Читать книгу Working for a Better World - Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo - Страница 11

Chapter Four

Joy: A Journey

Joy did not come through night visitors, nor did it seize me with exuberant song and dance. It came from a sense that God may be calling, that He had been leading me on a journey where the past revealed its purpose in a specific invitation for the future. I did not grow up in a particularly religious family and would not consider myself to have good prayer and spiritual habits. Yet in my earlier departures from Hong Kong and Purdue, I was moved by some force bigger than myself for reasons that logic cannot explain. And, in hindsight, I saw how every step in my journey led to where I stood that day and was enveloped by the grace and the blessings of these experiences.

My Parents, Peter Woo (aka Ching Chi) and Hung U-Lan

I was born on April 19, 1954, in Hong Kong, in the neighborhood known as “Happy Valley,” which got its name from the iconic horse race course built there in 1846. My Western name, “Carolyn,” was chosen by my father. My Chinese name is Woo Yau Yan (吳幼仁), with “吳” (Woo) as our family name. “幼” (Yau) is the character for “delicate,” which comes from my mother’s given name, and “仁” (Yan) is the character given to all the girls in my family. This character represents the Confucian teaching on how people should relate to one another.

I was the fifth child of my parents, Peter Woo and Hung U-Lan. More importantly, I was the fourth daughter who arrived when my parents were hoping for their second son. My father wanted two sons for “an heir and a spare.” There was talk that if the fifth child were not a son, my father would consider taking a second wife — legal at the time. Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers had multiple wives. And that was a possibility as this fourth girl arrived, much to my father’s chagrin. Fortunately my mother conceived fairly quickly afterward, and my younger brother arrived twenty months later. In a twelve-year span, my parents had six children: Helen, Paul, Irene, Maureen, me, and William.

My parents’ personalities and backgrounds could hardly have been more different. My father was born around 1916 in China. As an infant, he was purchased by the third wife of a man who would technically be my paternal grandfather. My father didn’t talk much about his family as he had very little memory of his early years, and I don’t think he ever felt like he belonged. As a boy, he was sent away to St. Joseph’s boarding school in Hong Kong. It was there he became Catholic. My father was sent for university studies in Germany but enjoyed himself too much to master German, so he transferred to schools in Scotland and received a degree from the Royal Technical College in Glasgow in architecture. The plan was for him to serve the family shipping business located in southern China.

Peter Woo was smart, urbane, daring, and had little experience of family structure. He had always been on his own, made all his own decisions, and did things on his own terms. He loved dancing, bridge, drinking, and probably European dames, as he gave Irish names to all his daughters. In the midst of World War II, he returned to Hong Kong and started work as a naval architect: a profession in strong demand given that Hong Kong’s most distinctive asset is its harbor. My father apparently enjoyed his life as a bachelor in this British colony with his Western flair and full command of the English language. Two incidents, however, disrupted his life: one, he was introduced to my mother; and two, he was summoned by the Japanese, who by then were occupying Hong Kong, to serve its naval interests. For a Chinese man, that would be an act of treason.

While my father grew up on his own, my mother was a hothouse flower protected from all the challenges of life. She was also from China, the only natural child of the first wife of my grandfather, who came from a wealthy family and was known for his generosity. His favorite child was my mother, who, for as long as she could remember, had her own maids and servant girls. The family sought temporary refuge in Hong Kong when China fell to the Japanese.

My mother was named Hung U-Lan (delicate orchid). Tutors came to the home — she never had to go to a school, take an exam, cope with due dates, or face pressures from anything related to school. The learning regimen was constructed around her comfort level. My mother learned the proper manners befitting a young lady, developed an exquisite taste for fabrics, and was renowned for her tailoring abilities. The Chinese did not have access to Butterick or Simplicity patterns, so my mother learned to cut fabric without a pattern to make any clothing item we needed. It is a skill I never picked up.

We always thought that my mother was four years younger than my father until, after her death, we learned the long-held secret: they were the same age. For her generation, my mother married late because, the story goes, my grandmother did not find any young man worthy until she met my father. Since Chinese marriages in those days were primarily engineered by parents, my grandmother’s approval was paramount. While my grandmother was brought up in the “old” Chinese way, when foot-binding was the practice, she preferred a more modern approach and did not put my mother through that torture. She liked my father’s Western ways and the possibility of a different type of marriage for my mother.

We think our mother was smitten also. After a few dates, all chaperoned, the question of marriage came up. Like my father, my mother also faced a problem with the occupiers. The family had received an inquiry from a Japanese military officer for the hand of my mother. The only acceptable (though not truthful) answer they could give: she was already engaged.

So Peter Woo and Hung U-Lan, who were as different as night and day and who hardly knew each other, married on September 21, 1943. They immediately fled to China, where some regions were under Japanese occupation and other areas were fighting to retain control. As for so many, the war years were very difficult. My father could not work. My parents had to stay a step ahead of the Japanese, sometimes literally fleeing late at night on foot. My older siblings Helen and Paul were born during this period. My mother was resourceful and strong in ways she never had to be before. To generate cash, she gave her jewelry to my father to sell on the street. She would recount the agreement among fellow travelers on the run from the Japanese that the safety of the group could not be compromised by crying babies.

