아리랑 (Arirang)

http://www.musicanova.com/board/technote/print.cgi?soundbox=17&board=music7&Count=989122188&d=

http://www.big.or.jp/~jrldr/m/1ar1.mp3

http://203.252.231.26//jangsaik/jangsaik-2-05-arirang.mp3

Father: Table-Battle

Some say that a father is like a bulb in a refrigerator. You could see the bulb illuminate the room, but you never know how they would be after you shut the door. That is to say, a father is the one whom we did not know much. In this world, there is a man lives in your family, seat himself in the honor place at your dinner table, and use FATHER or DAD as his name. He never fixes your bicycle, never teaches you playing football, and seldom talks with you except making a lesson. Even if when your mother turns into a dragon, you would rather pray E.T. to save you than this man. You know this man no more than your classmates. That is my Dad. However, I reluctantly consider he is a bad father or not good enough, even if up to now, I don’t think there was ever a successful communication between me and Dad. His lessons at the dinner table always plunged us into battles.

Dad was a loyal military officer in our country’s army, Peoples Liberation Army of the Peoples Republic of China. Before he retired, he was a General in a military region in the southern part of China. He joined the army in 1942 when he was 20 years old, during the war against Japanese intruder. He said if he had not joined the army, he would have died from starvation.

Yes, I believe what Dad say. When I was a kid, I was told that Dad was born and raised in a peasant family in a small village located in the northern part of China. In schools, I was educated that, at that time, in the old society of China, peasants always went hungry because they did not have their own land to produce enough food. Furthermore, I was taught to know the reason why the peasants like Dad would join the Communist Party’s army. They believed in the Communist Party who could guide them to overthrow the old system and build a new one.

“It was the Communist Party saved my life!” Dad always told me and my two elder sisters, “You all should never say anything bad about the Communist Party and our national leader.”

It was impossible for us.

Twenty years ago, when I was a teen-ager, we often talked about some fashionable topic. At this occasion, it was a nature in my age to express radical points of view to this kind of matter. Usually, this kind of discussion took place at our table, during dinner, among me and my two elder sisters and my Mom’s two sons-in-law.

In the beginning of our discussion, Dad usually staged silent, eating and drinking his favorite wine, hard to tell whether he was listening though we all wished he was not.

In the pause of the talk, Dad was found to sip the white wine in his little white china wine cup, tightly closing the lips and shutting the eyes with the wine was sucked into his mouth, as if he was concentrating on every tiny flavor of the wine. Tasted! Then, he opened his eyes, put down the cup, and slowly reached out his right arm. Folding the five finger tips, picking up a pinch of peanut, putting into his mouth, Dad looked out of the window behind me, chewing. The smell of peanuts mix with the wine was floating in the dinning room. I was sick at this smell. That is the reason why I don't like Chinese whit wine. After the peanut was smashed and swallowed, Dad took back his sight down at the dishes in front of him. With a little smile curving one of his lip corners, he shook his head slightly, as if he was saying how stupid we were.

This was a signal of Dad’s lesson; also, it was a beginning of a battle.

“This matter should not be considered like that,” He began to speak in his north rural accent. “There was a little mistake in the circumstance, but it was not the government’s fault.”

No one would listen to Dad’s Clichéd Propositions. The smart guys always could find their excuses to escape from the table. It was me, the stupid one to stay in this battle field.

“Why are you always saying that? Is it impossible for a government would make mistakes?” I pronounced like a lawyer in courts, “I think people are entitled to comment on their government.”

Dad shook his head and stared at me with his eyes under eyebrows, with one or two pure white one sticking out of the grey cluster. The eyes were dim and muddy, like a pond filled by too much stuff, you could not tell the original color.

I could remember when I was a kid I saw Dad’s eyes in a photograph taken on the day when my parents got married. In the picture, Dad was in his straight military uniform, a bunch of medals which were prizing for his braveness and success in many battles, pined on the left chest of the uniform. Dad was smiling, slightly smile with a lip’s corner raised, and the eyes were sharp, clear, and confident. At one time, I was so proud that I had a handsome and heroic father.

At the table battle field, Dad was going on his lecture which my ears automatically shielded as well as all the news reported by newspapers, periodicals, radio, or television. I turned my eyes down at my chopsticks, stirring the rice in the bowl, trying to hide my weakness in the encounter with Dad's eyes.

