{"id":1940,"date":"2014-06-29T05:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-06-29T12:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/?p=1940"},"modified":"2014-06-30T21:33:19","modified_gmt":"2014-07-01T04:33:19","slug":"a-mothers-ashes-and-a-chinese-soldier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/a-mothers-ashes-and-a-chinese-soldier\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mother’s Ashes and a Chinese Soldier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gul-2\"<\/a>It was 1983, our first trip to China, and though my husband had been born a few miles from where we now stood, he wasn\u2019t entirely at ease. Let\u2019s just say that until he knew the situation better, he preferred to act with judicious caution. His cousin Andy, it seemed, had no such concern.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d traveled from Manila for this trip\u2014Andy and his wife Jane, my husband Eugene, our three daughters and I. It was the first opportunity in thirty-four years for Eugene and Andy and Jane to visit Gulangyu to pay their respects at their grandparents\u2019 graves. For Andy, the primary objective of the trip was to retrieve his mother\u2019s ashes and bring them back to the Philippines.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d tracked her urn to a mausoleum at the edge of this monastery. Scurrying around Gulangyu and Xiamen, he\u2019d gathered the required papers and all the proper signatures. So what in the world was holding things up?<\/p>\n

The rest of us, waiting in the monastery courtyard, winced as his voice and then the voice of someone else, every bit as insistent as his, blasted through the half-open door of the mausoleum.<\/p>\n

From what I\u2019d observed in the past few days, the people in my husband\u2019s hometown were as strong willed and direct as he and his cousin Andy were. The main difference was, the local people knew the ropes.<\/p>\n

As the argument inside continued, our three daughters wandered over to the edge of the yard. The oldest started a song from Grease<\/em>, and the others joined in. Eugene and Jane huddled, spreading worry from one wrinkled brow to the other. They\u2019d long since switched from English to Hokkien, a language I didn\u2019t understand. Even in English, I wouldn\u2019t have known what to suggest.<\/p>\n

Twenty minutes passed. Andy and the keeper of the urns paused and then started yelling again. Eugene went inside. After a while he marched out, and the shouting resumed. Would they ever give up?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going over there across the road and take some pictures,\u201d I told Eugene. He nodded, too concerned about Andy to pay much attention.<\/p>\n

\"011_11<\/a>In those days, Chinese roads were peaceful\u2014no smog, no traffic jams. That day there wasn\u2019t even a bicycle in sight. I crossed over and looked around, searching for a good subject to photograph. I\u2019d stopped doing Chinese brush painting by then, but I still had an eye for Chinese landscapes. I climbed a small hill and came upon one of my favorite subjects: a wind-twisted coastal pine. It was leaning out from a low cliff. I pointed my camera, took a few shots, moved to the side for a better angle, and clicked again. Then I stepped back so I could include the water and the islands in the distance. Holding the camera up, I looked through my viewfinder.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when I heard Eugene. \u201cHoney,\u201d he shouted. \u201cCome back! Quick! Put your camera down.\u201d He was running up the hill, and from the look on his face I guessed that Andy had finally gone too far, that he\u2019d seriously antagonized the man in charge of the urns and the man had called the police who were right this very minute preparing to haul him off to prison.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t see the soldier with his rifle drawn\u2014not until I was almost back to the road. By then he\u2019d lowered his rifle. He struck me as very young and slight. Not particularly menacing \u2026 except for the rifle.<\/p>\n

There must have been a sign somewhere (in Chinese) that said \u201cKeep out\u201d and \u201cAbsolutely no photography.\u201d Or maybe everyone else knew that the Matsu Islands across the sea were the object of a nasty, long-running border dispute between China and Taiwan.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was going to shoot you,\u201d Eugene said. \u201cI told him I\u2019d take care of it, that you were a foolish foreigner who didn\u2019t know any better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, some thirty-one years later, I\u2019m still not sure the soldier would have shot me. I tend to think not. But then, having grown up in a peaceful time and place, I just naturally expect people to be friendly and that in the end things will work out. Eugene, who was born in a war zone and spent his childhood in the middle of first one war and then another, had a different outlook.<\/p>\n

For Andy, that day was a bust. He had to leave the mausoleum without getting his mother\u2019s ashes.<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t give up though. Not on your life. The following afternoon, he returned accompanied by a local official whose superior status the keeper of urns immediately recognized. Suddenly the once obdurate man became soft as tofu.<\/p>\n

In the end, Andy succeeded, walking away with the urn and his mother\u2019s ashes.<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was 1983, our first trip to China, and though my husband had been born a few miles from where we now stood, he wasn\u2019t entirely at ease. Let\u2019s just say that until he knew the situation better, he preferred to act with judicious caution. His cousin Andy, it seemed, had no such concern. We\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,318,253,16],"tags":[45,421,423,424,195,422,150,420,933,21],"class_list":["post-1940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-photography","category-travel","category-visiting-gulangyu","tag-chinese-brush-painting","tag-chinese-monastery","tag-chinese-soldier","tag-growing-up-in-wartime","tag-gulangyu-china","tag-hokkien","tag-manila","tag-parents-ashes","tag-photography","tag-xiamen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-vi","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":894,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/visiting-gulangyu\/the-fall-of-the-bamboo-curtain\/","url_meta":{"origin":1940,"position":0},"title":"The Fall of the Bamboo Curtain","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"September 7, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"China, out of reach When I was growing up, large portions of the earth were simply off limits to us\u2014the Soviet Union, cut off by the Iron Curtain; East Germany, blocked by the Berlin Wall; and China, hidden from view behind the Bamboo Curtain. 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But it will be different. And you will be different. I suppose that was Thomas Wolfe's point when he wrote this classic of American literature. I won't know for sure for a while, though. 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But the occasion totally slipped my mind until one day I clicked on Timo\u2019s post, \u201cSecond Blogaversary.\u201d You see, Timo started his blog Crazy Chinese Family a few days after I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "blogging"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Celebration","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/celebrate.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1719,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/writing\/tiger-tail-soup-the-novel\/","url_meta":{"origin":1940,"position":5},"title":"Have I Piqued Your Interest Yet?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"June 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Have I succeeded, dear readers of my blog, in arousing your curiosity? Over the past ten months, have I been able to spark your interest in topics related to my novel? Have I stimulated your hunger for more? 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