Anniversary: Yuan Hongqi in Poems by Changming ©

Yuan Hongqi (袁宏启) is my father who died of heart diseases at my mom's arms in Jinzhou Central Hospital around 5:00 pm on 2 January 2012. Last Wednesday was his anniversary, when I was too busy teaching, helping students or communicating with PP's contributors to do something here. Now I am posting every poem I have written in commemoration of him since his death. Luckily, all these and other poems pasted below have been accepted or published by literary magazines, such as MOBIUS, PoetsWest, Asia Literary Review, CHEST, Fairy Tale Review, Grain, Istanbul Literary Review, Byword, Tower Journal, Syndic Literary Journal, Media Virus Magazine, Fortunates, Prairie Journal, Pyrokinection, Black Magnolias Literary Journal, District, Writers Abroad, Mixitini Matrix, Cynic, Lit Up Magazine, Literary Underground, Dialogist, Spirits, Red Fez and Westward Review.

These are the flowers I mean to put in front of his tomb in my native village (I have translated some of them into Chinese so that my father could understand when he reads/hears them in heaven)::

My Dates

Between

1934

And

2012

Is

A

Line

Short

But

Containing

Numerous

Dotted

Words

[Actually, these dates are my fathers]

The Day Yuan Hongqi Passed Away

That was the day when my father died

Before finishing the longevity noodles

Mom’s trying to feed him below our feet

On the other face of the planet, where

He had persisted long enough to allow

Us to celebrate another new year’s day

In Jingzhou as well as in Vancouver

When my brother’s only son managed to

Travel all the way to Grandpa’s dying bed

To report how he was doing in New York

This was also the time when I and Hengxiang

Felt like making love again after another

Cold war, when Iran successfully testfired

Two long-range missiles in the Persian Gulf

To deter the invasion to be led by Uncle Sam

And his running dogs, when the very first

Plymouth Neon was made in 2000, when JFK

Became a senator in 1960, when a stamped

Took 66 human lives after a soccer game

At the Ibrox Park Stadium in Scotland

Even earlier, and when God was taking

A long overdue nap, since he knew

All was well with this wild wild world

On that day, I became the oldest male

In my entire family, ready to take my turn

To deal with death in a masculine manner

Tomb Visiting: For Yuan Hongqi

Last year, before burying your ashes

Right beside Grandma’s grave site

(To guard her Buddhaship, as you had

Wished), I opened your urn for a peek

And found your biggest bone chip

Glistening against the January wind

As pink as a piece of charcoal

Now, too far to attend your anniversary

Like every other good Confucian son

Burning joss sticks and fake money

Lighting a huge pile of firecrackers

Before your tombstone, on Big Wok Peak

But I did make three loud kowtows

Towards the east, and in so doing

I saw a little rosy cloud drifting around

Like an inflated bird beating its wings

Along the horizon, amid evening glows

And wondered whether that’s your spirit

Still lingering between earth and heaven

What was it tightly holding in its beak:

A heirloom, or simply our family name?

[Although the poem was written early in 2012, it was round 10:30 pm on Saturday evening 30 December when my mom was conducting a traditional commemorating ritual in Jinzhou, China that I led my family actually to kowtow towards the east]

上坟：献给袁宏启

年初，我把您的骨灰

埋在奶奶的坟边

（保她平安，如您生前所愿）

我打开您自买的骨灰坛偷看了一眼

但见您最大的一片骨殖

在元月的寒风中闪闪烁烁

粉色的，就像一块火炭

现在，我离您实在太远

不能像其他儒家孝子

到大锅顶您的坟前去祭奠

点香，烧冥钱，放长鞭

但我还是领着妻儿面朝东边

磕了三个响头，当时我遥见

一朵红云飘飘然然

象一只充气的鸟儿振翅飞旋

在地平线上，在晚霞之间

不知那可是您的魂灵

还彷徨在天地之间？

瞧，那鸟嘴里叼的是什么

您的传家宝，还是我们的姓字‘袁’？

Recalling: For Yuan Hongqi

‘Wait a while!’ Mother would shout, ‘they say

There might be more showers this afternoon.’

So I recalled, from time to time

How he would turn a deaf ear to her

And continue, dragging out quilts

Sheets, pillows, blankets, padded coats

One pile after another

Like moving forests

Hanging them on thick ropes

Tied to deformed poplars or lamp posts

‘Not again! This old man of mine just wouldn’t

Want to waste a single ray of sunlight.’

