A Chinese from Singapore

By Samuel Wong

A young Chinese came to the U.S. for theological training. His goal was to become a pastor/teacher in Singapore. Upon graduation, he returned to Singapore with his Caucasian wife to fulfill his obligations and to do post-graduate study, concurrently. Unwittingly, the young couple was entangled in church and secular politics and they had to leave Singapore. They began a new life in America. At several critical junctures of the protagonists career when he was in a relatively comfortable environment, he moved out of the comfort zone to tackle a new challenge, in response to a higher calling. The detours in his life journey, the prejudice and discrimination in the workplace, the consistent acts of fairness of people of good will, the secrets of his success, and the mellowing of his worldview and religious faith are the substance of this unusual book of inspiration. For a deeper appreciation of one who has led a life full of challenges, a life characterized by many successes against high odds and a life replete with recognitions and awards in secular and religious settings, I invite you to read on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781514470213

Samuel Wong

Sam Wong began formal study of massage therapy in Northern Virginia Community College in 2010 after his retirement from government service. He is trained in Western massage and Chinese tui na. He has created the Virginian Stretch and Yin Yang Touch and has adapted massage to treating fibromyalgia, posttraumatic stress disorder, and scoliosis. Primarily a research massage therapist in private practice, Sam is a board-approved continuing education provider and board-certified in therapeutic massage and bodywork. He promotes caring for caregivers as essential for healthcare and provides free massages to veterans and their caregivers in the DC area.

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A Chinese From Singapore

Samuel Wong

Copyright © 2009 by Samuel Wong.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009900228

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4415-0198-1

ISBN: Ebook 978-1-5144-7021-3

Softcover 978-1-4415-0197-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

Foreword

Preface

1. Childhood in Chinatown, Singapore (1939-45)

a. What’s in a Name?

b. My Parents

c. The Chinatown Apartment

2. Attending Tong Zhi Primary School (1946-49)

a. Initiation to Book Learning

b. Better to get a C

c. My Chinatown

3. Attending Yang Zheng Primary School (1950-51)

a. The School

b. Primary 5

c. Primary 6

d. First Exposure to the Christian Faith

4. My First Job: An Office Gofer (1952)

5. Attending Trafalgar School (1952-54)

a. The Standout Student

b. The Chung family

c. The Final Year at Trafalgar

d. The House at Tessensohn Road

6. Attending Victoria School (1955-58)

a. First Year in a Secondary School

b. Church Activities

c. Second Year in Victoria

d. Into the Liberal Arts Stream

e. The Stockwells

f. Final Year in Secondary Education

7. Training for a Church Vocation (1959-62)

a. My Introduction to Trinity College

b. MYF Institute and Summer Caravan

c. Meeting the Leiffers in Singapore

d. Challenges in the Final Year

8. The First Pastoral Assignments (1963-64)

a. The Kuala Lipis Church

b. The Port Dickson Church

9. Graduate Training for a Church Career (1964-67)

a. Studying for a B.D. Degree

b. Enrollment in the M.A. Program

c. Preparing for Teaching in Singapore

d. Getting Married

10. Wandering in Singapore (1967-68)

a. No Job Available

b. Another Disappointment

c. National Service

11. Pursuing a Doctorate (1968-74)

a. First Year in Graduate School

b. Research Assistant

12. My First Fulltime Job in the U.S. (1970-73)

a. Teaching Sociology in a Women’s College

b. Serving as Acting Chairman

c. Qualifying for the Ph.D.

d. Moving to New York

13. Serving as a Pastor in New York (1973-74)

a. Being a Pastor again

b. The Church at North White Plains

c. Joining the New York Annual Conference

d. Re-Visiting Singapore

14. Doing Research at Howard University (1974-76)

a. Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Educational Policy

b. Teaching in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology

15. Empowerment in the United Methodist Church (1976-81)

a. Early Experiences with the Commission

b. Working with the Asian American Constituency

c. The General Conference

d. Pursuing Diversity and Inclusiveness

16. Ensuring Equal Opportunity in USDA (1981-82)

a. Multiyear Affirmative Action Plan

b. Asian Pacific American Heritage Week

17. Venturing into the International Arena (1982-86)

a. China Program

b. My First Visit to China

c. Chinese Visitors in the U.S.

d. More Visits to China

e. Visit of the Chinese Veterinary Team

18. Taking on Administrative Assignments (1986-88)

a. The gate keeper

b. The trouble-shooter

19. Becoming a Manager (1988-94)

a. Deputy Assistant Administrator for Administration

b. Asian Pacific American Network in Agriculture

c. Career Development

d. Training for Senior Executive Service

e. Merger of OICD and FAS

20. Recovery from Merger (1995-99)

a. Detail to NASA

b. The Passing of Dorothy Leiffer

c. The Government Performance and Results Act

d. EEO Complaint

e. Hong Kong Agricultural Trade Office

f. God’s Answer to Prayer

21. Representing the U.S. in China (1999-2003)

22. Promoting Foreign Market Development (2003-04)

23. My Church Connections

a. Chinese Americans in the United Methodist Church

b. The Cabin John United Methodist Church

c. The Springfield United Methodist Church

d. Back to the Chinese Church

24. More of what I thought and Wrote about

a. New Wine in Old Bottles

b. The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness

c. The Crime of Reward

d. Death is Rude

e. Thy Kingdom Come

f. Lessons of Fatherhood

g. Chinese in America

h. The Impact of Institutional Racism

i. Empowerment of Asian Americans

j. How Shall We Sing the Lord’s Song?

