Da-ma, Shao-ma:
My Two Moms
By Shoulee Paul
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011
My Old Neighborhood in Taipei
Editor's Introduction
Anyone who was around during the 1960's might recall the song “Hurdy Gurdy Man” by Donovan. For over 40 years, the following lyrics from this song have echoed in my heart:
Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity
Perhaps these lines put too negative a spin on human life. And to be fair, I should remind myself that later in the song, the Hurdy Gurdy Man comes singing songs of love. It seems that life's suffering is moderated by the compassion and kind deeds of individual human beings, who though living amidst the pain and strife around them, nonetheless manage to give themselves to making life better for others, if only in a humble and unassuming manner. They survive and persevere despite overwhelming obstacles.
I am pleased to introduce the story of a person who has experienced the cruel side of human nature all too often. And yet I am impressed that people like her survive, lovingly raise children and grand-children, and struggling with their past, live deliberately, with an enduring hope that one day justice will finally triumph in an unfair universe.
It may have been one afternoon, as she sat alone in her beauty salon, fighting off the urge to sleep. The weather was warm, business was slow, and drifting off into a dream-like reflection about the past, she wondered how she had come to be what she was today. However, it wasn't as if the question arose suddenly. Indeed, she often pondered over the circumstances of life, and often asked why there was such a mixture of joy and sadness along the way.
Shoulee first told her story to long-time customer and friend Jeff Archer. Thanks are due Mr. Archer for his careful interviewing and assistance in getting Shoulee's story down on paper. As editor, I made only minor revisions to the original manuscript, and modified the title, changing little else so the reader can experience Shoulee's story in her own words.
Early Days In China
After almost six decades on this Earth, I find myself as a proprietor of a beauty salon in San Diego, California, USA. Because of the hard work and perseverance I have conducted over the years, along with the support of my family, I can say that life is good. The current assessment of my life was not always so, however.
My story shares some of the universal elements of life, while at the same time depicts occurrences unique to me and my family. It begins decades ago in the Far East.
My father, Sun Yun Hsiao, was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan in the earlier part of the twentieth century. In 1940, he was drafted into the Japanese army. In those days, the political makeup of the area was far different from that of today and the country of Japan held a formidable influence in Taiwan. Because my father could speak Japanese and the indigenous language of Taiwan, as well as Cantonese, the standard dialect of mainland China, he became an interpreter for the Imperial Japanese Army.
After he was drafted, my father was assigned to Guandong Province in mainland China. One day, while visiting a hospital, he noticed a nurse who caught his eye. Her name was Hsiu-Chiung. The two began to see each other and, in 1941, Hsiu-Chiung married my father.
Soon after, my mother became pregnant with her first child, a boy. Today, my oldest brother, Chi-Wai, lives in Los Angeles, California, USA, with his wife and two children.
At the time of my brother’s birth, my parents lived with my grandfather from my mother’s side. My grandfather, a doctor and former classmate of noted Dr. Sunyatsen, owned a four-story house in Guandong and he allowed my parents to live there as long as they desired. Because the salary of a translator for the Japanese Army was meager, the living arrangement was superb. If my parents had to find a place to live on the open market, they would have had difficulties.
Shortly after my brother was born, my mother became pregnant again with my oldest sister, Moh-Duo. Actually, the name given her was Japanese in derivation. The Japanese never made Chinese people change their names, but, at the time, my father was educated in Japanese, so that language felt more comfortable for him to use as the name for a child.
My father spoke Japanese exceptionally well. Despite his low salary, he had attained the rank of Major in the Japanese Army.
After the birth of two children, my mother decided it was time to hire a housekeeper to help with the daily tasks. She was again pregnant, so she was looking to the future in making the decision. If she knew the drastic implications and how this would affect her family for decades, I think she may not have made such a decision. We all know that hindsight is the best teacher.
When my mother brought up the subject with my father, he quickly agreed. He even went so far as saying that he had a prospective candidate, a nurse in a local hospital. This was a different hospital from the one where my mother was working when she met my father. My mother agreed that my father’s choice for housekeeper, Hao-Chin, could move into the house and begin her duties.