And remembered, for nearly half a century

My dad had tried each time to empty the whole house

And sun-wash everything, more like a grandma

Than like a father, even during the Cultural Revolution

Now realizing how I have been haunted

By his stark image, smiling, in blue, ever since

He nodded his head to Mother for the last time

About 5 pm on January 2 last year

I find myself choked again with gratitude:

It was my father who gave me so many a chance

To smell fresh sunlight in my boyish nightmares

Kinship: For Yuan Hongqi

Yes, we are father and son, but so often

Did I doubt this simple small biofact:

We could never say more than three short

Sentences to each other when we met, nor

Did we meet more than three times per year

Before I managed to flee a thousand miles

Away from you, and later ten thousand away

From your village on this world’s other side

Like other Chinese fathers, you never said

You loved me, gave me a hug, or touched me

Unless it was a cutting pinch in the arm

Or a heavy hit on the butt, (always in surprise)

While my peers kept bragging aloud

About their great fathers, grandfathers

I looked down upon you, not because of

Your slight stature, but because of your

Smaller personality, constantly calling you

‘A Buddha outside, a Devil at home’

(Of course behind your back), so I used to

Feel guilty, fearing I could never shed

Any teardrops when you die, just as every

True Confucian son is supposed to

Unlike me and my son, with a big store of

Co-memories ready to share, to cherish

We were born enemies, karma-determined

In our former lives, just as you had explained

To my mother, (who would be busy filling

In each new crack on our wall, with a big pail

Of muddy mixture every time we met)

Yet ever since your death at the dawn of 2012

I have been haunted by your image, kindly

Smiling, and even sobbed my heart out

While dreaming last night: are you there, Dad?

亲情：写给袁宏启

没错，你我确系父子，不过我常常

怀疑这一简单的生物学事实：

每次相聚，我们难能说完三句短话

而一年到头我们见面也不过三次

那还是我在世界的另一边

逃避你千里万里之前

像其他中国父亲，你从未说过

你爱我，拥抱过触摸过我

除非是深掐臂膀

或痛打屁股，（总是冷不及防）

当我的同伴大声吹嘘

他们的爸爸爷爷如何了得，我却

瞧不起你，不是因为

你身量矮小，而是因为

你性格怯弱。我时时（在你背后）说你

‘在外是活菩萨，在家是活阎王’

因为这，我深深内疚，唯恐不能像个

真正的儒家孝子在你离世时为你落泪

不像我和我的儿子，总有许多共同往事

分享回忆，我你乃天生对头

前世注定，一如你向我母亲诉说的

那样。（每当我俩相见

她总是拧着个大桶， 随时在你我之间的

高墙上填缝补隙）

可是，自从2012年年初你撒手人寰

你的形象一直追缠着我，慈爱的

微笑，每每使我泣不成声

昨夜还梦见：你在么，爸？

Family Reunion: Once, and Forever

Yuan Hongqi, may your spirit, Dad, come

And join us from Pure Land in this poem

(Conceived in and dedecated to Vancouver)

With Liu Yu, my mother, who is paying us

A visit from the other side of the world

Let’s gather together behind these thin lines

Where I and Hengxiang Liao, my old girl

Have prepared a big dinner according to

Our own recipes. Please, sit here with Mom

Above my central metaphor. First, take a sip

Of Luosong Soup, our only family specialty

George Lai and Allen Qing, my two sons

Always love to drink, even Hyunjung Lee

(George’s Korean wife) finds it agreeable --

By the way, the young couple has finally

Decided to buy a condominium in Sunnydale

Now, try some consonance, and this assonance

Fried with Tofu, a course you never heard of

In your lifetime. Look, right beside you is

Julian Han Yuan, your most favored grandson

The pride of our family who’s doing his PhD

In New York, and across the table are Liu Yun

My brother and his current wife Chen Jing

Still working far away in Jingzhou, China

Dad, since you were a vegetarian, a Buddhist

Let’s have internal rhyme instead of wine, let’s

Celebrate our grand family reunion. Cheers!

