Some of My Days: 施璧倫回憶錄

By Pilwun Shih and 施璧倫

Pilwun Shih (also known as Pilwun Wang) was born in Beijing in 1931, the year the Japanese invaded Northeastern China. Her whole family moved from northern China to southern China traveling along the railways from Hankou to Gongzhou, and then through Hong Kong to Vietnam. In 1940 the family moved to Kunming. After the war the family moved to Tai

• Language: English
• Publisher: EHGBooks
• Release date: Nov 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781647849085

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FORWARD

I. STORIES OF MY MOTHER

Lucky Young Country Man

Stories in West Village

The Rhapsody Parker Fountain Pen

Her Destiny

My Uncle And His Stinky Toufu

The Good Old Days - Cooking, Cleaning and Raising Pigs

Be Punctual. It’s Dinner Time

Professor Fang and his Orange Orchard

The Threshold

There is Heaven, and There is the World of Men

II. LIFE IN AMERICA

A Cradle Land

Affairs on Bridge Street

He Lectures, I Teach

Campus Talk

One of My Days

All She Needs are Scallions

Don’t Invite Them to Your Table

The Key Is Turning In The Key-hole

Christmas Resolution

Indulgence - to Piece a Puzzle

The Cleaning Lady is Coming

The Story of a Breadmaker

You Got to Practice

He and Eggs

A Chicken Comedy

A Piece of China

III. TRAVELING

Don’t Blame the Wind

No More We or Us

Of Husband and Wife

Left for Taiwan

Across the Border

On the Train

A Journey to the Southern Hemisphere

The Inn

Lost and Found

Arrival

A Piece of the Puzzle

FORWARD

I lived in Princeton Junction, New Jersey for almost seven years (2007-2013). The landscape of Princeton Junction was different from Ithaca, my home in the US for thirty years. Rather than the immediate hills and waterfalls that I encountered on my daily outings, I walked a terrain full of flatness and street side windings. My walks there were full of twists and bends, but I felt my life was going nowhere for me at the age of close to eighty. Fortunately, a senior center was located close to my house. I went to there to do taichi and yoga exercises, and also joined a creative writing class. The classes extended my life, but my writing class in particular, also surprisingly deepened my life.  I was spurred on to draw from stories and experiences of my long ago past. I tried to recollect those stories from my mother’s generation and my own experiences during my early life. Here are the fruits of my creative labors.

Anyone who happens by and picks this up to read might say:  Oh, that was when….

I am dedicating the following poem to all the people at the senior center.

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I Appreciate

I am a semi-withered leaf

Drifting down in a shower of colored leaves

Some of them are amethyst, transparent yet deep

Some of them are olive, astringently bitter yet sweet

Some of them are burgundy, smooth yet burning

The leaves appear in different shapes

They are chronicles, poems, autobiographies, and plays

Floating, swirling, wafting

In realism or romanticism, fiction or fantasy

Here is a book of Mother Nature

The birds fly overhead

The plants soundlessly grow

The creatures talk to each other

Here are stories of rural folk

Comedy or tragedy

They happen every day

Here are biographies of

A doctor, who delivers a baby

A mother, who sends her daughter to ballet

A boy, who becomes a soldier

The writers travel between heaven and earth

Experiencing and imagining their events

Then comes discussion time

To pan the gold of our writing,

Where glints of punctuation are even discerned

I appreciate especially the teacher’s evaluations

He can read a Chinese mind

Despite and through her broken English

I appreciate all of our time together.

June 2013

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To The Senior Center

Grandpa, where are you going?

I’m going to my school—The Senior Center

Have you checked the weather today?

Is it a little too warm? Or is it a little chilly?

Who cares, I have been seasoned for seventy years.

Grandpa, where are you going?

I’m going to my school---The Senior Center

Be careful when you cross the street.

I have traveled over a thousand crags

and crossed torrents of water.

Don’t worry; I have a cane in my hand.

Grandpa, where are you going?

I’m going to my school---The Senior Center

Watch what you eat.

I know, I know. A plate of salad would be fine

Since I have tasted sour, sweet, bitter

and a hundred kinds of spicy

Grandpa, why are you going there so eagerly?

