, a bad Chinese haircut that makes him look like Woodstock — the bird in the Peanuts comic strip. Somewhere along the way, caught in the flush of proletariat spirit, he must have given away his sweatshirt and jeans. He has lost weight, but seems to have gained heft with his new air of earnestness. To me he seems foreign, overly deferential; he even smells different. I am envious, though, of the way he speaks Mandarin. When he asks my mother for another pair of chopsticks his inflection is perfect, like a Chinese born on the mainland. I can tell my mother is pleased from the way she smiles and closes her hand around his when she hands him the chopsticks.
It's no secret that my brother is my mother's favorite. He has gone the farthest of us first-generation children who boomerang from adopted country to homeland, traveling to China, getting a Chinese haircut. Not that I hadn't picked up parental hints that I embark on the same pilgrimage — the sighs, the long days of silence that were the subtext of our family — but it was my brother, the only son, who had fulfilled his filial duty. He had gone to Beijing to pay homage to my grandfather and aunts and uncles, drunk from the springs of his origin, atoned for my family's desertion to America. I admire my brother for this, but I'm also relieved. He was so thorough, zealous, that I hoped he'd done the job for me, too, meaning that I wouldn't have to go on my own journey of guilt. It wasn't that I was lazy or scared. I just had other compulsions.
The ducks are done and lay on the draining racks, gleaming with burnished succulence. I slice scallions, fill small bowls with hoisin sauce. Everyone sits down and watches my father carve the ducks, after which we put pieces of skin, fat, and meat on the pancakes with slivers of scallion and dollops of sauce. I notice that my brother has gone from the table to get himself a Coke from the fridge. I roll up my pancake and bite into it, squirting duck fat all over my mouth. I chew and roll my tongue around, savoring the salt of the duck, the sweetness of the sauce, and sharp tang of scallion. It is always a miracle, this first bite.
"Duck heaven," my brother moans, raising his Coke can in salute. He has removed his Chinese jacket, revealing the Stanford T-shirt underneath. I am glad to see how quickly he is reverting to his old self.
My mother chews her pancake slowly. When she finishes, she places her hands on either side of her plate. Her thumbs are clenched between her index and second fingers, giving them the look of clasps on a valise. It is a gesture I recognize all too well, one that indicates powerful feelings that my mother, normally a stoic, has trouble stowing. She fixes her gaze on me.
"You should go see Yeh Yeh," she says.
Something in her voice makes me afraid. "He's all right, isn't he?"
My mother and brother exchange glances.
"It's not over yet," my brother says.
"What do you mean?" I say.
"The Cultural Revolution."
My brother is staring at my mother's hands, whose knuckles are white. "The Red Guards have been arresting artists, intellectuals, anyone who had contact with Western culture," he says.
"Is Yeh Yeh in trouble? Is that what you're saying?"
My brother looks at my mother again. She stares straight ahead, avoiding his glance.
"Nobody knows for sure," he says.
Though I ask more questions about my grandfather, inquiring after his health and that of his wife, Nai Nai, and whether he had come under investigation by the Red Guards, no one has any answers. After dinner we go into the living room to gather around the tree. It is trimmed with ornaments my mother has collected over the years. Among the baked-dough Santa Claus and tin-stamped reindeer are prancing pink horses, white giraffes, and yellow-and-black lions from Szechuan and Changsha. They are made of cloth, stuffed with sawdust, sewn with stitches so minute that as a child I believed the Chinese elves who made them were smaller and more clever than any at the North Pole.
My father takes out his violin. During dinner, he is silent except for the noises he makes chewing his duck. Though he has an explosive temper, he is a taciturn man with the capacity to project silence that is frightening and omnipotent. When we begin singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!" accompanied by my mother on the piano, he puts the violin to his chin and suddenly his dark mood falls like a cloak dropped at his feet. A strange smile comes over his face. He closes his eyes and moves his body to the music, swaying like a concert violinist on stage. Even though he saws and moves his fingers awkwardly up and down the fingerboard, I am moved by how expressive he is, how the feelings and words he withholds flow out of him through the instrument.
After the music we clean up the kitchen, say good night and retire to our rooms. When I think everyone is asleep, I take out the envelope my mother has given me and open it. Yeh Yeh's handwriting is shaky and spidery. He is eighty-seven, and it's been a long time since I've heard from him. The letter is brief, only half a page:
... I'm growing deaf. I can no longer hear the crickets chirping in my room, much less the music on the radio. Da Mama has to shout when she asks me what I want for breakfast.