[Towards the end of 2011, we had our first and last family gathering when my father was still alive. In terms of health and finance, this was a highly costly reunion, as George and Hyunjung had to travel from San Francisco, Julian from New York, and we - my wife, my younger and i,  from Vancouver all the way to Jinzhou in Hubei Province. Because of this trip, Allen's disc problem got worse and has never recovered, while I began to suffer from dramatically obvious symptoms of heart diseases such as HCM (?)]

Here are all the pieces I have written with my father in mind since I began composing poetry in English, which have all been published as well:: 

Well, Well, the Well

(for Yuan Hongqi)

In the lowest terrain of

My father’s native village

Used to be an old well

As deep as the memories

Of last century, around which

Boys would be running

At noon in summer

And girls dancing under the willow

At midnight, where my father

Often sat, listening to his sick mother

Telling stories about his unknown ancestors

The well finally ran dry

After God knows how long, and

Since electricity came across the hills

And ponds, nobody has returned to it

Except mosses and lichens that have colonized

The whole territory, where only my grandma’s ghost

Shines down from time to time

Trying to guard its walled-in secrets

Now as dry as its mouth

[This is a parallel poem based on an imagined experience.]

Ischemia

In my line of people, especially on my father’s side

There never seems to have been ample blood

Running within the arteries behind our Chinese chests

No matter how warm-hearted we actually are

As in the case of my father, who used to

Accuse me of being an ill-hearted teenager

My heart muscle is imbalanced

As one side is less infused with blood

Than the other, thus causing palpitation

Short breath, and a strong sense of

Tightness, heaviness or tiredness about life

To diagnose my cardiovascular defection

Neither an echo nor a stress test is needed

For I am keenly aware of my own doomed

Arteries that have been clotted

With too many syllables

Voiced or voiceless

And to make all these sounds flow out of my heart

Is already stressful enough

Nevertheless, I will keep pumping out these words

Be they ever so blood-soaked

[This is a parallel poem based on a puzzling health-related experience.]

心肌缺血

在我的家人中，尤其是男性

好像从无足够的血液

在我们的中国胸腔里流淌

尽管我们实际上非常热心

一如我父，他常骂我

是一个心坏的小子

我的心肌不够匀称

尖端处总是缺血

因此我时常觉得心悸，气短

以及对人生的疲倦

或负重感

要诊断我有缺陷的心脏

其实无须扫描或进行运动试验

我深知我的心脏血管

因有太多的音节而堵塞

有的是清音，有的是浊音

让这些音节都通过心室

早已使我精疲力竭

然而，即使这些音节沾满鲜血

我也要将其泵出

Curse in Verse: An Ischemic Tradition*

As if this had been a family curse

You have all the symptoms of ischemia:

Palpitations, short breaths, irregular heartbeats

Although no test results show you

Having a physiological cause of the problem

While your family doctor keeps wondering

Why you do not have enough blood

Flowing around behind your Chinese chest

You know your heart muscle as a sponge

From which you have squeezed out

Too many of your blood-rooted words

Like your father, like your son

[While my dying father Yuan Hongqi has never been able to get his poetry published, my 16-year-old younger son Allen Qing Yuan, who suffers greatly from disc problems, has already had his poems appearing in a number of countries. ]

诗咒：缺血的传统*

仿佛这是个家族之咒

缺血的症状你应有尽有：

心悸，气短，律动不齐

尽管没有哪项检查结果表明

你确有病理方面的原因

你的家庭医生实在弄不明白

你的中国胸腔之内，为甚么

没有足够的血液流淌

你知道，自己的心肌像一块海绵

从中你已挤出

太多太多沾血的字句

有其父，必有其子

Like A Lamp

in Vancouver west

from time to time
you just cannot help yelling, yearning
for your father's humming
you fumble into musical halls
in pursuit of tunes
soft/hard utterances
you need this feeling
you need this contact
with origin
guiding your heart
like a lamp
along a forlorn road

[This is a parallel poem based on an imagined experience.]

Making Tea

Without a famous name

These little shy leaves

Coming afar from my father’s farm

Deep among fluffy hills

Like sleeping giant pandas

Sowing a few in my crystal glass

I see them budding

Blooming in boiled water

Taking a slow sip

I fall drunk as if in a stupor

With a tiny taste of

All the freshness of spring

And a whole morning glow Making Tea

Without a famous name

These little shy leaves

Coming afar from my father’s farm

Deep among fluffy hills

Like sleeping giant pandas

Sowing a few in my crystal glass

I see them budding

Blooming in boiled water

Taking a slow sip

I fall drunk as if in a stupor

With a tiny taste of

All the freshness of spring

[My father enjoyed drinking thick green tea, but this is a parallel poem based on an imagined experience.]

