My Paternal Grandfather (I still do not know his name)was some sort of Kuomintang official in Guangdong, educated in Japan at a time when only the elite could afford it, and ended up having four wives at the same time (Which was legal in those days.) the ofurth was my Grandmother. (I still do not know her name.) My father told my mother (through however it was they communicated)that he had some memories of growing up in the mansion like compound as a child though only a few. At some point the Japanese invaded and my grandmother and father went down to Hong Kong in poverty. My father had told my mother when referring to my Grandfather and most of the family that most of them had died from the invasion. Needless to say contact seems to have ended.
My father grew up poor in Hong Kong and was somewhat mature by the time he somehow became a chef on a boat that travelled all around the world, Asia, Africa, Europe and eventually the United States. What he did before that job, I have no clue of.
What he did on the boat I know a little bit about from what he told my mom, and what one of his friends who was Younger than him I who I will refer to as Uncle S. told me. Most of the Chinese crew would stay on the boat when the ship was docked but my Father and Uncle S. were youthful enough to go around and have adventures, watching movies in European languages they didn't speak, skiiing, whatever.
Uncle S. said he was watching a movie with my father and finally turned to him and asked him, "Do you know what the hell is going on?"
"Yeah sure," my father said.
"You speak German?"
"Nope" he said, "That guy there is saying something to that chick, now they're kissing, so that's what'seasy enough right?"
On the boat, activities consited of gambling, doing some kind of Hung Gar Push hands, and occassionally stealing suits to pass themselves off as wealthy paying vacationers on the boat and partying.
My Father was apparently an excellent Chef, though felt no need to wash vegetables or much of anything before cooking them, and could lpay guitar and flute pretty well though he never had formal training.
At some point the boat docked in Baltimore at which point they jumped ship.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Chinese White Boy
It often comes as quite a surprise to Chinese when the Cantonese Language
with a fairly Cantonese tone comes out of my seemingly full white mouth rolling off of my perceived to be full Caucasian tongue. Women born in China hold their hands to their mouth giggling, and many "Wahhh!'s" are heard. Men born in China will hide there surprise at first fearing they are hearing things, and then later in the conversation ask if I am actually from Hong Kong and if not where the hell I learned Chinese so well and admit that at first they had been afraid they had finally snapped from working too many hours.
One Jook Sing Chinese man, born in the United States, told me from across a table full of after clubbers at Chau Chau city restaraunt, "That's pretty good," followed by, "Wow a white guy that speaks Chinese. Huh, you must get a lot of Asian girls."
I then explain that I am white but I am also Chinese and that my family name is Cheung. Furthermore my father was Chinese and my mother was white. Chinese born in the United States tend to assume my mother was Chinese, despite my last name. Furthermore that is after assuming that I am simply a white guy with Yellow Fever that probably studied in Hong Kong or something like that. (Not that there is anything wrong with that. Over there they will love you. Most resentment thrown at me was from people born in the states, or educated in International Schools abroad.)
Here's an example of some tension with my existence. One time in New York, after helping out the Gee Oak Tin Family Association do Lion Dance for Chinese New Year all day, along with some Lion Dancers from New York White Crane, we were eating and comparing notes about our respective Chinatowns the conversation turned towards White Guys dating Chinese girls. "No offense, but" seemed to be the begginning of many sentences, until I clarified that my Chinese father who was straight from China, had been the one to date a white woman and then Father me.
A loud "OOOOO.." rang out followed by high fives all around.
"Okay your cool, your cool." and then there was no elephant in the room.
Again, not that the reverse combination of myself is a bad one, but all males feel
a competetion when it comes to courtship. If White guys are getting asian girls, asian guys feel that they have lost one. If asian guy gets white girl, they have won one. My existence turned from proof of a "loss" to proof of a "win" It shouldn't matter, but it does. Much legislation in the United States has tried to prevent the existence of mongrels like myself for many many years. But this isn't a history lesson, it's my story.
So how did this Adam Win-Son Peters Cheung combination come to be?
It is a story that many people want to hear since my face with my speech can seem so jarring and mind boggling, at least in Boston. (And to tell the truth, despite the great number of Whites speaking Chinese and even Cantonese nowadays, I got the same surpised looks in Hong Kong.)