k. Expanding Our Circle

l. China’s Need for Trees sows Seeds for Trade

m. Closing Statement at the EEOC Hearing

n. Strategies for Career Advancement

o. In Memory of Murray Leiffer

p. Equality, Excellence, and Empowerment

q. Empowering Women in Ministry

r. In Memory of Dorothy Leiffer

s. Ministerial Recruitment among Chinese Americans

t. Partnership with God

Glossary of Acronyms

For

Cathy, Philip and John Paul

Isabel and Imogen

and

In Memory of

Murray H. and Dorothy C. Leiffer

Foreword

Marcus Chung-Sun Fang

Former Foreign Student Advisor

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

This remarkable life story is told in such an interesting fashion that it will delight any reader. Even for someone like me who has known Sam for nearly five decades, this account of the incredible twists and turns in Sam’s life (especially between 1967 and 1968) reads like a suspense novel.

Different readers will be interested in different parts of the book. Some will find interesting Sam’s discussion on Chinese culture, such as the naming of children. Those interested in government service will find the description of how agencies worked informative. For me, the book’s intent that Sam is essentially writing for his grandchildren and their children invokes a resonance. For several decades, I have spent time researching the Fang genealogy and have gathered over 2,900 individual names across eight generations. I have also collected stories of my own line as well as those of other lines. I know my search for root would have been less frustrating if some of my ancestors had recorded their stories in some fashion.

How two young men born two months apart and who grew up in two different worlds became soul brothers is a story by itself. Indeed, meeting Sam for the first time at the All-Malaya MYF Institute in April 1960 was a most opportune moment for me and set in motion a lifetime of enriching interactions. Sam and I did not see each other for four years after that. I went to Texas for undergraduate study and then to Wisconsin for graduate work; Sam completed his study at Trinity College, Singapore, and worked with my brother, C.N., for two years before he came to America for graduate training in theology. Yet when he visited me in Madison, we spent nearly 30 hours conversing non-stop. We had embarked on a journey of questioning orthodoxy and conventional wisdom. In addition, even though we don’t usually see each other but once every three to four years, we find ourselves in sync on most issues and with complete freedom to disagree on others. In-between our infrequent get-togethers, we kept in touch as when I called on Sam to help with the petitions I submitted to the five United Methodist Church General Conferences to which I was a lay delegate. Indeed, one of the highlights of my church association was to attend the General Conference in Indianapolis where Sam and I strategized on developing a more positive stance toward homosexuality.

As I read this story of Sam, I take delight in affirming his accomplishments. I believe the secret of Sam’s success was his willingness to do anything, no matter how onerous, and his commitment to excellence, as several of his supervisors testified. He showed that sweat, being focused, and giving one’s all are primary ingredients for success. Yet Sam is eager to attribute his success to help from mentors and friends, who in fact were individuals to whom he gave himself generously. He won the support of his benefactors because he took the initiative to help them whole-heartedly.

Of course, hard work and perseverance do not always bring success. Sometimes one has to be in the right place at the right time, and sometimes one has to create opportunity for oneself. Sam’s success in getting various assignments in the Church and USDA illustrates both these processes. At several critical junctures of his career when he was in a relatively comfortable environment, he moved out of the comfort zone to tackle a new challenge. Those responses to a higher calling are the substance of this book.

Even though Sam was born in poverty and encountered adversity through various stages of his life, he showed that neither poverty nor adversity could hold him back. He was able to transform the prior difficult life experiences into positive contributions, most notably in his role as a US Consul in Guangzhou, China. On the two occasions when my wife Constance and I visited Guangzhou for student recruitment, we were proud and happy to see the easy relationship between Sam and the local business folks and hear their laudatory remarks about having an American officer who understood them. Sam walked his second mile for the local people because he felt he had to open a door for the Chinese students, just as other people had given him opportunity in the past. Even though counseling prospective students was not part of his regular work, he met with the students and their parents to assess the student’s readiness for college study. He even coached them on the visa application process. Because of his support, our university had the largest single sign-up of students from any foreign city that year. Readers can read about other aspects of how Sam made lemonade out of lemons in this book and in his other book, A Diplomat in Guangzhou.

In my 30+ years of working with foreign students, I had not encountered many new Asian students who had adjusted to their new environments as quickly as Sam had at the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary. Granted Sam was a non-traditional student but one behavior, which merits modeling, is Sam’s taking initiative to meet American students and his professors, and his perseverance despite early rebuffs. Clearly, Sam had cast aside the familiar dictum about empty vessels make the most noise and professors rewarded him for boldly speaking up in and out of class. Other initiatives worth emulating include Sam’s getting involved in extracurricular activities (writing for the seminary newsletter and successfully running for presidency of the student organization), holding on-campus employment (in the seminary library), and reaching out to community folks (along the lines of a host family arrangement). And, like Sam, Asian students would benefit if they pay heed to Shakespeare’s admonition to prize personal integrity: This above all: to thine own self be true. And it must follow as night the day; thou canst not then be false to any man.

