My father was a Christian missionary, and from mainland China to Taiwan to the USA, he worked for the Lord for more than 50 years, spreading the gospel and witnessing. Three times a day, before each meal, he would read from the Bible and pray--in Mandarin in the morning, in Southern Fukienese at midday and in Cantonese in the evening. In the course of a year he would read the whole Bible through many times over. Under our father's careful tutelage, word by word and sentence by sentence we four brothers learned to understand and speak these three very different dialects, and could even read easily from the Bible and sing hymns in each of them. The sweet memory of the whole family sitting together at the dining table, studying and enjoying each other's company, is imprinted on my heart forever. That through all the trials and tribulations of life we have been able to cope and come through, I do not put down so much to the strength we derive from our religious belief, as to my father's teachings by word and example, which quietly influenced us and focussed the strength of every member of the family to pull together.
When we first arrived in California, everything was new and different. By chance I noticed a questionnaire from the community college asking local people what kinds of new courses the college should offer and who could come to teach them. I audaciously proposed myself to teach conversational Chinese, and to my surprise the president of the college really did ring me up to arrange an interview. As the president's parents had once beep missionaries in China, he knew a lot about our country. Furthermore, that year EVA Air was preparing to start flying to the US, and was urgently trying to recruit staff. Thus not only Americans wanted to learn Chinese, even Japanese, who see themselves as the world's economic giants, were coming to the college to ask whether it had Chinese classes. The college quickly decided to put on classes, and publicized them widely to attract as many people as possible.
The largest group among my students are business people who want to communicate with the many ethnic Chinese in California. Many people come because they need the language for their work, and some drive an hour or two after finishing work to get to class. They also include an elderly gentleman who was born in Indonesia and educated in the Netherlands. He worked in the Netherlands for many years and married a Dutch girl. Because his father had always told him, "We are Chinese," after he retired from an American aircraft manufacturing company, he set himself another goal in life: to build aircraft for the Chinese.
Canton and Fujian are the two provinces in China from which the greatest numbers of people have emigrated, and among my students there are many who are of Chinese descent but who understand no Mandarin at all. A small number of them can speak some Cantonese or Southern Fukienese. Thus I am very happy that I can use three different dialects of Chinese to communicate with them, and so do my bit to disseminate Chinese culture and promote popular diplomacy. All this makes me deeply grateful to my father.
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Father leading the family in prayer before breakfast. With her back to the camera is the family's maid. Taken in 1953 in the parsonage on Chungcheng Fourth Road, Kaohsiung.
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1961, in the courtyard in front of the parsonage in Taichung. This picture of the whole family reading from the Bible together was used as a New Year's greeting card.
1961, in the courtyard in front of the parsonage in Taichung. This picture of the whole family reading from the Bible together was used as a New Year's greeting card.