Shortly after Hao-Chin moved into the back of my grandparent’s house, my mother learned that the new housekeeper was pregnant. She asked no questions about the pregnancy. My mom assumed that Hao-Chin was married or that she had family locally. She had her own room in the back of the house and my mother thought that her business was her own
For a while, things were pretty non-contentious. However, one thing bothered my mother. My father was erratic in his sleeping habits. Many times, he would not come into the bedroom with my mother at night. After thinking it over, my mom put one and one together and confronted my father. She asked him about the father of Hao-Chin’s soon-to-be-born child, and he admitted that he was the father. He then added that he had been seeing her for a long time and that his choice for housekeeper was no accident.
My mother became very angry at the situation. She gave my father an ultimatum. After Hao-Chin’s baby was born, my mother would keep the baby and bring it up as her own and Hao-Chin would leave the house after the birth. Hao-Chin agreed, as did my dad, to the proposal put forth by my mother.
My father in Guandong in 1936
The baby was born, but it was sickly. About two months after its birth, the baby died. After the mourning, my mother decided to bring up the subject of Hao-Chin’s leaving the house. After repeated attempts to have her leave, Hao-Chin still remained.
My father did not push Hao-Chin to leave. Despite my mother’s protesting, my father held the last word. He was the head of the home at the time, so everyone had to do what he wanted, despite occasional complaints. The male holding all the power in a family was very traditional at that time in China. He always had the last word.
Backed by the power of my father, Hao-Chin decided to stay and perform housekeeping duties. My mother was not happy about the decision, but she was powerless to do anything about it. She thought that she would just try to make the best of an awkward situation. At this time, the revolution in China was in full swing, so both women put their personal animosities to the side. They had to discuss what they were going to do with their lives. The family had three choices: leave China; stay in China; or go to Taiwan. My grandfather told my mother to leave my father and let him go somewhere by himself. He guaranteed her that he would take care of her and the children. When my mother approached my father with the proposal, he negated it. He wanted to keep the children, so he told my mother that she could leave by herself. My mother was pregnant and my father said, “You leave with the baby in your stomach and I will keep the other two children.” My mother chose not to go because she did not want to leave the two children with my father, knowing she might never see them again.
Relocation to Taiwan
In 1944, my mother and father decided to relocate to Taiwan. They hired a boat for the trip, but the boat could not make a direct trip to Taiwan. My family stopped in the island of Macao, waiting to continue the journey. During that time, my mother had her second daughter, my second oldest sister, Si-Lo. After her birth, the family members re-started the trip to Taiwan, stopping in Hong Kong for a couple of weeks. They waited for another boat to go to Taiwan and eventually finished the last leg of their journey, arriving in Taiwan in 1945.
When the family arrived in Taipei, Taiwan, it was homecoming time for my father because he was originally from Taipei. They had to live with my uncle and aunt on my father’s side. They didn’t like my mother, so the emotions were intense. In addition to my family members was Hao-Chin. My mother had put outstanding issues aside.
Eventually, the welcoming mat was worn thin. My uncle and grandmother let my family stay, but they let it be known that they did not like them. Other than my father, the rest of the family was considered to be foreign. They did not speak the Taiwanese language. They treated my mother and Hao-Chin with disrespect.
My uncle and grandmother begrudgingly let them stay. They gave my mother and Hao-Chin a little food for the family here and there, but not enough for the basic needs. My mother and Hao-Chin had to go out and look for live chickens and vegetables and, eventually, they began growing their own produce, and raised their own chickens.
It was impossible to stay at my uncle’s house anymore, so the family found a broken down house nearby and moved in. At the time, there were a lot of unkempt and uninhabited houses. The family, which consisted of my mother, father, two sisters, a brother, and Hao-Chin, moved in and began to work to upgrade the house. The two women had chores and they worked together and continued to live their own lives the best they could under the circumstances. Neither could speak the dialect of Taiwan. All they could speak was Cantonese in a dialect unintelligible in Taiwan. The written languages are similar, but the pronunciation is vastly different, making it impossible to be understood. My father’s translation skills came in handy as he translated for my mother and Hao-Chin.
Eventually, things were looking slightly better. My father acquired a job with the local police department. In addition to his salary, he was given subsidies, such as flour, sugar, or powdered milk. Anything helped in those days. The government gave its employees rations according to how many children were in a family.
