Prospice

 1. A puzzling riddle

2019 is the 45th death anniversary of my father, Swan Chang (常子华). In all the years since he passed away, I have been constantly puzzling over the same riddle: In the deepest depths of his heart, what had he hoped to see from me, his youngest son? What teachings had he hoped I would receive, what books did he hope I would read, what career would I take, what sort of person would I become? He never told me any of these hopes when he was alive. Maybe this was because China had been going through a constant series of turbulent political movements since I was born in 1952, so he could never find a suitable time where he could express his expectations to me freely.

As far as I can recall, my father never asked me about my studies, and even seemed to ignore my musical talent with the piano. I was a talented piano prodigy from an early age, the star pupil of my teacher Jessica Wang (王重生), and once passed the entrance exams for the Beijing Central Conservatory of Music in the Spring of 1966. But the results of that exam were cancelled out by the stormy rise of the Cultural Revolution Movement; this became one of my life’s greatest regrets. I don’t remember my father ever giving me any sort of comments regarding my musical skills, leading me to assume for a very long time that he didn’t understand music at all.

2. A comment from my father

In December of 1968 at the age of 16, I was sent to a remote farmland to be “re-educated“ by  the communist government —I stayed there for two years working as a poor farmer, up until I joined Weifang City’s Cultural Art Troupe. Not long ago I managed to connect with Miss Guiying Wu (吴桂英) – an officer who was in charge of investigation of my family's political background the year I applied for the art troupe. During my chat with her on social media, I unexpectedly got to hear a comment my father had given about me back when he was alive, which left me deeply moved. Below is a record of my conversation with Miss Wu:

Wu: The articles you write are all so touching, and your family is a marvelous one; the different eras allowed you to taste all the joys and sorrows of life, but you were still very fortunate after going to America. Before you entered the cultural art troupe, Jiachang Zhou (周家昌) and I went to Qingdao to complete the political investigation for you. Your father and older sister were very kind to us.

Chang: There’s a question in my mind that I’ve always wanted to ask you. My parents at the time were classified as enemies of the state, the lowest of the low, one a “comprador of the bourgeoisie”, the other a “counter-revolutionary”. With such a bad political background, how could you have the courage to recruit me into the cultural art troupe?

Wu: Yes, it was indeed a serious political problem we encountered. Back then we had due diligent discussion about your family’s background many times, and ultimately decided that you were both young and bright, and couldn’t choose the circumstances of your birth; besides, the troupe really needed to hire talented young musicians like you.

Chang: I’ve wanted to thank you all these years, but never had the chance. I was afraid to contact you back then when I was in the troupe, because the political fighting between its two factions was particularly intense, and I didn’t want to cause you any trouble.

Wu: At the time the administration office was split into two groups—Jiachang Zhou and I were in one group (as heads of the Singing team). The two of us were the main ones in charge of recruiting you, though of course we also needed Communist Secretary Chuanfu Ren (任传夫) to approve it.

Chang: By then I’d been settled down in the farm for two years, then was temporarily transferred to Hanting County’s art performance team for a few months; why did you go to Qingdao to complete my political screening procedures? Where were my personal profile back then? I’d always thought that, after getting settled in my place in the farm, my personal profile would follow me to the People’s Commune in Wei County.

Wu: Our main purpose in going to Qingdao was to visit your family; of course your files had to be transferred from Wei County, along with some other necessary information. How exactly we went about the process, it’s been too long for me to remember clearly.

Chang: Do you remember what my mother said to you? In all these years, I never knew you went to my home; at that time my parents had been driven to live in that damp, dark little house in the rear court of 32 Longjiang Street(龙江路32号).

Wu: We didn’t get to see your mother when we went there, only your father and older sister. Your father told us that you’d learned the Yellow River piano concerto and other new piano pieces through listening to the radio, and that you were very smart, with great intellect. Your sister didn’t say much. The rest was just normal chat, and when we left your father walked us a long way down the road. He left a very deep impression on me - he was a very charming old man.

Chang: What my father said was true. I did not have any piano teacher during the Cultural Revolution Movement, and no longer had a piano to practice, because our family’s piano was seized by Red Guards.