Finally, Dad was going to reach his conclusion, “It is not good for you to say something like that,” Dad sighed. “Do not talk it anymore and let anybody else hear, and you are too young to understand.”

Like stepping on a hedgehog, I almost bounced up to the ceiling; Dad always used these sentences to end everything he did not want to talk further. Teen was not old enough but I was absolutely not born yesterday. I must fight back!

“Young? Have you ever thought you are too old to understand something? Have you ever admitted something true?” My face flushed, the chopsticks in my hand seemed to turn into a sword.

“Enough!” My mother interrupted, “How can you speak to your father so rudely?”

I stopped. I swallowed the wax-liked rice roughly mixing with anger and tears, pushing them into my stomach. Dad drank up his wine, added a little pile of rice in his bowl, eating, silently.

Actually, for many years, I don’t think that Dad had not his own opinion but Clichéd Propositions, but he just never shows it to anybody, including us. I had known how Dad survived the severe political activities during the cataclysmic years. I had known there were many people in China who was ever persecuted severely because they refused lying. In this territory without real freedom of speech, if someone could not bear telling lies, the safest way was to keep silent, to protect himself, to protect the family.

Nevertheless, Dad never could use these table-lessons to succeed in a single communication with me. I am Dad’s daughter, in return, I was honed to taking the same strategy with him. Now, I keep silent and distant from Dad, to avoid arguments, to avoid talking about truths or lies.

Precious moment

The topic for this week is about something precious in our own. Looking around, scanning again and again, the most valuable in my life is religion. But it is not good to talk about here. Buddhism is not Amway, I do not need to develop my membership.

Then the computer, I can utilize this machine to do anything I want except cooking. It is the most helpful tools in my daily life. But the software is changeable like the weather in Chicago, and so does the hardware. It is important, but it can be replaced anytime.

Money may be important and precious. My daughter in her three years old once said, “Money is the most precious.” I really understand how valuable a million dollars are, but I do not know how precious a penny is.

Every time when I clean up the room, the most pleasure is to shake off a large bundle of rubbish. The room can not be more tidy than occupied by heaps stuff which you do not really know whether you need it or not. Throwing away is much easier than keeping. I do not like to own so many burdens.

As regard to my family, my husband and my daughter, of course, needless to say. But I won’t keep my husband beside me. Last week, Philip went back China alone. I decided to stay in Chicago a few months longer, for I do not want to end a precious dream so soon. The several months in Chicago were a big vacation for our family. In this vacation, my family got reunited.

Philip is a lawyer in China. In today’s China, a lawyer is occupied by clients and the courts. In day time, lawyers may be busy among their office, courts, and companies in order to handle their cases. In night, lawyer should maintain business relationships. In China, the most efficient method is to turn the business relationships into private one. All of these are carried out in wine and feast. Chinese lawyers are busied himself from day to night. I do not need to prepare dinner for my husband, and my daughter would never expect her father would be with us.

My daughter was always complaining that the house was dark and lacked of warm, even though I turned on all the lights. At weekend, the three of us in this family might have lunch or dinner in restaurant, but we could not talk more than his cell phone.

In Chicago Philip got rid of business tangle, and we found out our own family time at last. Some afternoon, we three sat in the small kitchen in our apartment. Usually, the Entenmann’s donut or the Pepperidgefarm chocolate cookies, hot chocolate were served in our tea time. Occasionally, the oven was baking one or two sweet potatoes. The sweet roasting smell full filled the room. It was warm. We talked and laughed, and my daughter loved the father’s joke.

From the kitchen, we could look out of the window and saw the different color of the sky, grey, blue, or bright white, clipped by the building’s roof in distance. From the January, we could see the snow floating in the air, listening to the sound made by the snow drop bounced on the window’s glass. We were warm, safe. We were a whole family.

This is a precious moment, and is fleeting. No one could hold it in hands. I understand if we went back to China, the crowded noisy hometown, after we went back to our busy routine, our precious family time could not spare the pressure, busyness, and tiredness.

All I want is to taste the warmth left in my hands, again and again, in these several months left, when my heart still have a capacity to enjoy the beauty in this world.