A daughter takes inventory of her father’s luggage — unpacking what the objects he brought (in an aluminum suitcase made in Taiwan) say about the man he was at 25 and today.
My dad and I have always been close since I was a child, but like many Chinese immigrants, he didn’t talk much about his childhood — when his family fled the Communists during the Chinese Civil War — or when he traveled from Taiwan to America to study as a graduate student. As an ABC or American-born Chinese, I went to Saturday Chinese school in suburban New Jersey (my dad was once the principal) but lost the connection with my native tongue many years ago.
Since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, my dad, who turned 91 last May and still lives in New Jersey, and I talk every Friday morning while I cradle a mug of chai in my California home, bridging approximately 2,800 miles. Sometimes he tells me about his daily breakfast (oatmeal, buttered wheat toast, green tea). Sometimes he tells me about lectures he wants to deliver to his retirement community. Sometimes he talks about life in Chongqing in the 1940s when his family of six had to seek shelter in caves from Japanese bomber planes and his neighbor’s home was smashed to rubble. At my desk, I scribble notes in a composition book, desperate to stockpile these family memories like copper coins in a wishing well.
Because I don’t want to squander the time we have left together.
i. BLAZER 西装外套
In this photograph, my dad stands outside his family home in Taipei next to his youngest sister Grace, who died five years ago in Texas. Their father gave him his light gray blazer to take to America — one he would later wear to a job interview. He gazes to the side with a dreamy expression and a full head of dark hair, his future calling to him. At twenty-five, his blazer and white collared shirt look fresh and crisp though Taipei was likely sticky and humid at the time. I don’t remember him ever looking this youthful. I wonder if he stopped dreaming by the time I was born when he was 45.
ii. CAMERA 照相机
In October of 1956, my dad boarded an ore-bearing freight ship called the S.S. Hai Huang from a port in Kaoshuing, Taiwan bound for Oakland, California. It took 31 days. He only got off the boat once in Yokohama, Japan after he and a few other passengers convinced the captain to let them off. They went to a camera shop. One fellow convinced my dad he knew cameras and told him to get a black-and-white model, the best one.
Although my dad still has this camera today, he regrets listening to the guy. “He didn’t know what he was talking about!” Because film was expensive, he didn’t take a single photo on the trip.
My dad has loved cameras for as long as I can remember, buying the latest models and lenses. He saves the boxes for his collection — each one a reminder of something precious, a treasure. When I was in third grade after a school recital, he posed us for a group photo. “One more! One more!” he shouted, as the kids moaned and shuffled their feet. He joked that his technique was to take as many as possible. “Sure to be one good one!” Recently, when I was helping him to declutter his room and placed each of the camera boxes atop his bookshelves, I realized how each of these cameras were descended from the first one, a way to capture something in the past and hold it for the present.
iii. PASSPORT 护照
To obtain a visa to leave Taiwan, my dad had to pass an English comprehension test. The clerk will open randomly to a page in Time magazine and you have to write about it. “You hope she’ll open to the front with news,” he says, “and not the back of the magazine with a book review — that will be deadly!”
When he went to grad school in New Mexico, a professor nicknamed him Andy. It was commonplace at the time for Chinese students to be given an English moniker because it was easier to pronounce. This still makes me cringe. I think about every time I would tell someone “My name is Jen,” and they would look at me in confusion and say, “Chen?” In 1975, the year I was born, my dad officially changed his first name to Andrew.
iv. DICTIONARY 字典
My father’s dictionary had no instructions about where to find a place to live, how to get a job or hail a taxi. He had to learn those things on his own.
The first night in America, he stayed with another student at a host family’s house on their pull-out couch. The next morning, their host family asked them what they did with the mattress. “We rolled it up in the closet!” he recalls, with a hearty laugh.
When I was growing up, my dad took classes to lose his accent. He was a perfectionist and this inability to master the language pained him. I couldn’t hear his accent. He was a walking encyclopedia. He watched Jeopardy! religiously, knew most of the answers and if I asked him about any historical event, he always had a ready response.
v. SLIDE RULE 直尺
My dad trained as an electrical engineer in university in Taiwan. Precision was his trade. He always read a manual front to back before attempting assembly. The slide rule he brought with him was a Japanese bamboo slide rule. After a year, he replaced it with a K&E slide rule, “a much better German slide rule.” Now he has an iPhone, but prefers reading about how to use it rather than playing around with it.
vi. DAUGHTER 女儿
Taking stock of this inventory has made me better appreciate our relationship. My father has an incredible memory and when I ask him about specific events, he can drill down to the details. I wish I had started asking questions earlier, but I’m glad I know more about his journey and how his early life influenced his later years. Since I am an only child, it is up to me to preserve this history.
When I go to visit him in New Jersey, usually around his birthday, we have started a tradition of visiting the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in NYC’s Chinatown. On one visit, he had his first boba with me. On another we met MOCA’s president in the lobby. When we told her about our tradition and it was his birthday, she gifted him a tote bag and a book on the origins of the Chinese language.
Now I live in a college town in Northern California where international students from China often hang out at boba shops. When I overhear their conversations and laughter, I am filled with a kind of nostalgia and wonder. I try to see in their faces my own father’s and imagine how they will navigate this place that is so far from their native home.
The journey my father took is one both of distance and time. Each of the objects he chose to take on the longest boat ride of his life have shaped the person he is — and understanding what it means and unraveling all of the complex layers is a gift I will cherish for my lifetime.
This piece is published in a series responding to APIA-nionated’s Spring call for pitches: personal essays that share your experience unravelling a loose thread of your personal history with objects — a rabbit hole down your mother’s letters, heirlooms lost and found, documenting activism through protest signs, etc.