Wu: It’s because you’re smart and love to learn that even though you didn’t play much piano back then, when the troupe urgently needed someone to perform the Yellow River Piano Concerto, we decided to recruit you.

Hearing Ms. Guiying Wu’s recollection of my father’s comments about me half-a-century after the fact, I felt a flood of emotion overcome me, my tears falling like rain. Three years after his meeting with Ms. Wu, in 1974, my father passed away in Beijing. In the year before he passed, I’d often tended to him at his bedside, but he never once mentioned this event to me. When Ms. Wu went to Qingdao in 1971 to screen my family background, my elderly parents were living in a penniless predicament. At the time they’d been labeled “first-class enemies” by the people of Jiangsu Street’s sub district office, and were forced to go through “reeducation through labor” every day in front of our home, 32 Longjiang Street: Sweeping the street, breaking rocks, suffering all sorts of degradation. In order to protect my father’s safety, my mother, Mary Liang (梁今永), had done as much as possible to prevent him from going outside our home. But when sending-off the “rare guests” Ms. Wu and Mr. Zhou after their investigation visit, he’d actually made an exception and walked them “a long way down the road”. When it came to his love for his son, my father’s unusually eager actions spoke louder than words.

But this precious information which Ms. Wu gave to me still did not resolve the unanswered question in my mind. What exactly did my father expect from me? It seemed like he’d over exaggerated my piano-playing talents to the investigators Ms. Wu and Mr. Zhou when they came to inquire, because there was no way he wouldn’t have known that a young man who’d been working in the farm for two years, whose hands had become covered in calluses, would have lost the sensitivity he once had as a piano player, and would no longer be able to reach such gloriously great heights when performing.

3. A set of English-language hardcover books in the attic

A month before this writing, my wife and I went to visit the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. This place was once the private estate of Henry Edwards Huntington (1850-1927) and his wife, Arabella (1851-1925). When Henry passed away in 1927, he left a will declaring that this 120-acre villa would be opened to the public. It’s a place the two of us love to visit; not only does it possess a fascinating desert garden, as well as Japanese and Chinese gardens, but it’s also home to a collection of famous European artworks from the 18th and 19th centuries, along with many priceless books.

 The thing I like most within this estate is the house the Huntingtons once lived in. Every time I walk into this mansion, I always head into one of the studies and stay there for a while. It’s a very large study, the quiet shelves displaying a large number of ancient hardcover books. These old books, with their gold-lettered covers, emit an atmosphere throughout every corner of the room that leads one to feel a sense of deep veneration. The European sofas placed around the study let one’s imagination run wild, making it feel as if you could actually see the Huntingtons reading there in private (the 400,000 precious works and 7,000,000 authentic manuscripts they collected are saved in a library within the estate).

Standing inside this luxurious study, I can’t help thinking of my father’s mysterious little study back in the tiny attic of 32 Longjiang Street, back in Qingdao. Although there’s no way it could compare that little study of his to the gigantic one in the Huntington estate, the literary charm it gave off was something I’ll never forget in my lifetime—because space was limited, it was impossible for the little study to store all of my father’s books, so he’d built a long row of crude floor-length bookshelves along the wall of the hallway outside, the shelves of which were then stuffed full of books. This became my favorite place to visit as a child; I’d often sit there by myself, flipping through the books, swallowing up the stories within them, reading every book there without really understanding what it was I’d read: The Complete Works of Lu Xun, The Collected Works of Guo Moruo, Ba Jin’s Home, Spring,  and Fall, Luo Guanzhong’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Cao Xueqin’s Dream of Red Mansions, Shi Nai’an’s Water Margin, Ethel Lilian Voynich’s The Gadfly, Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West…

The thing on these shelves that most caught my eye was a row of dark coffee-colored hardcover English books; there were probably about 20 in the series, all with an identical old-fashioned cover. The title pages within these dark coffee hardcover shells had gilded English lettering, written in beautifully elegant lines. Just like the venerable old books in the study of the Huntington estate. This long row of English books was unique among all the works on my father’s bookshelf, giving off a thick air of mystery. I’d often pull one out and flip through its pages, but I couldn’t read a word of it, because the words inside were all in English. However, the books also held many elegant illustrations that I absolutely loved; these pictures included oil paintings, photographs, animals, natural landscapes, and my particular favorite at the time, a selection of pictures designed for children. It was these books that led me to dream of learning English when I grew up, so that I could read and understand this fascinating set of books my father owned.

