Grandpa

My grandpa was born in 1900 in mainland China and died in 1981 (I think) in Hong Kong. To be exact, he was killed by a ball of sticky rice. It was a dimsum lunch in a restaurant hosted by my eldest uncle from my dad's side to celebrate something. My grandpa put a sticky rice dessert in his mouth. It pulled out one of his false teeth and choked him. My younger brother, who was not there, said afterwards that he could have been saved if someone knew some first aid skills were there. They could have squeezed his lower abdomen and caused him to spit out the object. But luck was not on my grandpa's side. Lady luck had left him long time ago.

I remember him being a kind, and gentle grandpa. When I was very young, he always bringing some candies or snacks to treat us, his grandkids, whenever he came to visit with 'little grandma', his concubine.  He never raised his voice at any one except at little grandma. I knew he worked as a judge before in mainland China, and then became destitute in his old days, but I did not know why. Only recently when I asked my dad about him that I learned a fuller picture.

My grandpa was appointed by General Chiang Kai Shek to be a local judge in Guangdong province. He would be assigned to work in various counties, and when my dad was very young, he had traveled with my grandpa on a couple of these trips. So my dad learned that it was common in those days for judges to go to fun houses in those days in a group, to drink alcohol and enjoyed the company of hostesses. My grandpa even took in one hostesses as a concubine, a mere teenager as my dad recalled. So when that concubine ran away with a worker in a tofu skin shop that my grandpa owned one day, my dad thought that was not unexpected.


 I did not know my grandpa had businesses before, but it did not surprise me to learn that his ventures had always been a flop. Both my dad and his kids have no business acumen or skills. Another venture that my grandpa entered into in mainland China before going to Hong Kong was owning a huge tug boat. According to my dad, my grandpa got a lot of money from taking a bribe. It was an expensive ship. But one day, the hired hands simply disappeared with it. After that, he lost the remaining money in gambling.