Thank You For Those Who Were Nice to My Dad

My father kept sending money to his hometown in mainland China. According to my mother, even when they were just starting their business and life was so tough that my parents could only afford bread for many months, my father kept supporting his friends, relatives in the rural country side near east of Cantone province. My mom and I have been troubled by this act for many years.

My father went through very difficult childhood after communist party took over China in 1950 because the familty possessed lands and my grand-grand father was a judge in KMT's court room. My grand-grand father committed suicide before the police arrest him, my grand mother and her four children were deprived of the right to live like a normal human beings. My grand father was in Indonisia, married to one of his students and didn't want to go home.

In my father's stories, the Liao's family were like carrying some sort of disease that no one in the village would dare to get in touch with, or talk to. There was no income and no help, my father, as the first son of the family, age of 13, went to the forest to chop woods and sold for money. My grand mother could not find any job but to sell her blood to feed her young kids (she could not bear the hardship and drown herself in a pond later).

My father told me, he still remembers all those people who were nice to him during that tough period. Some old lady accidentally dropped a banana leaf wrapped rice ball in front of him. Some person sat down behind my father, back against my father's back, for a while without talking to each other. Some hid my father in the attic when police were searching for him. And many many other stories.

I started to understand how much it means for my father to send money home...