 This set of hardcover English books wasn’t lucky enough to be saved like the old books in the Huntington study. In the 1966 Cultural Revolution, they, along with all of the other precious books collected in my father’s study, were taken out and burned in the yard by the “revolutionaries” of Jiangsu Street’s sub district office and Red Guards. Because my father had too many books in that little attic, the fanatical “revolutionaries” kept up that fire in the yard for three straight days before they were done. And the tiny dream that had ignited in my young soul vanished in a puff of smoke, together with the ashes of those English books which had burned away in the flames.

4. A precious birthday present

One July day half a century later, in Southern California on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, I received a package in the mail. I could see from the front of the package that this was sent from my older sister, Angela Chang, who lives on the east coast. Because the day I received that package just happened to be my birthday, I guessed this must be a birthday present from Angela.

When I opened the package, I was so astonished I couldn’t believe my own eyes, because what entered my vision was one of the books from that set on my father’s old attic bookshelf at 32 Longjiang Street! Hadn’t all these books been burned a long time ago? How could Angela have managed to save one?

 Unlike those books being treated like “royalty” in the Huntington study, kept at a constant temperature and saved in perfect condition, this book of my father’s looked quite weather-beaten: Its once-beautiful coffee-colored cover had faded to a gloomy pale hue, only a single patch of darker color left in the center of the front cover. The gilded lettering had lost its old luster. The pages were already yellowing, and the binding was beginning to come apart. This book before me was like a hunchbacked old man, the polar opposite of those enchantingly, dazzlingly beautiful English books from my memory of that little attic in Qingdao.

I let the tears flow freely down my face, sitting quietly there for a good long while; once my feelings had calmed down somewhat, I picked up my cellphone and gave Angela a call. I thanked her over the phone, telling her this was the most precious birthday gift I’d ever received in my life. On her end, she explained that perhaps because our father had had too many books stored in that little attic on 32 Longjiang Street, this book had been lucky enough to escape the misfortune of getting seized and thrown into the fire during the revolution—but because my parents were evicted from their home at the time, it had moved along with them to the dilapidated, damp, dark little shack behind their old house. When it poured outside, it would rain on the walls inside as well, so this book had suffered serious damage under these poor conditions, and many of its pages had gone moldy. I don’t know how my sister knew about her little brother’s “secret crush” on this book, deciding to part with her “treasure” in gifting it to me for my birthday. For the sake of my health as a sickly man with stage IV cancer and a weak immune system, she’d taken this moldy book to her work unit, Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, and used ultraviolet ray equipment in the labs to sterilize it, as well as putting in the time and effort to remove the moldy areas with alcohol swabs.

In the days following this, as if having discovered a precious treasure, I finally began to read this long-lost and newly-recovered English-language book.

5. The Book of Knowledge

This is a children’s encyclopedia (originally titled The Children’s Encyclopaedia), first written by Englishman Arthur Mee. In 1910, the famous American publishing company Grolier bought the rights to this book, and began publishing it in New York under the name The Book of Knowledge. The set of children’s encyclopedias which my father had collected in his tiny attic room was published in 1923, a rare early edition of the Book of Knowledge.

The birthday present Angela had sent me was the fourth book of this 20-volume encyclopedia set. When I cautiously cracked open this 96-year-old encyclopedia, I was immediately drawn in by the contents I found inside. This was an unusual and wonderful children’s book. Unlike the encyclopedias of today, this earlier edition’s contents aren’t written in alphabetical order. Instead, each essay is sorted into different categories or classifications, and then placed at random within those categories. When you open this encyclopedia, it’s difficult to find what you’re looking for; instead what you find are things you’d never thought to imagine before, making for a surprisingly exciting reading experience.

Among these different categories is a fascinating one called “Wonder Questions”. This category gives easy-to-understand explanations to satisfy a child’s desire for knowledge, for example: Why is the sea never still? What makes the current in the sea? Where does the wind begin? Why is fire hot? Can we fall off the Earth? Why do we get tired? How does a dog know a stranger? Do the flowers sleep at night? What is light? Can animals talk to each other? Why can’t we sleep with our eyes open?

