As painful as this last week has been, especially Sunday night in the hospital room and the Monday after being in shock, I have chosen to celebrate the life of my grandfather and remember as many happy memories as I can, which is probably the best way to celebrate his life.
Qinsheng Wang was born into a large family in 1920's China, which was still an agricultural society coming off the end of feudal society (end of the Qing Dynasty was 1911). He served in the army as young boy in World War II and the Chinese civil war afterwards working in the supply force, and then afterwards he had 2 daughters, the younger of which was my mother. Between that time, despite no formal college education, he developed a near-dictionary level handle of Chinese vocabulary, which is like tens of thousands of Chinese letters that are more intricate than English words (due to lack of an alphabet and characters being written in so many unqiue strokes), knowledge that he would later impart to a mostly willing and sometimes lazy student (that would be me).
My first memory of my grandfather would have been a memorable experience for anyone: I flew on an airplane for the first time and flew from the country I was born in (China) to a new country (the U.S.), permanently moving my home, on an transcontinental flight from Shanghai to Chicago, with a layover stop in Vancouver in between. I can still remember the slight confusion as a 4.5-year-old boy in December 1991 being pulled out of kindergarten (or was it preschool?) in the middle of the day and told to pack up all my belongings and go with my grandfather, who I had just barely met, to the airport, a trip whose purpose I was unclear about. I'm pretty sure I asked my grandfather "are we there yet?" in Chinese an annoying amount of times, and got airsick at least once on the long flight. My grandpa did a great job navigating us through the Vancouver airport to where we needed to go, and I followed obediently. At long last, when we arrived in the Chicago airport, I followed grandpa as we made it out past customs and through security, out the double doors......and into America. My parents were there waiting, starting us on a saga that is the life I lead today.
Ever since I was a child I have went everywhere with my grandpa and did everything together, wherever he went I went. When he flew on an airplane to the U.S., I also flew on an airplane to the U.S. When I walked to elementary school, he also walked to elementary school with me. We were like a match made in heaven. It wasn't until I grew up that I understood that grandpa was doing these things for my sake. He was coming to America so I could live with my parents and start a better life in the U.S., and he was walking to school with me for my safety. He was making a sacrifice; living out his retirement years in China where he had lived his whole life would have been easy; coming to a foreign land where he didn't know the language nor the customs or people was risky, but he did it for me.
My grandpa had a way of explaining things that I was very receptive to. He had a booming voice (maybe that's where I picked up my speech pattern from) but also had a strong storytelling ability, explaining my lessons in Chinese with eloquence and expertise. Many of his stories were about Chinese history and Chinese literature, things not taught in the American schools, so gradually I learned about both American and Chinese cultures in a type of dual education. More importantly, I learned to speak Chinese and preserved my Chinese ability from a young age, a vitally important skill later on in my life. While learning with grandpa, I never felt bored or unwilling to learn; all the lessons were interesting and provided a slice of life of an older time. This was also before cell phones and the internet, so I didn't have that many distractions. Grandpa was also pretty strict about not watching TV until all the homework was done for the day, which is still a great example to live by: learn while your brain is fresh as much as you can, then wach TV only when your brain is tired and needs a break (not the other way around like most of today's social media users).
One other very important life lesson I learned from grandpa: protecting my health. He never smoked and rarely drank if at all, but his daily ritual included waking up very early in the morning (normally 5AM) to do his morning exercises, then took a walk during the day as well to get fresh air and enjoy the outdoors. One particular exercise I have fond memories of was situps in the morning, where he would hold down my feet while I bent tried to do as many situps as I could. Later in life, grandpa would cut down on all these physical activities as his body couldn't handle it anymore, but the foundation he had set for me was already there, and they were ingrained at a young age, less likely to be forgotten.
One of the most educational, enjoyable, and memorable activities for me as I grew older was to read newspapers with grandpa. One of grandpa's daily rituals was to read the Chinese newspaper, but I did not have enough of a vocabulary to read the newspapers as a child, and the newspapers were in traditional Chinese letters. Plus, the news was not that interesting to me. However, as an adult, one of my favorite pasttimes was to sit on the couch with my grandpa and read over articles in Chinese, point out the characters I didn't recognize, and have grandpa translate them for me. For certain words, grandpa would have a long story about the context of the world, its historical significance, or some other anecdote that gave more information than merely what appeared on the page. This was grandpa's way of commuicating with me, of teaching. Even as I was gradually assimilating to the U.S. culture, away from the Chinese tradtional thought that grandpa was used to, teaching me new Chinese words and phrases was his way of continuing the conversation, to help me even more in ways that I didn't appreciate. I already miss these times, but luckily I had enough foresight to write all the words down in notebooks; I've filled several volumes with all the Chinese phrases I've learned over the years; I haven't learned all of them yet, but I look forward to rehashing all of them, each phrase filling another piece of grandpa that stays with me forever.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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