Let's start from my Fathers story and go from there.
with a fairly Cantonese tone comes out of my seemingly full white mouth rolling off of my perceived to be full Caucasian tongue. Women born in China hold their hands to their mouth giggling, and many "Wahhh!'s" are heard. Men born in China will hide there surprise at first fearing they are hearing things, and then later in the conversation ask if I am actually from Hong Kong and if not where the hell I learned Chinese so well and admit that at first they had been afraid they had finally snapped from working too many hours.
One Jook Sing Chinese man, born in the United States, told me from across a table full of after clubbers at Chau Chau city restaraunt, "That's pretty good," followed by, "Wow a white guy that speaks Chinese. Huh, you must get a lot of Asian girls."
I then explain that I am white but I am also Chinese and that my family name is Cheung. Furthermore my father was Chinese and my mother was white. Chinese born in the United States tend to assume my mother was Chinese, despite my last name. Furthermore that is after assuming that I am simply a white guy with Yellow Fever that probably studied in Hong Kong or something like that. (Not that there is anything wrong with that. Over there they will love you. Most resentment thrown at me was from people born in the states, or educated in International Schools abroad.)
Here's an example of some tension with my existence. One time in New York, after helping out the Gee Oak Tin Family Association do Lion Dance for Chinese New Year all day, along with some Lion Dancers from New York White Crane, we were eating and comparing notes about our respective Chinatowns the conversation turned towards White Guys dating Chinese girls. "No offense, but" seemed to be the begginning of many sentences, until I clarified that my Chinese father who was straight from China, had been the one to date a white woman and then Father me.
A loud "OOOOO.." rang out followed by high fives all around.
"Okay your cool, your cool." and then there was no elephant in the room.
Again, not that the reverse combination of myself is a bad one, but all males feel
a competetion when it comes to courtship. If White guys are getting asian girls, asian guys feel that they have lost one. If asian guy gets white girl, they have won one. My existence turned from proof of a "loss" to proof of a "win" It shouldn't matter, but it does. Much legislation in the United States has tried to prevent the existence of mongrels like myself for many many years. But this isn't a history lesson, it's my story.
So how did this Adam Win-Son Peters Cheung combination come to be?
It is a story that many people want to hear since my face with my speech can seem so jarring and mind boggling, at least in Boston. (And to tell the truth, despite the great number of Whites speaking Chinese and even Cantonese nowadays, I got the same surpised looks in Hong Kong.)
Let's start from my Fathers story and go from there.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Roadside Beauty
Roadside Beauty
The slender beauty came walking, appearing from the inky moonlit shadows of rainy Southern Chinese night. She glided through the rain in grace, her sandaled feet choosing the best footing through the muddy puddled path, off the crackpaved village road. A taxi biker eyed those smooth white feet as they maneuvered in a flowing dance. His eyes moving up to her ankles and further up to her jeans, rolled slightly.
He wished within that she had been wearing a skirt as his blood rushed in his organs as he searched in glances over her upper thighs and hips. A white blouse and a pale white arm holding her umbrella. His heart thumped harder as she stepped under the awning where he sat on his motorbike. He watched her adjusting and settling herself on the cemented ground by the roadside food stall. Just a stand with an awning and cheap tables and low plastic chairs you would squat on. She moved up closer to him.
He immediately exuded a players external calm of nonchalant toughness and business cool. He tried to hide that his heart quickened, blood rushed, hardening below just from smelling the air between them.
She spoke. Her voice ringing softly on a soothing high pitch that carressed the mind’s sense of sound between subconscious bed sheets.
“Boss..," she called out as the Chinese call any owner of a business, even if it is a taxi bike service of one, "I want to go to Taicheng. Can you go there?”
“I can go anywhere you want pretty one,” he smiled. He spoke now looking out past her as Chinese often do, glancing at her her good looks only ocassionally. They discussed the price in that same way, hardly making eye contact, his eyes outward, though her eyes staring directly at him.
"Of course we can wait until the rain calms down a little" She said
"Good." He said. "Have you eaten?"
She sat down not saying a word.
"Hey boss!" said the biker to the cook, "Get some snails and a plate of whatever vegetables and some noodles."
He got off the bike and and sat next her,"You drink?"