And then there is the last line, which I read over and over:
Sung Lien, come see me soon, before it is too late.
My Chinese name jumps out at me, because in all his previous letters, my grandfather addresses me by my American name. It was he who picked my Chinese name, which means "Lotus Blossom." This has caused me untold embarrassment over the years, because it sounds so un-American and because I do not think of myself as a flower of any kind. In fact, I tell no one that I have a Chinese name. Even on my driver's license it appears only as initials. Its only value is that it makes me grateful that I also have a name in English, unusual as it is. Now, my Chinese name stares up from my grandfather's letter like a hieroglyph I have only just deciphered. It reveals itself, emitting something florid, palpable, that imbues my grandfather's summons with poignancy and urgency. I feel like flying to China that very night. But the house is dark, the night is covered with snow, and on Christmas Eve nothing must stir.
Still, I move through the house, searching for the latest photographs my mother brought back from China. I find them on the kitchen table, where we had glanced through them earlier. There's one of the Beijing household, which includes Yeh Yeh, my uncle and two aunts, as well as two little grand-nieces visiting from Changsha. They are wearing sweaters and vests, padded coats, scarves, and earmuffs, huddling around a charcoal brazier in the middle of their living room. They look shaggy and bulky, like yaks bunched against arctic winds, yet they are smiling, and seem healthy.
"They have such rosy cheeks!" I exclaimed when I saw the photo for the first time.
"Rosy! Nothing!" my father snorted, looking over my shoulder. "That's carbon monoxide poisoning, from the charcoal!"
I looked closer. In the background the walls, windows, and furniture in the house are covered with a fine white dust. Suddenly I realized it was frost.
"How cold does it get in Beijing?" I asked.
"Freezing, freezing," my mother said, wrapping her arms around herself.
The kitchen is chilly. I scoop up the photographs, bring them back to my room, and crawl under the covers of the bed I have slept in since childhood. Looking around the room, I realize I always felt relatively safe here, growing up in the fifties before the great infusion of Asian immigrants to the Washington, D.C., area. As far as I know, we were the only Chinese family living in North Arlington. At the time, I knew we were different from everybody else. Still, I thought we were American. We had a Ford sedan, a television. On Saturdays we would go pick up my mother from work, then, as a special treat, head to McDonald's for hamburgers and fries. On Sundays we watched The Wonderful World of Disney and my father's favorite show, Wyatt Earp. My favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz.
The photographs I've carried to my bed depict a far different world. Flipping through them, I pause at one of Yeh Yeh sitting in his study, napping. It is obvious the little grandnieces, thrilled to borrow my mother's fancy Japanese camera, have taken this one. They have managed to drape a sock on Yeh Yeh's bald head and snap the picture without him waking. Even with the sock on his head, Yeh Yeh is the picture of dignity. Dressed in his long, traditional Chinese gown and black felt shoes, he still looks imposing. Even the clumsy Chinese hearing aid sticking out of his ear like a cork and the walking cane lying across his lap don't detract from this.
When I was a child, my mother made sure I knew that my grandfather, a professor of English as well as a poet and theologian, was a very famous man in China. I discovered early on how exacting Yeh Yeh was when it came to the English language. He returned every letter I sent to him covered with red pencil marks correcting all my mistakes. It got so I began checking my letters to him over and over before putting them in the mail. I grew to think of him as a figure of incontrovertible authority, my own Wizard of Oz, a very great and scary man who lived far away in a mysterious place — a man who made me shake every time I opened the thin blue aerograms, fearing his thunderous edict: DO NOT SPLIT YOUR INFINITIVES!
But Yeh Yeh had his gentler side, too. He joked in his letters about growing old, how, being retired, he didn't know what to do with all the time he had. Sometimes, he wrote, all he thought about was the hair growing in his ears. I wrote to him about my reptile project, about our new dog, wondering all the time what he looked like. In those years there wasn't a single picture of him in our house, which I thought was strange. And though my mother talked about Yeh Yeh, my father never did, even though Yeh Yeh was his father. All the letters that came to our house from China were addressed to me or my mother, never my dad.
