My mom, sister, and I were visiting my grandmother for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic started. I had last seen her seven months ago in December. In the elementary school parking lot, the noodle-thin legs of folding lawn chairs scraped against the asphalt as we formed a socially distanced circle. The midday sun in the cloudless sky warmed my arms as I lugged the stainless steel pot of fried rice from our trunk, placing it in the circle’s center. After chopping mushrooms, steaming broccoli, and frying eggs, I was excited to see what my grandmother would think of this first meal I had prepared for her. After rubbing sanitizing gel all over my hands, I distributed plastic forks and snow-white paper plates filled with rice. Specks of pine-colored broccoli, traffic-cone orange carrots, tan mushrooms, and dandelion-yellow egg dotted everyone’s plates.
The mix of English and Cantonese ceased as we savored the freshness of the vegetables and saltiness of the soy sauce. My grandmother’s fork hung in midair as she smiled and said my cooking was delicious! Giggling, I gave her an air hug. She commented on how lucky we were to have such a fresh and filling meal. Tasting the rice reminded her of life back in China. I had heard snippets of stories detailing my grandmother’s past, but I never knew exactly what happened to the generations before me. Today was my chance to stitch the details together. I call her Po Po, which is Cantonese for grandmother. She was born in 1937 as the oldest of seven children; she has four brothers and two sisters. Born in Canton in the southeastern region of China, Po Po experienced the very beginning of the Communist takeover.
As a ninth grader, I had been excited to learn about China’s history to better understand the full context of my family’s past. I learned that starting in the 1900's, China underwent a period of turmoil. Warlords were the principal governing force, an ineffective system leading to perpetual combat between ruling feudal states. A new political ideology, Communism, emerged in 1917 after Russia underwent the Russian Revolution. The Communists promoted the ideology that the peasants (Proletariat) should rise up against the rich members of society (Bourgeoisie). With their newfound momentum, the Russians looked toward struggling China to spread their Communist ideals, hoping it would provide much needed civil and economic stability. Four years later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) established themselves as one of two main political parties in China. After years of fighting with the Kuomintang, also known as the Nationalists, Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. My grandmother was 12 years old at the time. I had been fascinated by the textbooks touting Mao Zedong’s leadership and prowess in implementing the agricultural and industrial Five Year Plans which brought civil order and a prosperous life for the Chinese masses.
However, that day in the parking lot, my grandmother’s life story provided a completely different perspective to the history I had learned in the classroom. Po Po taught me that, in China, to own land was a privilege that qualified someone to be labeled as a Bourgeoisie. Many years before the rise of the CCP, Po Po’s great-grandfather purchased a plot of land which was passed down through the generations and shared with their extended family. As a young girl, my grandmother spent her days bringing workers to the fields, maintaining her own garden, and taking the cows to graze. She and her family toiled on their land to enjoy a stable life. What school curricula and textbooks fail to teach is this other story– my grandmother’s experience under the label of Bourgeoisie. The fractured family connections, lives lost, and shattered dreams that the members of the Bourgeoisie class had to endure during the Communist takeover are never printed.
When Po Po was 12, a shadow was cast over her fields as Mao Zedong came into power. Her life immediately took a turn for the worse. Under the Communists, my grandmother’s family lived in constant fear as previously friendly neighbors turned into hateful local officials patrolling the streets outside their home. Due to societal hierarchies, we are led to generally believe that the rich are almost indestructible. Affluent members of society face no obstacles in life and their money can shield them from pain and suffering. However, that day in the parking lot with all of us sitting in a circle, Po Po gave me a different perspective. While the Communists were harvesting rice to feed the Proletariats on land confiscated from families like hers, four members of my family committed suicide directly in response to Communist actions.
During those horrific years, Po Po’s grandfather traveled ahead without his family, escaped from Canton, and immigrated to the United States. He sent letters back to Po Po’s family, advising them to stay in Canton. He wrote that it was too perilous to attempt an escape towards Hong Kong, and that he could not send enough money to support their living in a more expensive city. Po Po’s family had no choice but to follow his instruction and remain where they were. Inevitably, they were forced into servitude by the Communists. She recounted that while eating dinner, the Communists would barge in, prod their meager food with dirty sticks to see what they were eating, and leave with menacing laughs. She saw her beautiful silk blouses, which were saved for special occasions, stolen and worn by Proletariat children who mocked her at school. After Po Po’s grandfather learned about his family’s suffering, he felt responsible for having advised them to stay in Canton. Immeasurable guilt overtook him. He had escaped from the Communists with aspirations of later bringing his family to join him in the United States. Now, he was hopeless and couldn't tolerate the thought of not having protected his family. He took his own life.