Throughout the book, Sam comes across as an extremely driven person; it is as though he is on a fast track to prove something. Sam attributed his drive as a compensation for his slight body stature; I tend to think he was a classic example of a middle child who had to struggle and fight for everything he wanted. It is also plausible that Sam’s overachievement was a reaction against early childhood experience of abuse in the hands of his father and older brother and an outcome of the disdain he had developed for those in high positions who abuse/misuse their power. Regardless of what drove Sam to his achievements, I am happy that he spoke up on various occasions to counteract the stereotype of a silent, docile, and invisible Chinese. He was not an inscrutable Oriental. His efforts to even the playing field for all future players (as in the landmark study on the glass ceiling for Asian Pacific American employees in USDA) and his advocacy for Asian Americans in the United Methodist Church have lasting effects even though the beneficiaries may not be aware of Sam’s role. Students from Asia can certainly take a page from this book and see an important difference between east and west, where functional and dysfunctional demeanors are concerned. They need to reevaluate what they have been taught back home about deferential behavior. As someone had wisecracked, the meek shall inherit the dirt.

Yes, Sam’s story is also filled with the unanticipated light at the end of a dark tunnel. It details the lurking disappointment when the best-laid plans go awry. Despite the heartbreaking events in his relationship with his church, Sam’s religious faith remained strong, in large part because his is a faith that nurtures instead of one that smothers, a faith that grew from much healthy questioning. Significantly, it was this religious faith that had sustained Sam and helped him overcome adversity in those early years. This faith also helped Sam to articulate in his sermons the relationship between human beings and their Divine Creator. Readers will appreciate Sam’s sermons for the richness and relevance of the contents and the elegance of his prose.

In light of Sam’s spectacular achievements in the federal agencies, I am more convinced than ever that Sam’s premature return to the U.S. in 1968 was a big loss to the Methodist Church in Singapore and Malaysia. One wonders whether Sam’s problems had anything to do with his breaking the mold by marrying a Westerner and his daring challenge to the colonial system in the Church. Speaking or living the truth does not always bring positive results.

The coolest compliment one can pay any one is to say that that person has made a difference, that the world is a better place because of him/her. To say that Dr. Samuel Peng-Yuen Wong has made a difference in just about every endeavor is to state the obvious. For a deeper appreciation of one who has led a life full of challenges, a life characterized by many successes against high odds and a life replete with recognitions and awards in secular and religious settings, I invite you to read on.

Preface

You are Chinese. How did you come to America? What was life in Singapore like when you grew up? What was it like to make a living in America when you were younger? These and similar questions are what I imagine my grandchildren and their children might want to ask me. They are questions about roots, questions I wanted to ask my parents, but never thought of asking until they were gone. I know very little about my parents’ past or how they moved from China to Singapore. Other than a few pictures and artifacts, their traces have vanished. Like my parents, I am an immigrant to an alien land. Unlike them, I want to answer my grandchildren’s yet-unasked questions while my mind is still alert and I can recall the roads I have traveled. I have seen the dire effects of memory loss, and felt the loss of untold stories. I do not want to deprive my grandchildren and their children of my story.

I am one of the taproots of three American families whose future is beyond my imagination. I am a Chinese-American, but my children are progenies of Chinese and Filipino parents. Their children will undoubtedly have a more diverse ancestry. When the grandchildren or their children search their roots, they will have this book as a source reference for one of the taproots and understand from whence they come. Knowing their past, they might have a better understanding of themselves and realize more fully their potentials. I hope my story will be one of many sources of inspiration for them.

I started writing this book when my children began schooling. That was more than 25 years ago. I wrote the first four chapters and put them aside to cope with the demands of making a living in America. After the publication of the book A Diplomat in Guangzhou, an account of my exciting experience as a Foreign Service Officer of the U.S. Government in Guangzhou, China, I felt compelled to provide a broader framework to account for my rise from being an immigrant to serving as a US Consul. While the story of how I moved from Singapore to America and how I made a living in the U.S. is essentially an account of my life journey, it is in the genre of immigrants in an alien land. The story might be ordinary, but it tells what it was like to cope with prejudice and discrimination, and fighting for recognition in this land of opportunity. This is the story of an immigrant that echoes the experiences of other immigrants; that is why I dare to share it with the public. The story also tells of the benefactors who showed me the way at each critical juncture. I reached my destination and survived in each situation through their unheralded support. I wish the world to know the random kindness of these benefactors. That is why I want to share my story beyond my immediate family circle. The world is a better place because of these benefactors.