Back then, the kids in my school pulled their eyes into slits, mocking my slanty eyes, or sneered that people like me caused World War II. I was shocked at their mean and false accusations, wondering what I had done to deserve them. Sometimes I felt like an animal in the wild, a deer, which, never having been exposed to hunters, doesn't know to run or hide. I don't know what moved me to write to Yeh Yeh about these things. Perhaps putting them down on those flimsy blue aerograms to China made them seem less onerous or real. He wrote back within a month, sooner than he usually did:
Dear Granddaughter Evelina,
You must always be yourself, no matter what other people say or do to you. Stick to the truth. Even though life can be very hard, try not to be afraid. Study hard. Remember that modesty becomes a person best. Don't draw attention to yourself. Obey your parents. This is the best way.
I read Yeh Yeh's letter over and over. Somehow I felt that, even with him being so far away, I would be all right. After getting this letter, I began looking through our house for a picture of him. I searched the attic, the basement, through all the boxes my mother had brought in our moves from place to place. In one of the boxes I found my parents' wedding portrait, taken in China. They were both in their twenties but looked like teenagers. My mother had a blank look, as if her life had yet to come to the surface of her face. My father's smile was more of a smirk. He had thick, shiny black hair, and there was something to his high cheekbones, his narrow eyes, that gave him a wild, restless look, like a Mongolian horse rider. But I never found a picture of Yeh Yeh. The only photograph we had of any of our relatives in China was the one of Aunt Lucy, my father's older sister, which sat on my parents' dresser. Though this was not the photograph I wanted, I would still go look at it, thinking that by staring at Aunt Lucy long enough, I would somehow get a glimpse of Yeh Yeh.
This photo of Aunt Lucy had been taken at her graduation from the University of Chicago in 1950, when she received her doctorate in English literature. She looks pale, slim, her hair drawn back tightly in a bun. Dressed in a long black graduation gown, she looks severe, not unfriendly or unkind, but extremely critical, like someone you could never please, no matter how hard you tried. Her eyes seem to see everything.
"Aunt Lucy is the highbrow in the family," my mother always said, in a tone I found confusing. Later, when I understood such things, I detected the irony in her voice, expressing a quiet hurt of her own. She told me of Lucy's great achievement, publishing the Chinese translation of T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land. Although I didn't read The Waste Land until I was in high school, I knew somehow that my aunt had done something miraculous and difficult and that her accomplishment bestowed great honor on our family. My young friends, who hadn't read The Waste Land either, much less poetry of any kind, challenged me when they caught me bragging about my aunt.
"What's so great about The Waste Land?" they said. "Was it on TV?"
Now I flip through the stack of my mother's photographs to the most recent one of Aunt Lucy. She is sitting in her tiny room in the house in Beijing, a book in her lap. She looks annoyed; it's clear my shutterbug grandnieces have disturbed her. Aunt Lucy looks her age now. At sixty, her hair, drawn back in the same bun, is gray. Again I wonder why it is her photograph that sits on my parents' bureau and not my grandfather's.
I search the covers on my bed, locate Yeh Yeh's most recent letter and read it again. Sung Lien, come see me soon, before it is too late. What does he mean, too late? My mother insists that, even at his age he is in good health, and though the phrase, "Cultural Revolution," has an ominous ring to it, I think Yeh Yeh ought to be safe. Why would they harm an eighty-seven-year-old man, especially one as eminent and respected as he? Even so, I make up my mind to go to China in the spring, when the music season ends and I am free to travel. It is the time when Yeh Yeh's plum tree, which he planted himself and where he sits in the shade, composing poems, will be in bloom. As pleasant as this vision is, I lie awake, beset by thoughts as improbable as the news reports filtering in on the airwaves from China about their ongoing revolution. The rumors are faint but unsettling, like earth tremors. Surely, I tell myself, wizards were beyond politics. Wizards did not suffer or die. Or did they?
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Yeh Yeh's House by Evelina Chao. Copyright © 2004 Evelina Chao. Excerpted by permission of St. Mrtin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Author's Note,
PART ONE: AROUSING THE DEAF,
1. Yeh Yeh, 1974,
2. Arousing the Deaf,
3. Saint Paul, 1982,
4. Aftershock,
5. Minnesota,
6. Kinship,
7. Da Bobo,
8. Black Sheep,
9. Mandarin,
PART TWO: RIVER OF YEARS,
10. Shanghai,
11. Shrewin,
12. Six Floors Up,
13. Widgets,
14. Suzhou,
15. Xi'an,
16. Terra-cotta,
17. Chongqing,
18. Yangtze,
19. Mother Hen,
20. Changsha,
21. Beijing,
22. Doghouse,
23. Pilgrim,
24. Storm,
25. Good-bye,
26. Lightness,
Epilogue,