A Sketch of My Parents
I wrote this brief sketch of my parents in 4 parts:
Family background of Mother & Father
How our parents met and the young family
Father’s business
Parents: their personalities and marriage
How we count a person’s age in old China
A Red Envelope Show & Tell
Today, February 10, 2024, is Chinese New Year. In the lunar calendar, it’s “January 1st” (the 1st day of the 1st month), with the zodiac animal Dragon. One aspect that you may find interesting is that in the olden days in China (actually till fairly recently, like when I was born in 1941), everyone's age increased by one year on this New Year’s Day – as everyone does here on their respective birthdays. The New Year tradition of giving red envelopes containing money to youngsters, called Ya-Sui-Qian (壓歲錢), is associated with this. The 1st character, Ya, is a Chinese word that can be interpreted to mean “to anchor,” the 2nd Sui, is the word for “age,” and Qian, “money,” the phrase Ya-Sui-Qian (壓歲錢) translates as “anchoring money for the year ahead” namely, “the money-gift for increased age.” There are other stories/interpretations, too. It should be pointed out that this traditional way of counting produces an age one or two years more than our familiar way of counting, the real age.
Guizhen – A Life in a Tumultuous Time
June 25, 2023, was my sister’s 84th birthday. On that occasion, I wrote of the life story of her nanny, Guizhen, the person closest to Leepo in her childhood. It is also a story of our family and, in fact, very much a story of China in the 20th century.