Shortly after, my mother became pregnant with me. I was number four. In the meantime, they moved to a better house in the area. They lived there until after I was born on January 11, 1947. There was a problem with my birth date, however. Hao-Chin was pregnant again and my father did not register my birth with the authorities. He waited until my half-brother was born and they registered us together as twins on July 2, 1947. I have the distinction of having two birthdays — one real and the other approximate. My father loved all of us equally, so he wanted to be fair in registering the family and not having one member ostracized.
My father as a police officer in Taipei
We lived in the house in which I was born for about five years. Our family grew and we eventually moved to a more permanent residence — the house in which I grew up in Taipei. It was about a 30-minute drive from our previous residence.
Hao-Chin continued to have more children with my father; six in all, and we lived together in the same two-story house. There were now 10 children to look after. My mother bore the brunt of the work, treating all the kids equally. She loved Hao-Chin’s offspring as much as her own.
By now, my mother and Hao-Chin did not talk to each other. Hao-Chin had begun to become a not-so-good person. For instance, after the birth of her second child, Hao-Chin tried to strangle the newborn. The child did not look like anyone in the family. She was dark-skinned and resembled an aborigine. Now that I look back, I think my grandmother on my father’s side had similar traits, so it took a couple of generations for them to emerge.
The baby did not like to eat, so Hao-Chin wanted to kill her. She would strangle the child by the neck until she made choking sounds. My mother told Hao-Chin to leave the child alone so she could take care of her. She nurtured her and did everything she could to improve the child’s health. Eventually, my half-sister became healthy with the persisting aid of my mother. The child did not have breast milk, so my mother would soak rice overnight and, the next day, grind it with a mortar and pestle and then put it in a bottle and feed the girl. All the nurturing paid off.
I'm at the upper left, my “twin” brother on the lower right, with a couple of our neighborhood pals.
By now, my mother was doing all the cooking and washing, all the tasks our housekeeper should have been performing. Because of the size of our family, my father’s salary was not enough to keep us afloat, so he decided to open a business downstairs to gain more finances for the family. In those days, no one needed government permission to open a business. Even permits were not necessary. You just opened your business.
My father opened a little barber shop. It was a little fancy for those days; it had six chairs and six barbers.
After the business opened, my mother continued to perform all the housekeeping duties. They were growing more because of the expanding family.
Growing Up In Taipei
In a curious move, my father registered the business under Hao-Chin’s name. She was officially the business owner. They put her downstairs to run the business and she was happy. All she did was collect the money and take care of the employees and merchants.
An ominous pattern began to emerge. They put my mother upstairs to take care of all the children, hers and the supposed housekeeper’s as well. By now, nobody took seriously the fact that Hao-Chin was a housekeeper. Her power had been elevated greatly over the years.
Former family home (upper) and barber shop (lower)
Every day, Hao-Chin gave my mother an allocated amount of money from the barber shop to buy groceries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. In those days, there were no supermarkets. Everything was fresh and sold in smaller venues, so my mother had to shop for food three times a day.
In addition to the family, my mother had to feed the workers. There were five or six in constant need of lunch. We had a little house with a little table and my mother allocated eating times. First, she cooked for the workers who sat down at the table to eat. The second round was for the kids and my dad. My mother was always the last to eat and many times, there were only scraps left for her, such as a little gravy or a couple of pieces of vegetables. My mother never complained about the inequities.
After a while, the amount of money to buy food decreased. My mother was good at rationing the money for the food, yet she did not have the ability to buy more for less money. Hao-Chin began giving my mother less money and when my mother told her that there was not enough money to buy the required amount of food, Hao-Chin would state, “Too bad. You will have to find a way to buy the food and feed 19 people.”
My family in 1950 (left to right)
Top: Mom, Hao-Chin, Chi-Wei (brother), Dad
Bottom: My “twin,” Ren-Wei, Me, Si-Lo (sister), Mo-Duo (sister)
This decrease in finances led my mother to become astute at bargaining. She would buy right to the gram or the piece. In those times, you could buy one or two eggs, not be limited to purchasing a dozen. She knew right down to the last coin what she could afford. She began to wait for leftovers (bruised fruit and vegetables or cracked eggs) and purchase them at reduced prices. Sometimes, she could buy these items at half price.