Personal stories by their nature are history as the author remembers it. I try to be as accurate as I can, but I will not be surprised if my recollection is at variance with that of my contemporaries. I am not entirely certain of the many events in my childhood. However, I am fortunate in having kept what people wrote about me, and having returned to me some letters I wrote to my American parents, the Leiffers. I have also kept reports, memoranda, letters, articles, occasional notes and e-mail messages I wrote in my various jobs, sermons and talks I gave in different settings, letters from relatives and the Leiffers, and two dozen or so photo albums of my life in Singapore and the U.S. Many of them brought back memories I had forgotten. Indeed, the need to purge the files and the albums to make room for a simpler lifestyle was one of the forces that drove me to write this book. I have moved the boxes of files and albums with me to various locations in the past. I do not intend for them to be my baggage when we move again. Besides, the future generations would probably not understand or recognize what I scribbled or collected in those files and the albums (even I found them obtuse after the lapse of time), and my children would not appreciate having to spend time to sort through and discard my papers and photographs after I am gone. Thus, I gleaned and cleared the records to save them the trouble. I shredded most of the papers and pictures (much to the dismay of my wife) after I had distilled what I wished to pass on. I still have a cabinet of files and a stack of albums that survived my purge. Their fate will be in the hands of my children. Just as I did in A Diplomat in Guangzhou, I have focused my recollections on what happened instead of assigning motives to various people, and I have deliberately refrained from too much rehashing of the negative encounters. In the perspective of time, that which was so important then is meaningless now.

This book includes a liberal selection of speeches and sermons, which reflected the changes in my intellectual and spiritual development. Some of them show how I dealt with some of the contemporary issues in the Church. All of them reveal what I thought and believed. Future generations will undoubtedly fight over these issues again, albeit in a different guise, and I hope they will find in the speeches and sermons refreshing perspective on the new, yet old, issues. I hope my descendants will speak up for fairness and equality and be willing to break the mold whenever necessary.

Unlike the generations before me, men and women in the future will change jobs many times over their lifetime. From my experience, they might have a feel of what it is like to change jobs voluntarily and involuntarily. I was a harbinger of the workers of the future. I held five jobs in Singapore and Malaysia and 10 or 11 jobs in the U.S. All of them had their usual twists and turns. What I went through will give future generations some ideas on how to cope with job change. Some might find my story an inspiration for dealing with adversities and setbacks. I survived the outrageous fortune to tell the stories.

I had a hard time trying to decide whether to use pinyin or Romanized Cantonese (or other Chinese dialects) to render the names of people and places of my childhood and my years in Singapore. In practice, if I knew the Romanized names, I used them. For people whose Romanized names I do not know, I used pinyin to render their names. However, for privacy reasons, I used pinyin to render the names of my sisters and other relatives and I used pseudonyms and nicknames to identify some former contacts. These are marked with quotation marks or asterisks. Whenever possible, I have streamlined the writing styles of the documents I excerpted to make them more consistent with the overall text and inserted square brackets to indicate later commentaries. I have also corrected obvious grammatical or typographical errors. The endnotes provide additional information and references for clarification and explanation. Some expressions in quotation marks are my reconstruction rather than a verbatim record. The context will show whether I relied on old records or my recollection.

I have followed the practice of not using periods for abbreviations, with the exception of U.S. and D.C. when these are used as proper nouns for the United States and the District of Colombia. Thus, a series of alphabets in capital letters, as in the glossary of acronyms, should be read as alphabets and not as a word. To make it simpler to identify Chinese words written in English form, I have italicized them. The exceptions are Chinese names for places and people; they are without italics.

This book has benefited from the critical review and painstaking editing of my wife Mercy. She read every line of what I wrote and made me clarify what I thought was obvious. Specifically, she helped me to minimize the British idiosyncrasy in my writing and made it sound right to the American ear. She provided excellent ideas on the structure of my story to make the narrative flow more smoothly. Our daughter-in-law Elizabeth, an astute editor in her own right, was the first reader in the next generation to have read the entire manuscript and asked me questions I did not think of. In addition to suggesting changes, she also drew the floor plan of the house at Tessensohn Road. Our children Cathy, Philip and John Paul also read sections of the manuscript and asked about several uncommon expressions and obscure references. In addition, Sister Lian Hao provided some critical information for Chapter 1. I appreciate their labor of love. Of course, I am solely responsible for whatever errors you may find in these pages.

I am especially grateful to Marcus Fang who found time to write the Foreword to this book. He is one of a few people in the U.S. who knew me when I was a college student in Singapore and traveled with me in some stretches of my life’s journey. The challenges he encountered in his study of the genealogy of the Fang families affirm the wisdom of pioneers recording their biographies. Yvonne Freeman has granted permission to reprint one of her speeches, Empowering Women in Ministry. Similarly, Huey Tyng Sun, Philip Javier-Wong and John Miranda have allowed me to include excerpts of their writing in Chapters 1 and 19. Herman Bailey, Yohanna Choo, Marcus Fang, Amy Leung, Christina Lim, Richard Rortvedt, and Vincent Wong have provided information for labeling some of the photos in the book. The Methodist Church in Singapore, the Singapore National Heritage Board and the Singapore Tourism Board have granted permission to use their copyright materials in Chapters 1 and 8. These external sources shed more light on the journey I have traveled.