Because, following the direction of the teacher

there, I’ll take a deep, deep breath

I’ll have a long, long stretch

Because I’ll play table tennis

The sound of ping-pong

is evidence that my paddle is  not so old yet.

Because I will meet friends of my generation

We’ll talk about our memories from our time

We’ll talk about an old story

Or a movie from last century

That we were greatly touched by

We were so innocent and naïve

And now it seems so stupid and so funny

We’ll laugh at ourselves so loud

Even tears come to our eyes

May 2011

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I. STORIES OF MY MOTHER

Lucky Young Country Man

Jia-Hui came home from his office a little earlier on that weekend. The first thing he did was embrace his mother, since his father had died recently.

Mom, how was your day today?

Fine, don’t be so crazy. She pushed her son a little.

I’m not crazy. I’m happy. I can do whatever I want to do this Sunday. I have a big book to read. We can visit our neighbors, the Wu family. He was whistling a tune merrily.

What would you like for dinner? Jane wants to have noodles.

So, where is my dear sister Jane? Does she have a date with Joe?

She went shopping. But she said she'd be back for dinner.

I don’t care much about what we are having. Anything will do. I heard the Wus'cousin Lin-You is coming to visit from Tianjin University. . .there must be a lot of news about the Japanese occupation of the Northeast. Tianjin is a big city.

After dinner Lin-You came to ask Jia-Hui and his family to go over to the Wus next door.

The Wus’ house was much bigger than Jia-Hui’s house. Theirs was a big family. Besides Mr. Wu and Mrs. Wu and their children, Mr. Wu’s sister and the Wus’ relatives and friends also appeared frequently.

There was always something exciting happening. Jia-Hui’s family was a small one. As a clerk in the railway company, he hand copied and managed the documents. As an assistant secretary, he made some drafts, too. His beautiful handwriting was well known in his working circle. But he was bored. If only he could go to college.but he knew that was impossible. He needed to work to support his family.

As he expected, the Wus’ living room was crowded. People were discussing the Japanese invasion. The Japanese considered the northeast area  (the Japanese called it Manchuria) an independent country. They said China would perish within three months.

There were a lot of demonstrations in the big cities. We Chinese really should do something, said Lin-You.

Did you bring us new books and magazines? Do you know more popular anti-Japanese songs? We really need them, Jia-Hui said.

I gave them all to April.

April was Mr. Wu’s younger sister. She had just come home from nurse training school.

April, show me those books. Are they in your room? Let me read them first, OK?

You can’t take them all. I want to read, too.

It is too hot in the room. Let’s go out to walk on the railroad tracks. Let’s have a race. I’m tired of copying those documents.

But your handwriting is so neat. I like the way you write your characters very much.

Really? I’ll copy a poem for you tomorrow. Let’s go to get Lin-you to go with us.

The railroad tracks led them farther and farther toward the horizon. The three of them raced one another on the tracks.

Jia-Hui was the tallest. He walked on the tracks with big steps. Lin-You’s steps were stable. And April ran behind them. She yelled:  Wait for me. Wait for me!

Lin-You, I'd like to see the outside world. Reading cannot satisfy me. I don’t like being a copy machine. Self-studying is not enough at all.

Let’s buy some icecream to take home! April yelled behind them.

OK, OK, you little girl! Lin-You said. He acted like a big brother.

I’m not a little girl. Soon I’ll graduate.

Yes. Some day you’ll be a big girl. I can tell you are growing taller and more mature.

It seems like life will never change. My days are fresh yet boring, Jia-Hui murmured to himself.

One day, Mrs. Wu’s sister, Mrs. Liu, came to the Wus' house with a young man. She said he was her brother-in-law, Feng-Yong, just arrived from a countryside of Shandong where the Liu family owned a large farm. She wanted Feng-Yong to join the younger generation in the Wus' house.

It seemed Feng-Yong got along with the younger group very well. He dressed himself with a silky shirt and a pair of trousers that made him look like a rich landlord. He also had a gold watch in his pocket. He spoke with heavy accent. April felt his speech was very funny and