What I learned about Ba and Gu Ma

Gu Ma (my aunt) told us that she had wanted to go to university, but my grandfather had insisted that she complete her vocational high school program and then find a job so that she could help put her younger brothers through university. Ba never knew this.

In the tumult of war and communist revolution, Ba only managed to complete two years of elementary schooling by the time he entered junior high school. Being unprepared and uneducated, he inevitably ended up in a remedial school, with fees. His mother managed to borrow the funds from someone who would then later come by regularly looking for repayment and making things awkward for my grandmother. My father knuckled down with the school work and after one year, managed to grasp the subject of math so well that he aced the final exam. His strength in math would carry him through senior high, university and ultimately secure a scholarship for a Masters degree program at the University of New Brunswick. A recent university graduate, he was already teaching at a high school in Taipei when he'd heard about scholarship programs abroad, and he quietly sent away for the forms. Later, when the letter arrived from UNB offering him a full scholarship, the first person he told was his girlfriend, who then suggested they get married. The next couple of months was a blur of preparations which included passing a physical examination, applying for a passport, quitting his teaching job, fund-raising, receiving a gift of an airline ticket from his uncle, and marrying my mother. In the week he was due to fly out of Taipei for Canada, a typhoon was approaching Taiwan, and he chose not to risk a trip to Taichung to say good-bye to his family. In 1963, with a small suitcase of clothes, he boarded the plane and he would not return for a visit to Taiwan until 1976.