From: Rosa - 1
Date: 7/1/00
Time: 8:50:40 AM
Remote Name: 212.211.2.19
An Invitation (tentative title)
I had been opening cupboard after cupboard,
drawer upon drawer, box on top of box for that vital piece of paper. The
invitation card to Grandmother's Ninetieth Birthday Celebration some thirty over
years ago. Deep in the heart of kweilo Yorkshire, in our cottage in Kampong
Thurlstone it was so very important for me to find that invitation. Preparations
for Mother's Ninety-First Birthday Celebration were getting woven together,
through invisible threads in cyberspace, from Adelaide, where Mother was with
Daughter #3, to London where Stephen was coordinating practical details, to
Thurlstone where I was trying to give the Chinese flavour, essential to a
Chinese celebration. For reasons very Chinese, Mother had not wanted any formal
invitation cards for the occasion but the correct manner of expression still
needed to be used for the Chinese on the menu cards. In Kampong Thurlstone my
only Chinese aids were my well thumbed English-Chinese, Chinese-English
dictionaries. But they did not reveal the secret for the correct, formal
expression for 'Ninety-First Great Birthday Celebration', or rather, I lacked
the skill to explore their depths for the much needed phrase that would do
Mother proud. My fann-g-fann-kou brothers in London, indeed my fann-g-fann- kou
brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews the world over were absolutely useless
to call upon. The generation steeped in Chinese learning - Mother, the aunts,
Paul Suk - were not within the reach of email or fax. Desperately, desperately I
needed to find Grandmother's invitation card. Down the years, through
house-moving from Ipoh to Kuala Lumpur to Thurlstone I have kept the invitation
among my 'Bits of Treasured and Important Papers', gently, delicately placed
with the English and Chinese announcements and later acknowledgements of thanks
of Grandmother's and Grandfather's deaths, our wedding announcement and suchlike
memorabilia. For memories are a treasure and such 'bits' are the tangible
vestiges of occasions past. Also, perhaps unconciously, against the day when I
need to use them in some way. As I did now.
I could picture the labelled box where I have
put the invitation. I was so sure that it is in the drawer where I have many
times chanced upon it in a bout of tidying and read again the contents, the
fading print on yellowed paper. Tiresomely the box was no more there. It was
somewhere, as never would I have thrown it away. I could even see in my mind's
eye Grandmother's invitation card and wished that I could recall the wording in
Chinese. In Chinese, the invitation was sent, as is the custom, in the names of
the two sons, Peter Phooi Kee and Paul Min Phang and the names of the
daughters-in-law, two sisters (the eldest and the fourth) of the Wong family,
Koong Sook and Koong Ting, and all the paternal grandchildren were also
featured. The invitation in English included the names of the son-in-law,
Anthony Soh Boon Chuan, married to daughter, Theresa, but without the
grandchildren's names. The cover, the gold ink now tarnished, had a splendid
picture that told more than a hundred words. It had all the auspicious symbolic
details - an old person, Longevity himself, with flowing beard and a high
forehead leaning on a staff and carrying the peach of longevity surrounded by
some figures and a frolicking group of children, denoting the good fortune of 'ng
sai toong tong' or 'five generations in the ancestral hall'.
I can still see in my mind's eye the
filled-out picture of the occasion. Rather vague about the year. Grandmother
died in 1969 at the age of ninety-three, so the birthday party must have been in
1966. A particularly good time as she had just become great grandmother to baby
Johanna Loh, born at the end of January, to Grand-daughter #3 and husband
Michael Loh Cheng Hai. The party was held in the home of the Younger Son, who
resided in Kuala Lumpur. A house on top of Federal Hill, a select residential
enclave for top civil servants, as Paul was then the Federal Chief Inspector of
Schools. The garden provided ample space for a marquee to house the numerous
tables for the grand Chinese banquet. From the kitchen quarters the caterers
prepared and cooked on-the-spot all the dishes of the feast. I remember the
shark's fin soup, the bird nests, the suckling pig, the eight-treasure duck, sou
mien and much more besides. As a backdrop, covering a wall, were two great
pieces of red chinese blanket sewn with words of congratulations and good
wishes, a traditional gift for dai-sou celebrations. These great stretches of
red lodged unforgettably in my memory and also for the reason that they were
perhaps the last I saw, as then the custom of this gift died out. Held at home,
it was very much a family party, I remember. Father and Mother with their
children still living at home had travelled from Ipoh. The Sohs were of course
there as were the Wong in-laws, other relatives (including some cousins of
Grandfather's from Rawang we hardly knew) and family friends. One brought her
predictable pair of sqawking live chickens, a great joke among us youngsters as
this bossy woman was always the butt end of our jokes. There were baskets of
fruit and cakes, bottles of brandy (Hennessy brand - samm-sing-jiao) and, in
keeping with custom, some of these were returned (to return the good wishes and
not to appear greedy) amidst the expected protests from the givers of the gifts
and counter declarations of 'too generous, tai-hak-hei' from the family. At some
stage in the evening there was the tea ceremony, the offering of our love,
respect, congratulations and good wishes to Grandmother, with Grandfather
smilingly sitting next to her in state, and sipping his cups of complimentary
and complementary tea. To the younger ones among us, the chief purpose of this
tea ceremony, cup after cup, from the oldest to the youngest, was the hoong-pau
that we got from Grandmother. Although I cannot recall, at some stage too there
must have been the distribution of a ricebowl and a pair of chopsticks to
everyone present, an essential feature of a dai-sou celebration, signifying the
wish of the celebrant to share her good fortune of a long life with all. The
Chinese peach buns of longevity were handed out with the western birthday cake.
Just as the red blankets were my vivid visual memory of Grandmother's Ninetieth
Birthday Celebration the loud and long explosion of giant firecrackers, ignited
by ringleader Grandson #2, Stephen, with the younger Changs taking his lead,
remained the staying sound of the occasion for me.
I still could not locate the invitation card
to Grandmother's Ninetieth Birthday Celebration for use at Mother's Ninety-First
Birthday Celebration (the 'Ninety-First' is a story of Chineseness - who'll tell
it?). When looking appeared frustratingly futile and there was no more time to
delay, the plea of modernity was trotted out as a saving device. I used a less
formal, more modern but of course correct, phrase, thus concealing the gap in my
knowledge of Chinese. It passed muster. On the evening of 22 April 2000, at the
Golden Phoenix Restaurant of the Hotel Equatorial in Kuala Lumpur I received
many compliments for the computer-generated menu card in happy red but sans
symbolic drawing. Well, for one, not many there could read Chinese (such is the
melting pot of the Changs and the country now) and those who could were very
kind. Some thirty over years on, and still many good things remain and for good
- the tea ceremony, the distribution of the ricebowls and chopsticks, items on
the menu (shark's fin soup, suckling pig, eight-treasure duck, sou-mien),
longevity peach buns together with birthday cake. The venue at a hotel indicated
the spread of the family so far as to make a non-home location necessary;
presents were convenient money gifts instead of bothersome, shitting, sqawking
hens; pretty congratulatory cards took the place of flaming red blankets. The
sounds of laughter and talk had to do instead of resounding firecrackers. But
never changing, ever growing was the deep, warm sense of family as Changs
gathered from the UK, Australia, Singapore, Canada to celebrate with one another
and with good friends and to show their respect and love for another matriarch
of the Clan.