I discovered that this book is like a playground, just like its editor said in the preface: “The child will find whatever he wants… The child who can be left out of doors to play will find here the beginning of interest in natural things. All the games and pastimes, all the fireside enjoyment children love, the mechanical interests of boys, the domestic interests of girls, and homemade toys for both of them ---- this is but one phase of the practical value of the book.” Aside from this, children can also enjoy eloquent speeches, inspiring sermons, graceful and outstanding essays, passionate songs, lofty poems and works of art.

On the front page of this fourth volume, I saw a familiar oil painting, The Blue Boy. This was created by the famous English portrait and scenery artist, Thomas Gainsborough, in 1770. With his bold and unrestrained brush strokes, and his delicately detailed coloring, he became a well-known figure in the world of European traditional art. When he created the Blue Boy, he found the son of a factory worker and had him dress in blue, playing the part of a prince for this portrait. In the painting, the artist brilliantly displays this boy’s casual and confident poise, and the texture and fragility of the blue satin clothes he wears are extremely lifelike.

Coincidentally, Gainsborough’s original authentic work is displayed in a second floor exhibit hall in the Huntington Estate. In 1921, Mr. Huntington invested an amazing $640,000 to buy this painting from England; this is equivalent to $8,500,000 today. My wife and I got to see this famous 249-year-old painting when we visited the Huntington Library a month back; it’s currently in the process of restoration, because the sapphire blue colors have already faded by now. The cost of restoration is incredibly high, and will take about two years to complete.

This fourth volume of the Book of Knowledge has a small number of color pages, the Blue Boy being one of them; its being placed on the very front page of the book goes to show the high degree of interest the editor had in this work. But due to the hardships this book has been through, plus the limitations of color printing technology a century ago, the sapphire-blue colors have now completely faded, turning the picture black-and-white.

Unexpectedly, the book also contained a photo of the San Francisco Bay area’s Golden Gate, which we’d visited just last month. This black-and-white photo was probably taken around fifteen years before the Golden Gate Bridge was built; it was only when I read the description of this photo, that I learned that this part of the San Francisco Bay area had already been called Golden Gate long before the bridge came to be.

 I set plans for myself to do some reading, giving myself make-up classes in a sense, and decided to spend at least 15 minutes a day reading The Book of Knowledge during my illness. As I was reading, I got a feeling as if my father’s spirit were speaking directly to me through the words in the book. Suddenly I realized, this was the expectation he had never been able to express to me when he was alive! The author and editor’s target audience when creating the Book of Knowledge were children between the ages of 7 and 14. My father had hoped that my thirst for knowledge during this vigorous period of growth would be able to benefit from reading this series of books; that I could learn how these famous artists, thinkers, politicians, writers, preachers, and scientists from around the world managed to ignite people’s souls, forever pursuing truth, goodness, and beauty, and understand more clearly than ever the love of God and the love of mankind.

It was clear to me that the “class struggle” revolutionary education I received in elementary and middle school in the 50’s and 60’s was much too different from the expectations my father had for me. It goes without saying that I didn’t understand a word of English at the time - even my Chinese studies were ended suddenly at the age of 14 when the Cultural Revolution sprang up, and I unluckily became one of the lost generation in modern Chinese history - so how could I have managed to understand this set of English encyclopedias my father had thoughtfully prepared for me?

One August day, as I was reading the Book of Knowledge, I casually flipped to a collection of poems titled “The book of poetry”; I particularly like one poem in this collection, titled “Prospice”. This poem was written by English poet Robert Browning (1812-1889) in 1864, not long after the death of his wife Elizabeth, and was written in the form of a dramatic monologue. In this poem, the poet portrays the point of view of someone on the verge of death.

Maybe it’s because I’m a stage IV cancer patient, putting me in the same boat as the soliloquist in the poem, but every line of this English poem resonates within me, taking a tight hold upon my heart. I tried looking up a Chinese translation of this poem online, but came up empty-handed, so I decided instead to try translating it to Chinese myself.

6. Prospice

by Robert Browning

Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote

I am nearing the place,  

The power of the night, the press of the storm,

The post of the foe;

Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,

Yet the strong man must go:

For the journey is done and the summit attained,

And the barriers fall,

Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,

The reward of it all.

