My Parents - Part 1

My mother was a very good mother, too. Without my father, she alone raised up us three children. There was a bad tradition in the villages: "Only poor people do manual labor. Rich people do not dirty their hands or feet." Those families who had fathers in America were considered rich. Therefore many of my uncles and cousins had no initiative to do labor work or farm work, and yet were not smart or ambitious enough to pursue higher education. My mother had a far better foresight than her peers. She believed that kind of attitude was wrong. She taught us to do every thing we could. "Any productive works are good for us." Ever since we were little kids, we helped wash dished, feed the chickens, tend the hog, carry water from the river, carry water to irrigate the garden vegetables, clean house, etc. We went down to the rice field (full of leaches) to help pump water for irrigation, or to weed. All three of us grew up decent, clean and upright, "smart enough to hold up a pen, and not ashamed to hold the plow." We are far better kids and more successful than any of our cousins. Even my little sister, a city school girl, during the War in the village, she did more farm work and hard labor than my brother or I ever did.

In Guangzhou, we, with the help of my mother's fifth uncle's family (I-E, Moy), who moved to Guangzhou in the 1910's, lived at No. 20, Nga-Yiu Rear Street in Dungsan District, next door to my mother's cousin's (II-i) wife and two daughters. My brother went to Baat Guei High School. I went to Pui Ching School, my sister went to Guong Dong Elementary School. Within a year, we bought a house and moved to No. 8 of 8, New South Street, Dung Wah Dung Road. It was a solid two-story house, brand new, about 100 yards from the railroad tracks. Since we seldom saw a train or steamboat in our life, it was quite exciting to watch an occasional train passing by every day.

In my words: 

The little sister that did all the farm work was my mother, Julia. I still remember her telling us kids the stories about the leaches in the rice fields.