Like many Hongkongers, I have a family with members living in different cities on different continents. My big sister, from a different mother, lives in Edmonton, Canada. Her younger brother, my other brother or half brother, lives in Guangzhou, China. My elder and younger brothers, no.3 and no.5 of the family, live in San Francisco, USA. I stay in Hong Kong.
The family members had never had the chance to gather together after my elder brother and I moved from Guangzhou to Hong Kong in 1962. Even now, although my elder and younger brothers are in the US, I am seldom together with them. The last time I visited them was 2007.
For some special reasons, I did a woodcut of my elder and younger brothers and I myself early this year, before the Lunar New Year. When I finished the woodcut, I decided to entitle it 'Rarely Together'.
The family members had never had the chance to gather together after my elder brother and I moved from Guangzhou to Hong Kong in 1962. Even now, although my elder and younger brothers are in the US, I am seldom together with them. The last time I visited them was 2007.
For some special reasons, I did a woodcut of my elder and younger brothers and I myself early this year, before the Lunar New Year. When I finished the woodcut, I decided to entitle it 'Rarely Together'.
By order of birth, I am the no.4 child of my father and no.2 of my mother. My father met my mother in the 1940s during the war against the Japanese invasion. At that time, my father already had a wife and two children, a girl and a boy, in his home village. After the war, my father and mother settled down in Canton (Guangzhou). Mom gave birth to three boys. I am the second one, and hence the fourth child of the family. In the mid-1950s, my mother and my big sister left Guangzhou for Hong Kong to earn a living for the family. My elder brother (no.3 of the family and Mom's first son) and I joined them in 1962. My father, my other mother and two brothers (no.2 and no.5) remained in Guangzhou.
My big sister, some 15 years senior to me, married a car mechanic. She emigrated to Canada with her family in the mid-1970s.
My other brother, the no.2 child of the family, was already an adult when I was young. His mother, my other mother, moved from my father's home village to Guangzhou after my mom left for Hong Kong. For some years, the three little boys of the family were looked after by her, with the help of my other brother. He stayed with his parents all the time in Guangzhou until they passed away in 1998 and 2008.
My elder brother, the no.3 child of the family, was a surprisingly naughty boy but a born leader. He proved he had a particularly good sense of music in his primary school and was appointed the conductor of the school chorus. I always believe, given the opportunity to develop his talent, he would be a good musician, perhaps a great conductor. However, after moving to Hong Kong in 1962, he left school the next year to work as an apprentice in a mechanic shop. Like other apprentices, he had to board at the shop. The shop was located on the other side of the harbour and there was no cross harbour tunnel linking Hong Kong Island and Kowloon at that time. For several years, I visited him twice every mouth. Then, when he finished his apprenticeship, I went to the university and lived away from home most of the time. We saw each other even less often. My elder brother eventually became a car mechanic, first in Hong Kong and then in San Francisco, after marrying a Burmese Chinese. He emigrated to the US in the late 1970s. Mom joined him in 1987.
My younger brother was a cheerful and carefree boy when he was young. He stayed in Guangzhou when my elder brother and I moved to Hong Kong. He lived on the mainland through the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. For years, he was excluded from the government's job allocation scheme. Instead, he was mobilized to leave the city and relocate to the remote rural villages. But he remained in Guangzhou. When Mom settled down in San Francisco, the first thing she did was to file a petition for him to join her in the US. Eventually permit was granted for him to leave China in 1990. On his way to the US from Guangzhou, he stopped over in Hong Kong and stayed with me for one week. At that time, I found him no longer the communicative and carefree boy I had known in the past. After making his landing, he went back to Guangzhou once to marry his fiancee and take her to the States. Mom was happy with what she had done. She repeatedly said she went to the States because she wanted to get her youngest son out of China. My father had dreamed of going to the US too, but he ended up dying in Guangzhou.
Nine years ago, I painted a childhood image of my elder and younger brothers and I myself. At that time, I was working on a series about children and I found my thoughts often drawn back to my own childhood.
When we were young in Guangzhou, life was quite difficult. Food and other daily necessities were mostly rationed. A pair of shoes for a child was considered a luxury. So nearly all children went barefoot most of the time except in winter.
I have a small photogragh, a 35mm contact print, of me and my two brothers taken when we were young. The photograph was taken in a winter day, while my mother and big sister were back from Hong Kong for the Lunar New Year. They brought us clothes made by them. And we all had shoes on. When I painted my childhood memory, I changed the image from winter to summer.
Of the three, my elder and younger brothers were always closer to each other even when we were young. At that time, my younger brother always followed the lead of my elder brother. They were always out having fun with other kids. I was somewhat autistic. I preferred to stay home alone. Now that they are living quite close to each other in San Francisco – my elder brother in Daily City and my younger brother in Sunset. I never intend to distance myself from them. But somehow I stay almost half a world away from them, with the Pacific in between.