"She shook her head folding her hands and resting her chin on them looking directly at him staring. It was then that he noticed that she was staring more at the Jade he wore around his neck and not so much at him. Her face was pale for a southern Chinese girl, but she spoke with the local accent. Not shy at all. Even the prostitutes seemed shyer then she was. And yet she was not really flirtatious or purposely seductive either.
The biker found conversation with her easy, but began realizing he probbaly wasted his money ordering snails. He wasn't going to get her in bed. Not tonight anyway. He wanted her badly. But even if he had been the type to do it by force, there was something about
her that seemed powerful and dangerous. She was very thin, but so was a sharp blade.
She really was good looking for a rural girl, and despite her delicate grace and features, there was no msitake that she was absolutely from here from her way of talking, and from her conversation, which dealt mostly with the market price of pigs or chickens, she definately grew up, worked on, and helped withh the business of a farm and wasn't just talking nonsense.
Then she reached down her blouse and pulled a stone from her her bra, unflinchingly and unflirtingly, as if her chest was not particularly sexual at all. Now was she embarassed or seductive about drawing attention to her breast. Her head did not glance down, nor did she smile the way a flirtatious woman would, with her mouth or her eyes. Her glance did not intensify in daring or lust. She played with the stone flitting it between her fingers in an unusual show of dexterity like a street boy playing with his lighter.
She held it still now holding it up for him to see.
"You like it?" she said.
This taxi biker did not really know much about Jade, but the piece the girl held was indeed eye catching. He felt the own stone around his neck warming. As it did the girls eyes noticed his Jade again, eyes excited for the first time for an instant. She put her stone away again and sat back suddenly avoiding eye contact.
The rain began to die down and
He then looked directly at her and tilting his head up teling her to get on the motorcycle, “Serng chei la.”
With that they made off for what was a fairly long ride for motorbike and slow going at first given the wet road.
Her white jade hands wrapped around his waiste loosely and yet firm. Not afraid of human contact, but not tight as if afraid of falling off. Her body was closely in contact with his from shoulders and chest to thighs, he could feel it all on his back.
Her body was cold. Delicate, attractive, firm and yet soft. But with other girls that were this close he would feel the blood pumping through her and the heat coming off of their body. He would feel at least a little no matter who it was, man woman, young old, let alone a bold young woman like her.
Her body was cool the whole time, truly yin, cold as stone.
The got to the center of the town.
"Right here is good." she said like bells ringing seductively from a far away paradise brushing against his ear.
She got off and handed him a fair amount of money. Too much really. Being in town the city lights lit everything bright and he inspeceted carefully the Mao faced hundred Yuan bills before puting them in his shirt pocket. There were certainly plenty of fakes around and he was used to seeing them so he made sure they were real, espcially since she seemed to hand over more than he asked for so willingly.
"Is there any thing else Miss? You need change?"
"Not that's fine." she said and turned wakling away down the street.
He watched her body as she walked away, admiring her ass.
Meanwhile his phone rang and he continued to watch until his eyes caught some other hot girls. and soon he was looking at any direction.
"Wai!?" he yelled into the phone sitting one foot up on his bike.
"Bull? Hey Bull is that you?. It's Big Eyes."
"Hey what's up."said Bull, now hopping off the bike and walking around it.
"Where are you now?"
"Tai Cheng. I just droppped someone off. What do you want?"
"Hey that's good. I'm in Tai Cheng. I want to hire you for the night man, I need you to take me around to few places you know, you busy?"
"No I'm free," said a Bull, "Where are you."
"Ehhhh... Why don't you pick me up in about an hour from that club, what the hell is the name of it, with the hearts outside, whatever you know what I'm talking about right."
"Ohh the one before with where Fan got a bottle thrown at his head?"
"Yeah and they got all the boys to close of the exits and turn on the lights. We lloked through the whole crowd. Couldn't couldn't recognize the bastard anyway, he was so drunk and its dark. Yeah that one," said big eyes.
"Yeah okay one hour?"
and then the call was over. The taxi biker put away his phone and went up to a vendor to buy some cigarettes.
He lit one and suddenly remembered the money the girl had given him.
