My mother passed away in November 2020 in Colorado at the age of 77. Her life in China was so tragic that it took me a while to write about her life and death. Because she had to face complicated emotions and the meaning of her legacy that she left behind.
I loved my mother’s kind and gentle heart. She was quiet, but there were many things I didn’t understand: she was easily bullied, submissive, and disliked conflict. Her interactions with Chinese Communist Party officials were marked by submissiveness and tolerance for their inhumane treatment of people like her. I’m haunted by her childhood memory of when she begged a Chinese Communist Party official on her knees for a raise at her job at her factory. She sacrificed her dignity only to be cruelly denied.
My mother’s heritage was one of rebelliousness. It began with a cry that defied death, lived with a heart of compassion that defied pain, and continues within me even now.
I thought I was completely my father’s child. He was a fighter with a strength as solid, resilient and tough as the steel in the factories he helped produce. I lived my life believing that my rebellious personality was because of my father. I’m not sure now.
In a nondescript village in Pengshan County, Sichuan Province, China, a sickly child cursed by fate was born prematurely. Her mother believed her daughter was too weak to survive and left her to die peacefully, but the child refused. Fighting through her labored breaths, she let out an enduring scream so loud that her mother could no longer ignore it. She nursed that night and she was able to survive until morning came.
The child who refused a peaceful death due to a difficult life was my mother.
Raised in poverty, with no access to primary education and an introverted personality, she devoted herself to working at a state-run factory in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. The repression of her social situation was matched by her physical characteristics. At 4 feet 9 inches tall, she was frail and severely nearsighted. Nevertheless, she won the love and adoration of her father, who was an illiterate orphan, and in marriage with her father she was blessed with three children.
Raising children under Mao Zedong’s regime was a huge burden. We lived in a primitive worker’s tenement, sharing one toilet and faucet with his and her eight other families. We were literally destitute. After a flood, mushrooms grow from the mud floor of our house. We were barely surviving on food stamps from the government. Despite these circumstances, my mother’s heart was never hardened. She was known to approach beggars on her street with small gifts and the words “Buddha bless you!” Her generosity defied the cruelty of reality.
In a very tough life, she found happiness in music (she only sang after drinking a little Chinese moonshine). She was elegant and clean and loved wearing pretty pink clothes, which was frowned upon under Mao Zedong’s regime. Her purchase of pink fabric with the little money she had saved was a small act of defiance against Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.
However, the happiness did not last long, as she was sick most of the time and required frequent treatment at the dilapidated state-run district hospital, a product of socialized medicine. During her surgery in the 1980s, she received a blood transfusion infected with syphilis, which was discovered ten years later when she brought her mother to the United States in 1995. did. Despite a course of antibiotics, her brain was already affected by neurosyphilis. She showed signs of dementia at age 59.
When my mother was ill, America gave her some comfort, even if it was temporary. She and my father converted to Christianity, went to church in China every Sunday, and lived peacefully. Eventually, her advanced dementia coincided with the new coronavirus infection, and she passed away alone in November 2020 after being hospitalized.
My mother’s heritage was one of rebelliousness. It began with a cry that defied death, lived with a heart of compassion that defied pain, and continues within me even now. This revelation proves that God’s plan is a subtle yet purposeful miracle. God has imbued each of us with a portion of His divine essence. My mother endured the suffering and submission to pain that Christ knew. It wasn’t out of weakness, but out of love for the survival of his family. She accepted God’s word that we confront evil not by hardening our hearts, but by turning the other cheek and showing compassion.
Congratulations Mother’s Day. I hope that all mothers around the world will never suffer or endure my mother’s tragic fate under communism.