I do not understand why I as the son of a poor family should want to serve the people, or as the product of an English education should want to work among Chinese-speaking people. Those were my vocations. Moving from Singapore to America, unintentionally and reluctantly, I lived a life different from how I started and followed several detours in my career. I did not accomplish what I planned to do with my life, but what I did accomplish was beyond my dream. The twists and turns of my life journey are the sum of my life story. I was born in Singapore, but I have no roots in that island nation. My parents were from China, but I have no nostalgia for my ancestral home. I have lived in America for more than 40 years of my life, but I continue to have the feeling of an outsider. I am nominally a member of many social groups and yet I do not feel I belong to any of them. Is that the destiny of an immigrant in an alien land?

A-01.TIF

Map of Southeast Asia, 2008. Source: US Central Intelligence Agency.

A-02.TIF

Map of Chinatown, 2008. Source: Singapore Tourism Board.

1

Childhood in Chinatown, Singapore

(1939-45)

a. What’s in a Name?

Before you were born, your parents had chosen your name many months in advance. They searched for the right name, with the right ring to it. They can tell you why they named you Imogen, Isabel, Cathy, Philip, or John Paul. It was not so in my case. I did not have a proper name until I began primary school. Then, my father named me Wong Peng Yuen.¹ However, he did not register officially my name until I was midway through primary school. In 1948, he brought an Abstract of the Birth Registry to a government office and swore in a Statutory Declaration that I was the unnamed child listed on the abstract and my name was Wong Peng Yuen. The abstract stated that I was born in an apartment at Number 50, Sago Street. However, all my older relatives said I was born at Number 50, Smith Street, in the same apartment where I grew up. Sago Street was the street parallel to Smith Street in Chinatown, Singapore. My father probably gave the address Smith Street (known as Theatre Street among the local residents) in Cantonese and the clerk at the government office recorded it as Sago Street. No one in my family in those days could read the abstract. That is why no one caught the mistake. When I found out the mistake, it was too late to change the record. Practically, it made no difference whether I was born in Sago Street or Smith Street. From the abstract, it is clear I was born at home, not in a hospital, and that a midwife probably attended to the birth. Whoever was at home must have been busy boiling water and keeping onlookers away. In the months before my birth, my mother was busy looking after my older brothers and sister and doing a myriad of household chores. I doubt she had the luxury of morning sickness or the opportunity to take it easy.

From the Statutory Declaration, it is evident my parents were Chinese of Cantonese descent and my father was from the Wong clan. That is why we write my family name as Wong, not Huang, as in Mandarin. Wong is the phonetic Romanization of a Cantonese family name. In other Chinese dialects, it would be Romanized as Ng, or Wee. When I worked in China later in my career, the fact that I was a Huang but my family name in English was Wong gave many of my Chinese friends a headache. Whenever they wrote to me in Chinese, they could not decide if they should write Huang, Wong, or Wang.² Living in America, I enjoyed telling people they wing the Wong number at my house and delighted in giving Wong advice to the younger generations. When you are born ‘Wong,’ there is not much else you can do.—That was what I responded to a seminary professor when he told me I gave him all the Wong answers in an oral exam. When I worked in the Commission on Religion and Race of the United Methodist Church, my boss was Woodie White. Whenever we held workshops on cultural diversity across the country, our hosts always introduced him as the White man (even though he is Black) and me as the Wong man! Actually, Wong as a family surname has a noble lineage. One of the first emperors of China’s mythical past was Huang Di, an astute student of human sexuality. I do not know if there are records to trace the founding patriarch of the Wong clan to Huang Di. If we are descendants of that emperor, we come from royal stock! When my father moved from China to Singapore in the 1920s, he did not bring any family record with him. After many years of asking relatives, I found out I am in the twenty-fifth generation of the present Wong clan.

The second word Peng in my name carries the meaning of bright, splendid and remarkable. It is a generation marker establishing where I belong in the clan network. Boys of the twenty-fifth generation of the Wong clan generally have the Peng word in their names. Thus, my brothers are Peng Hoong, Peng Cheong and Peng Sung. A Cantonese speaking Chinese whose family name is Wong and whose given name has the Peng word is, by tradition, my "tang xiong di, a brother of the same clan, a close or distant relative. However, I know of only one such relative and he lives in Guangxi, China. I do not know if he is still alive at the time of this writing. That shows how detachedly we keep in touch with one another! Unconsciously and regrettably, my brothers and I overlooked the generation marker when we named our children. I used Mun (people) as the generation marker for my three children. Peng Hoong used Shuet" (snow) for his daughters. Peng Cheong and Peng Sung did not use generation markers for their children. My two sons and those of Peng Cheong and Peng Sung should have a common generation marker. We did not bother to find out what is the marker for the twenty-sixth generation.³

The Chinese names of my boys Yook Mun and Wai Mun were both Romanized in Cantonese to reflect their roots in a Cantonese family. It was a conscious decision I made. I wanted them to know they were not merely of Chinese descent, but of Cantonese descent. Yook Mun means to nurture people—my hope that the older boy would become a teacher, in the broadest concept of teaching. Wai Mun means to be of benefit to people—my hope that the younger boy would be a blessing to others, again, blessings in the broadest sense of that concept. The name of our girl Chan Mun, also Romanized in Cantonese, means to be close to people and to be grounded in real life. It is my hope that our oldest child would learn from the people and serve the people. When friends in China heard the names of my children, they said I was more in harmony with the ethos of Chinese communism than they were. I had to remind them serving the people was a classical Chinese aspiration and Chinese communism was a late comer to the idea. Besides the Chinese names, my wife and I also thought through the English names for our children. I do not know how much thought my father gave to naming me.

