Travel Blog 2007 - Intro
Well, without a doubt, I hate my every ass found in my genealogy. I hate every fecking one of them.
Anyway, it turns out that my distant relatives are far better than the ones I grew up…ironic, huh?
So…off I go to
So try stuffing 20+ folks in your living room apartment.
Mom comes to the rescue and buys them a big house enough for all of these assholes to live in. For a whopping ¥1,200 ($130 back then), mom got ‘em a house big enough for my cousins to have their own rooms. My grandparents decided to remain in their own house while everyone else occupy every goddamn room half of this former mansion. The home was originally owned by a wealthy magistrate who unfortunately, had to turn over his massive abode into a crappy tenement building when Mao took over.
The original owners lived quietly and were forced to share their ancestral home with my relatives. At the very least, my family paid for their living space as opposed to the other occupants who simply barged in.
[Sad note: The magistrate was stripped of his wealth, title and two of his elder sons were publicly executed for participating in the Nationalist Army. Every household had to give up their firstborn son for the war, so it wasn’t exactly a choice many people voluntarily made. In fact, my 2nd uncle enlisted in the army posing as my eldest uncle because he wasn’t around when the guards came knocking down the doors. My 2nd uncle revered his eldest brother and used to get into such mischief that my grandmother would whup them with splintered bamboo sticks. Fortunately, my 2nd uncle survived the war and snuck away to
Anyhoo, mum gave the power of attorney to her long-lost sister (another story to blog about) and my aunt was up to no good. The wench is bitter and angry over the fact mom didn’t split any proceeds of the sale of two apartments back 2005. It doesn’t matter if the titles are in our names (me and bro), but she collected rent for 10 years, therefore it qualifies as a legitimate owner in her freaking mind. Of course, she conveniently forgot how mum never quite asked for the bulk of the rent money or asked her to keep an accurate record accounting these transactions. Mom being mom, allowed her keep her more than half of what was collected AND the witch had the balls to ask for more.
That’s
They’re greedy and they’ll take ANYTHING they can get. And oh, they’re really subtle about asking for money. You’ll hear crap like, “HEY! I’ve got a son who’s going to college this September”, meanwhile their eldest son is 45 and never even graduated from junior high school.
See, the reason why they make a sport of bashing us jook sings (another term describing American-born Chinese – hollow bamboos – meaning we look Chinese, but don’t possess the ‘heart’ of being Chinese) is because we’re a bunch of doozies when it comes to deciphering their subliminal and cryptic messages. We’re just too simple-minded and clueless in taking advantage of every given opportunity coming our way.
So I’m stupid.
Whatever.
My mother never trained us to calculate each favor or request; instead, she preached in the highest regard to love our family members unconditionally. Um, okay, but they sure don’t seem to recite the same mantra. Now why is that?
Comments:
The last part of your post reminded me of a woman I worked with in DC, who would have to close her office door at least once a week to have a screaming, sobbing, hysterical argument with her teenage daughter over the phone. These arguments always involved exertion and a volume one might expect if there was a war on. You'd think the girl had committed a murder or something, when in truth she was just a normal slightly rebellious teenager whom the woman was going to see at home in a few hours anyway. The entire office ignored the weekly drama, chalking it up to the woman's Russian blood.
Come to think of it, the office did have two rules for behavior: Russians and non Russians. Non Russians had to be all business, Russians were allowed to structure their work around their passions, subtleties, and biological inclination to turn every little problem into a full-scale drama.
Rest assured...Miki started school last week, so it means mommy is getting re-educated once again! But it's also harder to blog nowadays because Miki has developed a habit of asking me a question or re-telling stories based on cartoons she's watched...every fricking five minutes. This is clearly a the "only child" syndrome and she just can't stop yapping. I have to practically beg her to leave me alone for a good hour which almost never happens. Because I hate Spongebob, I would deliberately stick my fingers in my ears and go, "LALALALALALA" but she'll still press on and tell me that Squidward's the only squid that doesn't squirt ink.
LOL
Oh well. I only have about less than 2 hours each night to blog...and this topic ain't all that pretty!
Fukienese people speak so loud, one would've assumed we were fighting thanks to the volume and the drama they exert. So my office sounds like a battleground at times.