The wind shook the leaves above our heads, sending a cool wave of air across our faces. As the flimsy paper napkins in our laps fluttered in the breeze, my grandmother continued to share the stories of her past. In 1945, Po Po’s uncle returned home from serving in World War II. The Communist presence was felt throughout China, and her uncle wanted to procure a gun to protect his family. He asked a neighbor to accompany him to acquire one, but her uncle never followed through with his purchase. Later, after he had already started moving towards Hong Kong in search of safety, the neighbor lied to the Communist officials, saying that her uncle had actually purchased the gun. The Communists stormed into my grandmother’s home in search of the illegal weapon. Po Po’s mother and her father’s mother were the only grown-ups home at that time. My eyes widened when Po Po told us that although no one in her family had obtained a gun or committed a felony, they were forced into prison. During the two weeks it took to prove they never owned a gun, Po Po strapped her baby brother on her back and walked for miles along a dirt road, even in the pouring rain, to bring dinner to her mother and grandmother every evening. Once she arrived at the prison, the guards would snatch the rice from her and hurl it onto the ground. Po Po watched with fear from the prison’s exterior as her mother and grandmother picked through the dirt and pebbles to get to their food.
The plate of rice balanced peacefully in my lap suddenly jumped into focus. I realized why Po Po never left any food on her plate and always made sure I had enough to eat. These stories embodied a new point of view that I could never have gleaned in the classroom. Personal stories of immense loss and suffering are not shared within the covers of a high school textbook which focus only on the success of the CCP for some of the Chinese people. My grandmother’s life story brought a new viewpoint to a piece of world history that is thought by many to already be fully understood.
If the torment of her mother’s imprisonment wasn’t enough for a 12 year old, Po Po’s grandmother on her mother’s side also committed suicide during this time. With the CCP ruling every village, owning expensive or valuable objects such as jewelry attracted negative attention. The family owned a few gold necklaces and emerald-green jade bracelets that had been cherished from generation to generation. These pieces held considerable monetary and sentimental value, and were to be protected at all costs. Po Po’s mother decided to give the precious jewelry to different neighbors to hide them from Communist raids. In order to keep track of who had which pieces, she wrote their addresses on a scrap of paper and gave it to her mother (Po Po’s grandmother), who then hid it in a secret drawer of a wooden desk.
The plan was that if the Communist forces raided their village, Po Po’s grandmother was responsible for burning the slip of paper. However, an invasion happened so suddenly that there was no time to destroy the incriminating evidence. The Communists tore through her grandmother’s home, littering the floor with clothes and shoving furniture out of their paths. They eventually discovered the slip of paper. It detailed where the families lived and who had which pieces of jewelry, leading the Communists to terrorize and interrogate innocent family friends. Filled with shame for not doing her part and endangering other families, Po Po’s grandmother took her own life. Po Po’s mother spent the rest of her life burdened with the guilt of having caused her own mother’s death.
In the mid 1950’s after surviving numerous struggles, my grandmother and her family escaped south to Guangzhou and then Hong Kong, which was a British colony at that time. In September,1961, Po Po married my grandfather in Hong Kong. Adding to her own grief, she took on the sorrow and losses of her husband’s family. Po Po never met her mother-in-law. That day in the parking lot, I learned why. If my grandfather, whom we called Gong Gong, were to immigrate to the United States, he would use specific papers which verified his identity. Never needing them and already in America, Gong Gong let a family friend use the documents to flee China. Requiring verification, Gong Gong’s mother had to travel to Hong Kong to confirm that this friend was her own son. The boy successfully fled to the United States with her help, but Gong Gong’s mother received news that her granddaughter was very ill. Ignoring advice from her family to stay in Hong Kong, she journeyed back to the mainland to assist with the ailing baby. After being swiftly captured by the Communists, she hung herself to escape persecution.
Gong Gong lived the rest of his life knowing that if his mother had remained within the protected region of Hong Kong, she would be alive. Receiving the news that his mother had no reason to live brought immeasurable pain upon Gong Gong who never said goodbye. The suffering intensified when his grandmother committed suicide as well. Po Po could not remember what events took place that caused this fourth family member to end her life. At that moment, I realized the importance of writing this memoir. Many details of my family’s story had already disappeared, and I wanted to prevent any further loss.
At the age of 25, Po Po came to the United States in 1962, and the rest of her family immigrated in 1966. Po Po and Gong Gong worked hard to achieve the American Dream. Gong Gong became a draftsman with a coveted desk job, and Po Po learned enough English to work in the cafeteria of a local high school. They raised three children in their inner-city Boston home which they owned, and sent all three to college. Although she endured many hardships as a Chinese immigrant in America, Po Po is extremely grateful to be alive and never takes for granted her freedom in the United States.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I had more opportunities that summer to sit in the parking lot with my grandmother and listen to her story. In exchange for my fried rice, Po Po’s stories of resilience and perseverance gifted me enormous hope that I could endure the uncertainties of these tumultuous times. I also knew that I wanted to give voice to her story, one that is shared by thousands of Chinese families and which will surely be forgotten if not documented. Taught limited perspectives in the classroom, I realized the importance of having an accurate account of history which incorporates all perspectives.
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