With the family name and generation marker already fixed, all that my father had to do was to select one word for my given name. He chose Yuen, which means a source, a fountainhead and root. Was I to be the source of splendor or the remarkable root for the family? I don’t know. My parents never discussed the meaning of my name with me or told me if it had any special meaning. Unlike some other Chinese names, Peng Yuendid not have a literary ring to it, nor was it derived from a significant event or from a celebrity. Interestingly, there was a shop in Chinatown named Yuen, Cheong, Sung. I have no idea if our father took that shop name to name us. If so, why did he?

In my childhood, everybody called me Ah Ah. Why that name? Nobody could or would tell me. The first Ah is a common prefix that Cantonese people add on to a name or relationship to show familiarity. I would address my older brother as Ah Ge and my older sister as Ah Jie. The second Ah in my nickname rhymes with the sound of baby crying. It probably showed I cried a lot when I was a baby. All babies cry. What was the big deal about that?

Besides the nickname Ah Ah, many adults, whom I called aunts and cousins, called me Gluttonous Cat, a person who lives to eat. Cat is a ubiquitous, almost affectionate, Cantonese term for people who are different from normal. According to family lore, I had the notoriety of eating anything and everything since I was a toddler. When I was seven or eight, an older cousin hid a smidgen of spicy pepper in the snack she gave me. I ate all of it despite the burning sensation. When I was ten, an aunt fed me a bowl of fermented rice, which was a residue of rice wine, to get me drunk on Chinese New Year. I knew everything around me was swirling but I did not know that that was the sensation of being drunk. Was I that gluttonous? The older relatives said so and Sister Lian Hao tended to confirm their stories! Actually, I liked the nickname Gluttonous Cat, better than my given name. The nickname had character and it fit my persona. I live to eat! For most of my life, I did not care for my given name. When asked, I usually said, It’s just a name. It has no special meaning. When I became a Christian, I took on a Biblical name, Samuel, to indicate I aspired to be someone attentive to God’s calling. I created a new Chinese name Shan Mu as a derivation from the Biblical name and used it in writing, in church circles, and in my adulthood. I also used other pseudonyms such as Xing Zhi in some writings. As I grew older, I realized a name without any aspiration attached to it, such as my given name Peng Yuen, was in fact a license to be whatever I wanted to be. I could give substance to my given name. There are many Samuels in this world, but very few Peng Yuen. By the time I began working in China in 1999, I resumed using Peng Yuen as my given name to connect me to my ancestral roots in China.

b. My Parents

Why did my parents not give me a name when I was born? They did it ostensibly for my protection and their protection—not protection from this world but from the nether world. They believed evil spirits lurked around everywhere waiting to harm them and their children. If their children had no names, the evil spirits would not have handles to harm them. If the evil spirits could not harm the children, they would live and grow up to be members of the family and the clan. Before I was born, my mother had already given birth to four boys and one girl. Three boys died in their childhood. While I was numerically the fifth male child of the family, I was always the second child, after my older brother (who was second in birth). Apparently, the seventh male child also died in childhood. The only occasion my mother talked about the deaths of my brothers was when she asked me to stand in as a surrogate to marry them with some deceased single women. I was some sort of a medium for the spirits. It was a weird ceremony carried out in the wee hours of dawn. With all the prior deaths in the family, it was reasonable for my parents not to give me a name so they could foil the evil spirits. Not having a proper name was a small price to pay for staying alive! My parents even went along with the practice of not letting us children call them father and mother.⁴ Until we reached adulthood, we called them "Si Shu (Number 4 Uncle) and Si Shen or Ah Sao" (Number 4 Aunt or Sister-in-law). Not calling them our parents was another trick to foil the evil spirits. If we were not their children, there was no point for the evil spirits to hurt them by harming us. By acting as though they had no children, my parents tried to break the spell of misfortunes that plagued their childhoods. In fact, my father’s nickname in China was Ah Jian, the miserable one. His other nickname was Gu Qi, the grouch. In their lives, my parents had met with numerous misfortunes such as the death of several sons in childhood, the tragic loss of their fathers, the abandonment of his birth mother, and the conflicts of living with other relatives. They tried to accept the senseless acts through attribution, crediting the evil spirits as the sources of their tragedies. Confronted with overwhelming odds, they placated the evil spirits.