Sunwashing

Never have I been a handy man

With my hands so too clumsy

Even to hold a hummer right

As my wife often jokes about them

But from my old man I did learn

How to make my home hygienic

By taking all bed clothing outside

On a good sunny Saturday

Opening all the doors and windows

To replace the abused air

Or even to remove the whole roof

If removable

So that my sons can dream

A sun-fresh dream at night

Just as I used to be so crazy

About the golden smell of sunlight

[My father would never wasted a singly ray of sunshine, as my mom often says: whenever it was sunny, he would put everything outside to enjoy some sunlight. I used to hate this addiction when I was a boy.]


Name Changing

Confucius once said

If the name is not right

Language will carry no might

So my father created my name

By rearranging the sun and moon

Vertically and horizontally

To equip it with all

The forces of yin and yang

Dispersed in the universe

Since I became subject

To a totally different grammar

All people have complained

Or made fun of my name

So harsh and awkward

They conspire to seduce me

To adopt a familiar one

Like Michael in the powerful speech

But to retain the subtle balances

In the wild wild world I wander

To hold my father’s sunbeam

With my mother’s moonlight

I fiercely refuse to change it

Even though I often feel lost

When the sounds I hear

Do not sound like my name at all

The White Goose

My grandfather was younger than my son

When he died of an undiagnosed disease

Somewhere in the Mid-South of China

So we have been told since childhood:

He did nothing memorable or forgettable

Left no picture of his or any handwriting

Not even one impression on my father’s senses

Since he was born after he passed away)

But he had bought a big white goose

To protect his infant son in his place

And a single-syllabled family name

Copyrighting every little poem

I have composed

In a foreign tongue



Twilight Hanyang County

Twilight Hanyang County

My father was eight

Yes, as young as eight

Maybe only seven

Burning with sweat

On his way to nowhere

In front of him a wild fellow dog

(He was a dog according to Chinese zodiac)

Was grumbling angrily with hanger

While dry grasses and leaves

Were swept from field to field

And rain clouds too heavy with dusk

Sacking down towards bald hills

Dying of thirst and heat

Both caused by an unknown fever

He dragged himself close to a pond

Smelling of rotten reeds and water buffalo shit

There he drank to his full

Wrapping his legs with fresh mud from the bottom

To keep himself cool for the night

The next morning he would continue

Wandering around outside his fatherless home

Like a premature vagrant

[When my father was orphaned at 13, he became a homeless boy travelling from Hanyang to Badong, Sichuan Province and then back to Shashi, Hubei Province, trying to find a job to make a living until 1949.]  

Ancestry Worshipping

No, we never planned it that way

But it so happened this seventh summer

I took my twelve-year-young son

To my father’s native village among hairless hills

In the far east end, the other side of the world

Which he had left as a starving orphan

And returned with me in the Mao suit

Like a magic-toyed boomerang

When we were both at Allen’s age

For the first times in our lives

Last time, my father forced the Little Red Guard in me

To kowtow, burn joss sticks and paper money secretly

For his parents, whose dialect had survived

Though I understood it only half-heartedly

This time, I cajoled my boy to grasp a handful of earth

From the grave of my grandma worshipped by villagers

(Her humaneness has supposedly made her a local deity)

And smuggle it to the backyard of our home in Vancouver

Like some foreign seeds prohibited at the customs

As we departed, again, our clan elder chanted:

Under the shade of a new highway

This old grave will soon be erased...

Masculine Haiku: A Poet’s Family

Debao

Head and heart both bald

He’s not pulled out one single line

Except his surname

George

Using no poet’s lathe

He shaves off his young manhood

With an e-razor

Allen

Like son, like father

His voice has begun to break

All for poetry’s sake

Michael

To his great credit

He’s published two finest sons

Among his fine poems

The Death of a Chinese Widow

            (For Li Juying)

In a remote Chinese village

On a forgotten winter night

A 38-year-old poor woman

Tried hard to sit up noiselessly

Put aside rather than on her padded clothes

Crawled out of her frameless bed

And resolutely drowned herself

In a broken wide-brimmed water jug

Behind herself she left neither worth nor words

Except three teenagers who had been

Bullied and looked at with slanting white eyes

By their fellow villagers

(who bore the same family name)