Years later, I got a glimpse of the trauma when I went to the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! with my mother. She sobbed from the beginning to the end: her whole life was upended by the invasion of the Japanese. The world she knew and grew up in disappeared in the war. Though we heard many stories of danger, escape, hardships, and bravery, I wish that we had heard and asked more about the bond that my parents developed as a newly married couple completely on their own in that chaotic, dangerous world. For example, I inherited a beautiful diamond and pearl gold bangle from my mother that my father bought from another peddler when he should have been selling, not buying, jewelry. I cherish this as part of the love story of my parents. I now know that we should ask, probe, dig deep to get our parents’ love story because this is a source of the magic of our lives.

The Immigrant Life

After the war, my parents returned to Hong Kong. It was supposed to be only temporary. They were planning to resettle in China. But a trip back to Fujien, their home province, sensitized them to another looming event: the onset of the Communist revolution. If my parents thought that their lives would return to normal after World War II, their plans were crushed.

In China, leaving one’s home meant leaving one’s assets and security, as land was the primary currency of wealth. Land was not just a financial holding, it was also part of one’s birthright, identity, and ancestry. Giving it up means an abrupt severing of the bond to one’s past.

I got some idea of what this meant when, in the 1990s, I brought my mother back to her childhood home in Xiamen, a large city in Fujien. The few remaining carved wood panels in the courtyard bore some indications of the home’s former elegance, but different sections and gardens of the home had been destroyed, torn down to make room for a factory, or carved up into one-room apartments. She tried to picture for me not only what the house once looked like, but also the warm glow of family and festivities that took place in that estate.

I also recall the night in the 1960s when my father received a telegram from China informing him of the removal of the ancestral graves from his home. He put down the letter, took off his spectacles, wiped away his tears, and could not speak.

The experiences of displacement by war and revolutions — starting all over again, figuring out how to make a living, finding one’s place in a new society — are very much the story of the immigrants, like my parents, who populated Hong Kong while I was growing up. Some would find their footing and make meaningful progress along a steady track. But others never adjusted to their new position, never found their place in their world’s new order.

Displacement was a common theme of my formative years. My mother, in a society with a new language and new technologies, was like an orchid that lost the protection of the greenhouse. Relatives from China took up temporary residence on our couches on their way to new lives. In the years of the Cultural Revolution in China, some told stories of the brutality of the Red Guards.

And of course, we were all keenly aware that Hong Kong’s status under the British would come to an end in 1997, when the colony would revert to Communist rule. What my parents had faced, political turmoil and regime change, would also be the defining reality for my generation. The hidden gift in this situation for my peers and me was that we seldom wasted time or resisted change. Everyone was focused on creating options and opportunities. Change would come, and it was just a matter of how we would prepare for it. In light of this background, it’s not surprising that leading organizations through change would eventually be my profession.

Given my father’s disappointment at not getting a son when I was born, one would imagine that we would not be close. It was the opposite. I credit this to the ingenuity of my nanny, whom we called Gaga long before there was Lady Gaga. My care was entrusted to her. Every morning I would join my father for breakfast. I was seated at a little table at his side — as children, we did not ascend to the “big” table until we learned our manners. My father would share his eggs and sausage with me. We had a chauffeur who drove my dad to work, and after breakfast my nanny would pack me up to go on the ride with him.

Schools in Hong Kong were so crowded with the swell of immigrant children that grades one, three, and five would get the afternoon shift, while two, four, and six went in the morning. So when I was in first and third grade, I got to ride with my father on his way to work. Even then, he was very proud of my good grades and showered me with admiration for my excellence in work and studies. I remember vividly that in third grade, during one of our rides, I told him that one day I would be a professor with a doctorate. I have no idea where that came from. Perhaps my father was reading one of his favorite magazines and mentioned with admiration some accomplished scholar with a Ph.D. I just automatically declared that, of course, this is what I would become.

My academic drive also provided me with a sense of belonging and worth. As the fifth child — and especially the fourth daughter with a younger brother — I was sort of lost in the shuffle. My two older sisters Irene and Maureen were pretty, while I was a chubby child. Friends of the family would affectionately describe me as “taking after my dad,” when everyone noted that my sisters resembled my mom, a lovely woman. Academic achievement became a safe haven for me, a place where nothing could go wrong, a solution to every challenge and worry. My drive was intense; it came from a place of insecurity and was a way to earn my worth. I was also compensating for my sister and brother who would upset my father with their terrible grades and embarrass my mother at teachers’ conferences.

