I'm coming to the party really late as I only found out about this Grandparent stories contest a few days ago. For some reason, I thought the closing time is Tuesday 24 August 20:00 UTC but turns out it's 01:00 UTC which means I now have less than an hour to complete this to meet the deadline!!!!
Hop Sau
Out of my four grandparents, I am the closest with my paternal grandmother Hop Sau. I think I wrote about her a couple of times already, so some of what I talk about now might be repeat content, but still freshly written.
So where do I start? Granma Hop Sau died... probably about 20 years ago, historical events are rather vague for me nowadays. She's a tough old cookie, and always says she was born out of a rock. She was raised by her own grandmother as her mother left her when she was very young, not sure what happened to her father. I think that's what made her a tough cookie growing up. She always used to tell me after she gave birth to my dad in the morning, she was back working in the fields in the afternoon!! And if that wasn't a life tough enough, during her lifetime she survived
- her husband, my grand dad whom I never met
- her son, my dad
- her daughter, my youngest aunty who was still born
- her daughter in law, my dad's first wife who died shortly after giving birth to my brother, and
- her son in law, my uncle died from cancer 30 plus years ago
My parents came over to UK in the sixties as was common for many in those days when farming was no longer a viable way of life. They left my four elder siblings with Granma in Hong Kong, another common thing to do back then. They lived in the village and Granma rarely goes into the city. There was no reason for her to go.
Soon after, my parents bought them all over to UK in batches. Granma was responsible for bringing my brother and cousin over, both of the young lads must have been around 12 or 13 then. You have to remember, Granma rarely goes into the city, I'm not sure if she's ever even been there on her own, and she's illiterate. Suddenly she's got this mammoth task of taking two young lads on a plane to a foreign country where she doesn't understand a single word of the language. She made it safely in the end of course.
Life was totally alien for Granma in the UK as she didn't speak the language. I know she did manage to learn at least one word which stuck with her for the rest of her life. Remember I said Granma rarely goes into the city? The story goes, one day whilst going out with the family, the car approached a roundabout. She had never seen this before, straight roads yes, but why would a car go round and round on the road? She asked what this was, and someone told her it was a roundabout, using the English name. In Hong Kong, we speak Cantonese and we don't have the 'r' sound, and I think no one ever told her the Chinese name for a roundabout. So for the rest of her life, she only knew this as the 'lan-a-baw' and even used it when speaking in Cantonese 😀
After spending some years in UK, Granma eventually returned back to Hong Kong. When I was 9 years old, I went back to Hong Kong to stay with her. My dad wanted a volunteer to keep his mother company as she was getting a little old, and I put my hand up. I didn't really know what it all meant, all I knew it was an adventure! I was there for nearly seven years before I returned to UK to continue my education. Then after I graduated I went back to Hong Kong to work and spent more time living with her till I got married.
I can't remember when this photo was taken, probably in my early twenties. You can see the fields behind us, and in typical village life, most walk around bare foot.
Granma was a very traditional woman, for a long time, she had this thing about being photographed. She reckons the camera sucks away her soul and refused to have her photo taken 😄 Gradually she came around and didn't mind too much. This was taken during Chinese New Year, the flowers and pot of kumquat are traditional decorations and we stick lucky red packets on the plant for good luck.
With Granma being such a tough cookie, I've never seen her being sad. That's until my dad died. Whilst working in Hong Kong, my sister called one day to say my dad had fell ill in UK. The next day he'd turned for the worse and I was summoned back to UK immediately. Granma was 80 (?) then, still fit enough to travel but not fit enough to be told her son was about to die. I couldn't leave her alone in Hong Kong and we flew out in less than 24 hours notice. That's a very big move for an 80 year old, but luckily with Granma being a traditional woman, she does as she's told. I just told her dad was not feeling well, but I knew she could sense something wasn't right.
I never made it back in time to see my dad, we missed it by a few hours. I went straight to my brother's as everyone had gathered there. Everyone was quiet, as was Granma. She could really sense something was wrong especially since everyone but my dad was there. My brother broke the news to her. That was the first and only time I heard her cry. Her wail still breaks my heart and brings tears to my eyes as I write this.