My brothers, sisters and I began calling our parents father and mother only after we became adults. The turning point was when my brothers married and my new sisters-in-law began to address our parents as Old Master (Lao Ye) and Mistress (Nai Nai). My brothers’ marriages were a rite of passage not only for them, but also for my parents. If the new members of the family recognized our parents as parents of their husbands, there was no point in continuing to trick the evil spirits. Henceforth, we called our parents "Ah Ba, and Ah Ma,"⁵ papa and mama. Until then, the older sister of my father, Daguma (Number 1 Aunt), used a crude Cantonese expression to address my mother. She changed the expression to "Jia Sao, my sister-in-law, upon the first marriage in the younger generation. It was as though to signify that my mother had earned the right to be respected and recognized as a full-fledged elder member of the family. In addition to calling her Ah Ma (mother), we the adult children would often call our mother Ah Mi Ah or Ah Mi, both affectionate variances of mommy. When she came to live in the U.S., my children called her Ah Ma,⁶ an expression meaning paternal grandmother and my sister’s children called her Po Po," an expression meaning maternal grandmother.

My parents were married in China in the late 1920s.⁷ They migrated to Singapore shortly thereafter. Daguma probably arranged the marriage and the migration. Upon arriving in Singapore, my parents lived with Daguma in Chinatown until I was a toddler. At my birth, my mother was 28 years old.⁸

My father was about five feet in height, slim and wiry in build. His face was marked with prominent cheekbones and deep-set eyes and they gave him an austere and grim look. He kept his hair short. I do not recall him ever laughing, or saying a word of praise to any of his children. He probably did not know how to laugh or to say a word of praise. Someone killed his father in a case of mistaken identity in a village squabble before he was born in 1903. No one knew the murderer or other details about the murder. His mother remarried and left him to the care of Daguma. Apparently, the second family she married into had perished in some disasters and my grandmother returned to the Wong clan. Not knowing this twist of family history, I initiated the application for my grandmother to migrate to Singapore when I was in secondary school. Since their reunion, there was no love lost between my father and his mother. I only knew about the real cause for my father’s apathy (hostility might be more accurate) toward his mother many years after my grandmother’s death. When he was growing up, my father lived with his uncle. In his occasional grumbling, he hinted at his tough childhood in China and that life had treated him harshly. Life in rural China in the early 1900s was harsh, but it was so everywhere in China. Why should his be any different?

According to a fragment of our genealogy, my great-grandfather (the twenty-second generation) was the older of two boys in his family, my grandfather was also the older of two boys in his family and my father was the only son in his family. This patriarchal succession (primogeniture) established my father as a son of the senior house in the clan. My mother often told me a clan banquet in the home village could not begin until after your father is seated. He was a patriarch, but he had no worldly fame or fortune to glorify his ancestors. Since my birth, he had worked as a street vendor of fabric materials and as a repairman of Underwood typewriters. The branch of the Wong clan from which I descended was quite modest. It did not have any outstanding leader in any trade. I did not have rich ancestors and I had no inheritance. If I understand the succession protocol correctly, my family is now the senior house in the clan as my older brother does not have any male heir. I do not see any real benefits from this status.

My father was active in the Wong clan association in Singapore, an organization for people from the same ancestral village in China. After his retirement, he became a trustee of the association and safeguarded it as though his life depended on it. I happened to visit him in Singapore in 1992; a year after the association was disbanded. He was despondent and seemed to have lost his bearing. One week after my visit, he died. We children agreed he was broken-hearted over the demise of the association. Despite our cold and distant relationship when I was growing up, my father always came to the airport to receive me whenever I returned to Singapore from the U.S. He also made it his business to accompany other family members to send me off after each visit. He even kept my written request for money to buy what I needed for school.

My mother was about four feet ten in height. She was a bit chubby, but muscular. Her face was round, masking an iron will with a resigned look. She had straight hair and she usually braided it. Sister Lian Hao told me after her visit to China in the early 1990s that our mother came from an affluent family in Maling, Guangdong Province. It was not a case of mere imagination when our mother said she could fetch live fish from the family pond for supper. Her home was near Shunde, the ancestral village of my father. Family conflicts arose after the death of her parents in the early 1900s, and her brothers arranged for her to live with another relative until she married my father.

When I was four years old, my mother moved out of Chinatown to start a self-reliant life. She moved with Sister Lian Hao (age seven) and Brother Peng Cheong (age three) to a farm in a rural part of Singapore, on the fringe of the Cantonese cemetery (now Upper Thompson Road) about 10 miles from Chinatown. She became a vegetable grower and raised pigs to supplement the family income. One of the indelible experiences in my childhood was the accident she had when preparing feed for the pigs. The minor pig farmers in Singapore used to feed their animals with household garbage mixed with greens (water hyacinth?) and soybean meal. They boiled the mixture before it was fed to the pigs. One afternoon, while the mixture was cooking, the clay stove cracked, and the boiling gruel scalded my mother. She brought herself from the farm to the Chinatown apartment, waiting for medical attention. There was a lot of confusion and commotion. I felt helpless, frightened and angry with my father for doing nothing. I do not recall what happened afterwards or how long it took her to heal. After she recovered from the accident, my mother was more determined to be on her own. She pleaded with my father to leave Daguma’s household to build a future of their own. He refused. He probably wanted to live closer to his workshop in the business district and the cleaner life of a blue-collar worker. My youngest brother Peng Sung was later born on the farm (in 1947); so was my younger sister Fu Hao (in 1951). My youngest sister Qiong Hao was born (in 1954) after my mother moved out of the farm, to Tessensohn Road, which was on the fringe of the central business district. Once she moved out, my mother never spent another night in the Smith Street apartment.