Ah Gaga, My Nanny

My nanny did more than solidify my relationship with my father — she basically took care of me, becoming one of the most important people in my life. Though the arrival of my younger brother precluded my father’s taking another wife, my parents’ marriage was still difficult for my mother. In a traditional Chinese marriage, wives are completely dependent on their husbands. They were given an allowance and not much decision-making power. Men were not always faithful to their wives. And, of course, polygamy was still legal and an acceptable cultural practice. Women were talked down to and seldom treated as equals. Most Chinese mothers passed this attitude on: sons were the sun and moon, the hope and anchor for their old age. Daughters, not so much.

While there were moments of tenderness in my parents’ marriage, it also had its share of quarrels. My father tended to leave home after dinner and return in the wee hours of the morning. My mother took to staying up late and seldom went to bed before 2 a.m. Her nocturnal routine left little time for us to interact. Sometimes when I was in high school, when I pulled all-nighters for exams, we would share her midnight snacks of soup and noodles. But when I was young, I felt that my mother only managed to give me her leftover energy. Years later, I would understand that my mother was in a hard place herself; that it was difficult coping with all the changes she had faced in her life. My father’s behavior also created many deep hurts.

My nanny’s full name is Fung Yau (馮友), with 馮 “Fung” as the family name and 友 “Yau” as the given name meaning “friend.” While it is pronounced the same as the “Yau” in my name, they represent different Chinese characters. She joined our family eight years before I was born and still lives in Hong Kong today. For some reason, one of my sisters called her Gaga, or Ah Gaga because in the Cantonese dialect a reference to someone is often preceded with “ah.” Gaga has been part of our family for four generations, from my grandparents to our children.

Gaga was the eldest daughter of four children born to a farmer-scholar in the Kwongtung province around 1918. When her father died of tuberculosis, which was not unusual in those days, Gaga became a servant girl. She was eleven years old, making fifty Chinese cents a month. The entire sum was given to her mother for raising her younger siblings. As the maid for the young children of her employer, she carried their bags when they went to the village school. Gaga learned how to read by standing outside the classroom and listening to the lessons, gaining sufficient mastery to read the newspaper, although she never had the opportunity to learn to write.

The family that employed her was kind to her and taught her great manners. When World War II broke out in China, the family moved to Saigon and took her with them. In that French colony, she developed a love for French amenities and Shirley Temple movies. One of her treats was the French perfume Night of Paris. She never wore it herself, but she would put a dab into my hair after she finished braiding it. Gaga was known for her beauty accentuated by a poise that was almost regal.

Several times, her employers wanted to arrange a marriage for her. The intended grooms were other house servants or heavy laborers. My nanny turned down every attempt. In those days, it was unthinkable for a Chinese woman to reject marriage, but Gaga felt that her first duty was to her mother and siblings, who counted on her wages. Marriage would jeopardize her ability to continue working and directing all her resources to her family. Her independence was important to her, and she would rather work hard on her own terms than enter into a marriage where she would completely depend on the whims, kindness, generosity, or small-mindedness of a husband. After the war, she decided to move from Saigon to Hong Kong, where opportunities would be more plentiful and she would be closer to China.

In 1946, Fung Yau was hired as a servant to help my mother take care of my sister Irene. When I was born, we became inseparable. To get me out of the way of the adults, she carried me on her back using a Chinese-style Snugli while she conducted her chores of cleaning and laundering. She and I (and at certain times different siblings) shared the same room all the time I was growing up. It was to her I would spill out my worries — when my parents quarreled or, later, when my father had his first heart attack. I would complain to her about the privileged place my brothers enjoyed. Together we processed the news on the late-night radio show that reported the murder of a popular Hong Kong journalist when he spoke out against Communism. One of my earliest memories is from the time Gaga took ill when I was only three. I brought a stool and sat at the foot of her bed, watching over her until she opened her eyes and was well again.

Every morning when Ah Gaga got me ready for kindergarten at the Precious Blood School, she would send me off with perfect braids, the whitest starched uniform, matching spotless white socks and shoes, and a little wet towel in a soap box. In those days, the teacher would stamp in the student record book a “rabbit” for good behavior (attentiveness, neat appearance, completion of homework, obedient conduct) and a “pig” for anything less. Before I left for school each morning, my nanny would say to me that she had done her part in getting me ready and that I should do my part to bring home a rabbit for the day. I was glad to do that because the rabbit would be for both of us. After a year of only rabbits on my record book, I won a gold medal. Carved on it were my name and the Chinese characters for perfect conduct. It was placed on a chain for me to wear. I bit on it regularly, and it was so thin and pliable that I left little teeth marks. To this day it is one of my most cherished possessions.

Through the years, my nanny continued to instill in me a strong sense of discipline and the willingness to work hard. I did my homework in the same room where she ironed. She was a perfectionist in all she did. Her commandment — “Don’t play until you finish your work” — is forever chiseled into my brain. When I whimpered about the quantity of work, I only had to look at her duties and knew I could do more. At sixteen, when I took a practice test for the SAT and scored miserably on the verbal section, I was crestfallen. When I told Gaga that I did not know enough English words, she suggested, in the most pragmatic fashion, that I spend an extra hour a night studying the dictionary. I did and got over the hump.