He figured once he was riding on his bike, it would be likely to blow out of the shirt pocket, so he took out the bills to put in his jeans pocket where it would be safer.
Taking it out he looked at it and he felt a rush, a shock, and looked again carefully holding the money to the light, because it seemed different. The Bills seemed to be moving and changing as he held them. He steadied himslef as if he was drunk. He wasn't but the world seemed like it was spinning. Were they fake?
Shit, they weren't fake but they weren't money, not yuan. They haded as he held them up to theb light, becoming Hell Bank notes, the money burned to the ancestors, gods and the deceased. He threw it down in fear and watched it flame up suddenly and burn away in smoke. He threw down the other one too and the other one, pissing himself and then just standing there sweating and pissing his pants and oddly not all that concerned about it.
A man walking with two girls laughing and pointing yelled out to him.
"Hey! Your pissing yourself." said the man breaking into a grin and then laughing at Bull.
Bull stared somewhat blankly at them and shook his head walking back to his bike.
He didn't really care that much. He tried to gather himself and then headed over to Big Eyes.
The slender beauty came walking, appearing from the inky moonlit shadows of rainy Southern Chinese night. She glided through the rain in grace, her sandaled feet choosing the best footing through the muddy puddled path, off the crackpaved village road. A taxi biker eyed those smooth white feet as they maneuvered in a flowing dance. His eyes moving up to her ankles and further up to her jeans, rolled slightly.
He wished within that she had been wearing a skirt as his blood rushed in his organs as he searched in glances over her upper thighs and hips. A white blouse and a pale white arm holding her umbrella. His heart thumped harder as she stepped under the awning where he sat on his motorbike. He watched her adjusting and settling herself on the cemented ground by the roadside food stall. Just a stand with an awning and cheap tables and low plastic chairs you would squat on. She moved up closer to him.
He immediately exuded a players external calm of nonchalant toughness and business cool. He tried to hide that his heart quickened, blood rushed, hardening below just from smelling the air between them.
She spoke. Her voice ringing softly on a soothing high pitch that carressed the mind’s sense of sound between subconscious bed sheets.
“Boss..," she called out as the Chinese call any owner of a business, even if it is a taxi bike service of one, "I want to go to Taicheng. Can you go there?”
“I can go anywhere you want pretty one,” he smiled. He spoke now looking out past her as Chinese often do, glancing at her her good looks only ocassionally. They discussed the price in that same way, hardly making eye contact, his eyes outward, though her eyes staring directly at him.
"Of course we can wait until the rain calms down a little" She said
"Good." He said. "Have you eaten?"
She sat down not saying a word.
"Hey boss!" said the biker to the cook, "Get some snails and a plate of whatever vegetables and some noodles."
He got off the bike and and sat next her,"You drink?"
"She shook her head folding her hands and resting her chin on them looking directly at him staring. It was then that he noticed that she was staring more at the Jade he wore around his neck and not so much at him. Her face was pale for a southern Chinese girl, but she spoke with the local accent. Not shy at all. Even the prostitutes seemed shyer then she was. And yet she was not really flirtatious or purposely seductive either.
The biker found conversation with her easy, but began realizing he probbaly wasted his money ordering snails. He wasn't going to get her in bed. Not tonight anyway. He wanted her badly. But even if he had been the type to do it by force, there was something about
her that seemed powerful and dangerous. She was very thin, but so was a sharp blade.
She really was good looking for a rural girl, and despite her delicate grace and features, there was no msitake that she was absolutely from here from her way of talking, and from her conversation, which dealt mostly with the market price of pigs or chickens, she definately grew up, worked on, and helped withh the business of a farm and wasn't just talking nonsense.
Then she reached down her blouse and pulled a stone from her her bra, unflinchingly and unflirtingly, as if her chest was not particularly sexual at all. Now was she embarassed or seductive about drawing attention to her breast. Her head did not glance down, nor did she smile the way a flirtatious woman would, with her mouth or her eyes. Her glance did not intensify in daring or lust. She played with the stone flitting it between her fingers in an unusual show of dexterity like a street boy playing with his lighter.
She held it still now holding it up for him to see.
"You like it?" she said.
