Happy Father's Day to all the Babas out there

ralphrepo · Jun 21, 2009

A really touching story, of being a Dad, and Chinese too, even during the harshest of times...

In a rush? For a quick synopsis, just read the red highlighted lines.

When Being a Father Exacted a Price
By Da Chen
June 17, 2000

My father died 10 years ago, around Father's Day, in southern China, without my being there to kowtow and bid him goodbye. I had been living in the United States for five years and had just gotten my law degree from Columbia and was preparing for the bar exam. My family didn't tell me until after the exams were over. When I learned of his death, I collapsed in my sister's arms and cried the whole night. For the next few months, I stumbled around the streets of New York in silent mourning. At 28, I felt like a miserable orphan. Since then, I have shed tears easily over father-son stories that I see on TV or read in newspapers. And Father's Day, a holiday about which I had once felt vaguely cynical -- a boring American holiday that I could ignore -- has slowly become a solemn day for loving and remembering the man I respectfully call ''Baba.''

My father's best legacy were the dazzling smiles he gave when he could not afford to. As a son of a former landowner whose lands had been confiscated by the new Communist government, my father suffered during the Cultural Revolution. When I was about 7, he was hanged by his thumbs from the ceiling of our commune's headquarters, yet he still refused to write a false confession. I was there, peeping through a window, watching him scream as he was beaten. It sickened me to see him being treated worse than an animal. He caught a glimpse of me. His screams ceased, and he threw a secret smile my way. My young heart sank with love and pain for him. I wanted to climb through the window and save him. Then he smiled again, this time with warning: Son, go home. The luxury of such a smile came at a high price. The cadres beat him till one of his fingers snapped.

One winter day, when we had eaten up the last of our moldy yams, my father secretly sneaked out of our commune to travel to a distant village to try and earn money painting houses. It was a grave risk, because under Communist rule it was illegal to engage in private business. My mother, my three sisters, my brother and I waited for him past 10 that night as the sea wind slanted the winter rain. My mother sobbed and prayed to Buddha, which only heightened our worry and sense of gloom. There was no electricity, so we sat in total darkness, hungry, not having eaten since early that morning. Dad finally appeared, barefoot, drenched and trembling with exhaustion and cold. With a difficult smile, he put a small bag of cornbread on our table, and we immediately devoured it.

Wrapped in a blanket, he told us that it had been tough selling a paint job on a rainy day. No job, no food, so he had sold his coat and shoes to buy the food. He would have been home a lot earlier, he said, but a couple of hungry wolves had chased him up a tall tree, where he waited for hours before they finally vanished into the valley. My father rarely prayed, but when his father was dying, I watched as he knelt before our hidden shrine and asked Buddha to take a few years off his own life and add them to Grandpa's and to transfer all of Grandpa's illnesses onto him. With tears rolling down his face, my father smiled as if Buddha had accepted his deal. In that brief moment, he taught me what it really meant to be a son.

Da Chen is the author of ''Colors of the Mountain,'' a memoir about growing up in China.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/17/opinion/when-being-a-father-exacted-a-price.html
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xmichelly · Jun 21, 2009

awww this was so touching
i want to show it to my dad but i'm pretty sure he would cry D:

van22 · Jun 21, 2009

nice

[mJ9] · Jun 23, 2009

that's soo sad:(
dads are great

Akki · Jun 23, 2009

amazing heartfelt story.... thanks for that ralph

Happy Father's Day to all the Babas out there

ralphrepo Well-Known Member

xmichelly Well-Known Member

van22 Well-Known Member

[mJ9] Well-Known Member

Akki ...