At first, the buying of second-rate produce helped my mother to remain inside her budget, but the money from Hao-Chin became less and less. There came a time when my mother just did not have enough money to buy food for everyone, and she began to shoplift. She took whatever she could get away with — an egg, a couple of green peppers or green onions. When she was caught, the store owners would ask why she did it, and then tell her to put it back. They knew her, and they knew the hard time she was having to buy food for 19 people.
My mother was afraid of my father, so she never asked him to make Hao-Chin give her more money. She was afraid of Hao-Chin, who was 10 years younger than my mother, as well. She abused my mother both verbally and physically. I saw it with my own eyes.
Despite Hao-Chin being10 years younger than my mother, Mom was lumbered with all the nonstop physical grueling work. She would rush from the market and then rush upstairs to cook. We had a back entrance that my mother was relegated to using when she returned. When the monumental task of cooking for everyone was completed, my mother then served the food to the three shifts of eaters. When the meal was complete, she washed the dishes. In a state of near exhaustion, my mother then had to begin the routine all over again in preparation for the next meal.
Hao-Chin participated in only one function of the daily routine of meal preparation, eating. She had her own special food and gave my mother money that was earmarked for her designated cuisine. She told my mother, “You buy the stuff I like.”
Hao-Chin claimed she could not perform housework because she suffered from diabetes. We had reservations about how real her disease was, but she maintained that the malady kept her from doing any housework. My mother was in a constant state of exhaustion, yet she received absolutely no assistance from Hao-Chin.
Hao-Chin always complained about lack of finances for the family’s needs. However, I knew that this was false. She hid the business money from everyone, so no one knew exactly what the finances were because Hao-Chin took the business money and bought gold for herself. You can’t hide too much gold in your pockets, so she made a money belt to conceal the gold. She took a piece of material about one meter long, and sewed compartments into it. Then, she inserted the gold chunks into the compartments, covered the contraption and nobody saw the gold.
One day, I found out about her hoarding the gold. I saw Hao-Chin in the bathroom shower. She left the belt on a table and I picked it up and gave it to her, not thinking anything about it. We were just kids and we didn’t say “boo” to her about anything because she would tell us it was none of our business and slap us. We were all afraid of her. She called all the shots, including constant lying to my father who believed her. I told my siblings about the gold and we all knew from then on that Hao-Chin was amassing a gold collection. My brothers and sisters did not like the situation, but there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. This state of affairs continued for many more years.
At the time, we could only wear hand-me-downs. If we were really lucky, we might have one new outfit, or one pair of new shoes, each year. Sometimes, my mother had to steal these items as well, just so we could have something to wear. She usually performed such acts, that disgusted her, at busy times of the year, such as the Chinese New Year.
Hao-Chin was still adamant about not giving my mother enough money to buy food. For instance, rice, which was a staple food, was usually on the shopping list. In the beginning, my mother had enough money for rice, but that quickly changed. After a while, she would go to several markets and purchase only the cheapest rice. Little by little, she did not have enough money to pay for the entire order. My mother then approached Hao-Chin and asked how she could buy rice with no money.
She told my mother, “Go charge it. Tell them you will pay them next week.” My mother began to charge food on account, not knowing when she would ever be able to pay. By now, the whole neighborhood and the merchants knew our situation, but because they all liked her, the shops would let her charge the food.
The patience of the shopkeepers eventually ran thin. My mother asked Hao-Chin for money to pay for the debts incurred, and Hao-Chin told her that she had no money and that my mother would have to take care of it. Because my mother had no money or any way of making money, she had to ask the stores for more time to pay. Eventually, they stopped giving us goods.
After being cut off from buying food, Hao-Chin would occasionally give my mother a meager amount of money to buy food, but only if we were desperate. She would chastise my mother for not being able to buy food with little or no money and she blamed her for everything that went wrong.
Because we had no money, if a pot or pan had a hole in it, we had to use it until it was all worn out and couldn’t be used any more. Hao-Chin did not give us money for new ones or even for repairing the old ones.
We owed money to many businesses, and some of the proprietors complained. They all knew the situation, but did not persist on being paid because my father was well-known in that district, so he was shown respect.