This taxi biker did not really know much about Jade, but the piece the girl held was indeed eye catching. He felt the own stone around his neck warming. As it did the girls eyes noticed his Jade again, eyes excited for the first time for an instant. She put her stone away again and sat back suddenly avoiding eye contact.
The rain began to die down and
He then looked directly at her and tilting his head up teling her to get on the motorcycle, “Serng chei la.”
With that they made off for what was a fairly long ride for motorbike and slow going at first given the wet road.
Her white jade hands wrapped around his waiste loosely and yet firm. Not afraid of human contact, but not tight as if afraid of falling off. Her body was closely in contact with his from shoulders and chest to thighs, he could feel it all on his back.
Her body was cold. Delicate, attractive, firm and yet soft. But with other girls that were this close he would feel the blood pumping through her and the heat coming off of their body. He would feel at least a little no matter who it was, man woman, young old, let alone a bold young woman like her.
Her body was cool the whole time, truly yin, cold as stone.
The got to the center of the town.
"Right here is good." she said like bells ringing seductively from a far away paradise brushing against his ear.
She got off and handed him a fair amount of money. Too much really. Being in town the city lights lit everything bright and he inspeceted carefully the Mao faced hundred Yuan bills before puting them in his shirt pocket. There were certainly plenty of fakes around and he was used to seeing them so he made sure they were real, espcially since she seemed to hand over more than he asked for so willingly.
"Is there any thing else Miss? You need change?"
"Not that's fine." she said and turned wakling away down the street.
He watched her body as she walked away, admiring her ass.
Meanwhile his phone rang and he continued to watch until his eyes caught some other hot girls. and soon he was looking at any direction.
"Wai!?" he yelled into the phone sitting one foot up on his bike.
"Bull? Hey Bull is that you?. It's Big Eyes."
"Hey what's up."said Bull, now hopping off the bike and walking around it.
"Where are you now?"
"Tai Cheng. I just droppped someone off. What do you want?"
"Hey that's good. I'm in Tai Cheng. I want to hire you for the night man, I need you to take me around to few places you know, you busy?"
"No I'm free," said a Bull, "Where are you."
"Ehhhh... Why don't you pick me up in about an hour from that club, what the hell is the name of it, with the hearts outside, whatever you know what I'm talking about right."
"Ohh the one before with where Fan got a bottle thrown at his head?"
"Yeah and they got all the boys to close of the exits and turn on the lights. We lloked through the whole crowd. Couldn't couldn't recognize the bastard anyway, he was so drunk and its dark. Yeah that one," said big eyes.
"Yeah okay one hour?"
and then the call was over. The taxi biker put away his phone and went up to a vendor to buy some cigarettes.
He lit one and suddenly remembered the money the girl had given him.
He figured once he was riding on his bike, it would be likely to blow out of the shirt pocket, so he took out the bills to put in his jeans pocket where it would be safer.
Taking it out he looked at it and he felt a rush, a shock, and looked again carefully holding the money to the light, because it seemed different. The Bills seemed to be moving and changing as he held them. He steadied himslef as if he was drunk. He wasn't but the world seemed like it was spinning. Were they fake?
Shit, they weren't fake but they weren't money, not yuan. They haded as he held them up to theb light, becoming Hell Bank notes, the money burned to the ancestors, gods and the deceased. He threw it down in fear and watched it flame up suddenly and burn away in smoke. He threw down the other one too and the other one, pissing himself and then just standing there sweating and pissing his pants and oddly not all that concerned about it.
A man walking with two girls laughing and pointing yelled out to him.
"Hey! Your pissing yourself." said the man breaking into a grin and then laughing at Bull.
Bull stared somewhat blankly at them and shook his head walking back to his bike.
He didn't really care that much. He tried to gather himself and then headed over to Big Eyes.
Thumb
As I sent the chi throughout my body and focused on my hands, for a loose and yet strong grip on the stick, my hands became relaxed and powerful.
Then when washing bowls I didn't pay attention much attention and trying to thoroughly scrub the plate it snapped in half, my hand in the same instant coming down hard on the broken half, blood going everywhere.
It does not pay to over exert yourself.
Then when washing bowls I didn't pay attention much attention and trying to thoroughly scrub the plate it snapped in half, my hand in the same instant coming down hard on the broken half, blood going everywhere.
It does not pay to over exert yourself.
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