Ever since their father died

Of an untreated disease

13 years before

Years later, her children understood

Why she killed herself

In a water jug on that night

Many years after she had been suffering

From a painful

But not fatal disease

Years later, her only son told me

Why my grandma

Chose to drown herself almost naked

On that cold night

[My father was choked with tears every time he said he was never able to perform a son's loving duty, since his mother committed suicide to save family resources when he was only 13 years old. So, he insisted in having some of his ashes divided to be buried beside her tomb to do so. We honoured this wish of his, and to express my feeling, I wrote the above poem to commemorate my grandma.]

While most of the above poems are based on literally true experiences, my father and family have a rich store of interesting stories or experience and even legends, which I wish to write into something narrative in the future. Here I just want to mention 4 important biographical facts about my father::

1) He was born after his father's death to a very poor peasant family in a hilly remote village called Shisanbao (十三堡) in Hanyang County, Hubei on 15 November 1934 (Chinese calendar). If he had been unable to survive the first week after birth, his mother would have killed herself readily together with his two elder sisters, since a family without a male would be bullied, looked down upon or made to suffer in every possible way. Luckily, my father survived because it was believed that my grandma followed a Daoist fortune teller's advice by keeping a big goose to guard my father's spirit. For this reason, none of my family members is allowed to eat goose meat. 

2) My father received only about two years of intermittent private education. When he began to work as a secretary for the Organizational Department of Songzi County, he had great trouble writing a report or drafting a document. When his superior used a red-inked pen to correct every single sentence he had written, my father cried hard in private, not because his superior treated him harshly, but because he felt deeply shameful of his writing skills. Since then, he began to study as hard as possible. Once he stayed in a filthy public lavatory three hours, forgetting to stand up and get out because he had been trying to memorize Chinese characters. 

3) During the Cultural Revolution, when I was in grade 6, I happened to read a official document one day, which I thought was so well written that I memorized a few phrases from it and told my father about the article later. To my great surprise, and to his great amazement, the author turned out to be no other than him. That was the only time and only thing I felt really proud of him about.

4)When he was young, my father had a secret dream to become a writer. He spent a lot of time finding a good pen name for himself - Bi Ying, meaning something like 'a firefly in the blue,' but he was never able to use it, because he never got anything, even a single poem or story published. He never revealed this to anyone of us, but my mom found it out. In order not to hurt him, we never mentioned this to him when he was alive.  

This is the place in Shisanbao, where my grandfather's house used to be, but now it has become a pond, where there are a lot of frogs calling at summer night. Photo taken by Changming in the summer of 2007.

Add caption

My father was burning paper money in tribute to his beloved mother in front of her tomb stone. Local legend has it that my grandma became a Buddha because of her kindness and goodness, shortly after being buried at Rabbit Mouth Ridge, a place where, according to a travelling fengshui specialist at the time, one would, if buried there, have highly talented writers among one's offspring. Ironically, my grandma happened to be  buried there simply because no one was willing to carry her body further to a more decent place then without anyone to pay for the funeral service. Now the Ridge has become the most popular burial site for the whole village, although so far the village has never produced even a college student, not to mention Canadian and American Masters and PhDs as in the case of our family. Photo taken by Changming in the summer of 2007.

My father's graveyard in Lianhuadang Village, Gong-an Country, Hubei Province. (This is the place where Changming grew up and attended junior high school.) My father said his mother-in-law treated him like her own son, so he wanted to be buried beside her tomb to carry on his filial duties. Picture taken by my cousin Liu Youming in the summer of 2012. 

Bionote

Yuan Hongqi 袁宏启(1934-2012), author of Changming Yuan and Liu Yun, also known as Debao 得宝(nickname), Dan Qi 旦启(Buddhist name), and Bi Yin 碧螢(pen name), was born in an impoverished hilly village in Hanyang, Hubei Province and received fewer than two years of private education. Orphaned at 13, he worked as a shop apprentice until 1952, when he became a civilian government worker. Married to Liu Yu in 1956. Positions held included: a secretary at the Organizational Department, Secretary of Babao District, Deputy Director of Educational Department, Deputy Director of Agricultural Bank of Songzi County; Senior Accountant and Chief of Accounting Section of Jingzhou Agricultural Bank.