Due to differences in their personalities, my mother was always critical of my father. I do not recall hearing her praising him. I do not know if she meant to use the critical tone to steer us to the right course in life or as an expression of her true feeling about my father. Despite embracing the Christian faith with its cardinal emphasis on forgiveness, my mother never forgave my father for not standing by her. How much more we could have accomplished if your father was of the same mind as mine! That was the gist of her bitterness, even in her old age, even after the death of my father. When father died in Singapore, my mother was living in the U.S. with me. She did not return to Singapore for his funeral; nor did she show a great deal of grief over his passing. She comforted me about the loss instead of the other way around. Other than this blind spot, my mother was a worthy model for her children and their children. The achievements I attained later in life were due primarily to her early intervention and timely support. Despite her having quite a few blood relatives, I knew only her younger sister (Ah Yi) in Singapore. Sister Lian Hao had met most of our maternal relatives.

Huey Tyng, the daughter of Sister Qiong Hao, remembers her Po Po in these words:

Ever since I could remember, Po Po had lived with my family. She originally came to the United States to help my mom with taking care of me just like she did with her other children when they started their own families. It was a tradition. With me, it was different; I got lucky. What was supposed to be a few months turned into twelve years.

When my mom was at work, Po Po made sure that my brother and I got our dinner. She woke me up every morning before school, fixed me breakfast and walked me to the bus stop. Even though my brother and I were old enough to go alone, she still made a point to walk us there and wait with us. On rainy days we’d come off the bus to find her waiting outside with her umbrella. Sometimes she used the umbrella as a cane. It was always in hand, convenient for rain or shine. She was my umbrella.

On nights when I had too much homework to sit down for dinner, she would patiently sit and feed me like she did when I was a baby. She would watch carefully for each swallow, anticipating my next bite. I’d write or cut and paste between spoonfuls. She had an amazing way of making me feel so special. Despite frail bones and old eyes, her spirit never waned. Sometimes she would need help getting things out of the closet or threading a needle. Even though those tasks were simple requests, doing them for her gave me a feeling of importance as if she needed me as much as I needed her. She kept me focused. There was never a material reward but I know deep down that every straight A report card I brought home was for her. It was for her that I was constantly challenging myself—bigger books, better reports, more A’s: perfection. I showed her every A, every gold star, every certificate and ribbon. She couldn’t read them, maybe she didn’t even understand, but the smile and words of approval she gave me, made me thrive.

When my Aunt Lian Hao came to visit from Singapore, I couldn’t fathom that her month long stay would end in a farewell to Po Po. I wanted to cry the moment I found out. You can’t leave me, Po Po. I need you, I would rehearse in my head, but the words would never form on my lips. I wouldn’t let myself cry in front of her. If she knew that it hurt me so much she would have stayed. I couldn’t have lived with myself if she had missed this chance to see her other children and grandchildren.

I don’t think I truly accepted her leaving until that day came.

I remember when I was very young. Po Po and I had always shared a bedroom. We had twin beds placed side by side. Some nights she would stroke my hair or pat my back as I fell asleep. Some nights I would hold her hand. Her hands, tough yet gentle, wrinkled yet so soft. Those hands had held her eleven babies; those hands had already buried five of them. Those hands personified hard work, love and devotion; and they held tightly to my hands, hands of youth, hands of innocence, hands of inexperience, hands that could never live up to hers. Those nights I drifted into my dreams, never wanting to let go.

I was determined not to cry that day. As we got to the airport, I didn’t think that I would have the opportunity to do so. Uncle Sam, Philip and John-Paul were there as well as my mom, brother, and Aunts Lian Hao and Mercy. I couldn’t let them see that I didn’t want Po Po to return to our relatives, that behind my mask of acceptance I couldn’t be selfless like she had been in her devotion to me. I couldn’t cry in front of them. Shame and embarrassment would work temporarily to fight my tears.

I was fated to spend those moments alone with her. One by one or in pairs, my family left as Po Po and I waited. Soon it was just the two of us. They had gotten a wheelchair for her that day so that she wouldn’t be rushed walking from opposite ends of the airport. I stood by the wheelchair. There were so many things that I could have said to her, but I didn’t need to. She knew. The silence was heavy with our sentiments. Within seconds, Po Po broke the silence. I want you to do well in school, study hard. I’m coming back soon so that we can go to Singapore together. She always talked about us going back together. She and I kept a piggy bank and every time she found loose change to place in it, she would comment on how one day there would be enough in it for our trip.

This trip would be without me.

The tears streamed down my face and I dropped to my knees in front of the wheelchair. Her hands wiped my tears away. She would always tell me to stop crying and that there was no reason to cry. She reassured me that she would be returning. My hands held to her knees as if I was pleading with her to stay, but my tears were too late. We were at the airport; her flight would be boarding in no time.

I kneeled in front of her like I had so many other times, times like when I was a baby just learning to walk, and times like so many mornings before school when she would braid my hair. I would kneel patiently in front of her. As the comb gently detangled the tiny knots of fine, black hair, I would wait. Her fingers carefully twined