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Sunday, November 26, 2006 Road Trip to Kuala Lumpur: History Early Saturday morning (read: I'm more likely to stay up until 5:30am than to wake up then), I took my first road trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. Add all of my mother's sisters, assorted wives and brothers, and my cousin and I, and we had a grand total of 15 people caravanning in three vehicles. What can I say—my mom's the seventh of 10 children. The five hours on the road gave me a chance to accomplish one of my goals for this trip to Singapore: I wanted to have a conversation with my non-English speaking grandmother and find out about her life and the family history. She's 86 years old, so I don't know how many more opportunities I'll have to do this—and she's an incredible woman. Since I don't speak Cantonese—a byproduct of growing up surrounded by Caucasians in the US—I asked the aunt sitting next to me to serve as translator. In the end, I had three translators (i.e. everyone else in the car) and discovered that the family history is rather complicated. So complicated, in fact, that I ended up diagramming the genealogy going three generations on each side (my grandmother, her mother, and her mother's mother, and ditto for my deceased grandfather) just so we wouldn't get confused about which relative we were talking about (though we did at points anyway). When she was three months old, my grandmother was brought to Singapore to be sold (then, as now, girl babies were not always worth much in China); my great-grandmother intended her to be a daughter for one of her other daughters, but in the end adopted her herself. My great-grandparents were born in China, but moved to Singapore—for what reason, we don't know—and had four natural children, one of whom died at birth. They only had one son, but since my great-grandfather was a lawyer and my great-grandmother had a kind heart, they adopted a staggering 10 daughters and gave them homes. My grandfather's family was much more convoluted. You'll see why I got out the pen and paper: My great-great-grandfather lived in China and had two wives. The first wife gave birth to my great-grandfather, but he was also adopted by the second wife, who had no children of her own and adopted two daughters as well. She brought my great-grandfather and his wife to Singapore; I believe all four of their children were born here, and my grandfather was the eldest. However, one of his brothers kept getting into trouble in Singapore, so my great-great-grandmother (the second wife) got angry and sent everyone back to China. Everyone, that is, except my grandfather, who was her favorite. Genealogy aside, hearing stories about these people and how they interacted was fascinating. My grandmother was quite the firebrand in her youth. She had five nicknames, most of which were unflattering: Tigress, Thunder Voice, Shit Bag (because as a baby she would defecate on tables), Urine Bag (similar), and Crybaby. Somehow she managed to raise 10 children on a washerwoman's salary, taught herself how to sew because she wasn't allowed to take lessons and became good enough that she made one of my aunt's wedding gowns, needlework and all, and picked up a substantial amount about herbs and medicine from Chinese doctors because she needed to know how to care for her children when they were sick. And she only had around two years of formal education. She lived through the Japanese occupation of Singapore and her house getting bombed, but today she jokes that she doesn't have one bank, but 10: who needs a retirement fund when you have 10 children who would do anything for you? ^ Top | 11:42 AM | | | 
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