I was ever a fighter, so—one fight more,

The best and the last!

I would hate that death bandaged my eyes and forbore,

And bade me creep past.

No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers

The heroes of old,

Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears

Of pain, darkness and cold. 

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,

The black minute's at end,

And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,

Shall dwindle, shall blend,

Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,

Then a light, then thy breast,

O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,

And with God be the rest!

7. Let’s fight with Death once more!

It was August 25th when I finished translating this poem in the hallway of City of Hope hospital. My wife Diana had been keeping me company in the hospital for practically the entire day. I had to first get a blood test in the lab area, then head to the radiation department for a CT scan, after which I needed to go meet my oncologist Dr. Pal ...sitting in the hospital hallway, surrounded by an unending flow of patients and medical personnel, I focused myself solely on translating this English-language poem.

The name of this poem, Prospice, is a Latin word meaning “to look forward”, or “to expect”. The poet chose this name in order to imbue his poem with a philosophical touch. The poem in its entirety is made up of seven stanzas, each stanza consisting of four lines, with the first and third line being long, while the second and fourth lines are short. The poet used simple and vivid metaphors throughout.

The poet gets right to the point in the first stanza, answering his own questions as he says, Do I fear death? I’m already at the brink of death. He describes the feeling of facing death as having fog in one’s throat, making it difficult to breathe, his whole body feeling cold as a multitude of storms appear within him. At first I didn’t quite understand why he’d used fog in the throat to describe how someone feels before death, and hesitated a long time over how to translate the line as I sat in the hospital hallway. It wasn’t until I was called into my oncologist’s consulting room, and saw the pictures of my CT scan on his computer screen, that I understood what the poet had felt. I saw the shape of an ugly black tumor invading my trachea. Half of its formerly round shape had been crushed flat, leaving only a narrow semi-circular space.  “Do you normally feel pain when eating or speaking?” Dr. Pal gently asked, concerned. “It hurts a little when I swallow food - I haven’t told my wife yet, because I’m afraid she’d worry.” As I replied, a sliver of a bad premonition attacked my thoughts, the first stanza of that poem suddenly rising in my mind: To feel the fog in my throat. But what was in my throat wasn’t fog, but a very real malignant tumor.

In the second stanza, the poet takes it one step further, saying that Death has appeared in a clearly visible form before his eyes. To a dying man, this is the most vivid description in the poem. All the gratitude and grudges in this life, all the trials and tribulations, the pains and hardships, are all brought to an end with the appearance of the reaper.

In the third stanza, the poet thinks about how his life is nearing its end, how he’s fulfilled all the duties required of him in this life, and achieved the summit of his existence. There’s nothing left for him to do, all the problems and obstacles he’s ever come across are now resolved, there is nothing left to impede his forward progress. But he doesn’t wish to die like a coward, he wants to go down fighting like a warrior. This reminds me of the part of the Bible which Paul wrote while imprisoned in Rome: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” (Timothy 4:7)

In the fourth stanza, the poet says “I was ever a fighter, So one fight more”. This is the not only the last battle of his life, but the last glorious battle he’ll engage in. To fight with Death himself in retaliation for the life he’s lived, this is the greatest prize he can bring to his wife when they meet in Heaven—and it’s for this reason that he doesn’t fear dying. In my oncologist’s consulting room, I silently told myself this as well: So one fight more. After this fight is over, and I meet my father in Heaven, I’ll tell him that although I couldn’t fulfill his hopes when I was young - not picking up that Book of Knowledge he’d prepared for me to read at age 7 until I was the ripe old age of 67 - I at least managed not to let him down before the end of my life, and didn’t meet Death as a coward.

In the fifth stanza, the poet takes it one step further, saying that death does not take pity on him - it’s the thing which humans most fear, and yet he doesn’t fear it. He doesn’t want to die the way others do, unconscious and lacking reason; he wants to face it with full awareness, so that he can fully experience all the pain and suffering which death brings with it. This might be the most unfathomable “bold vision” written in this poem - something that’s very difficult to do in reality. Just think, who in the world would gladly and willingly go to experience the immense pain one must suffer when on the brink of death? Based on my own personal experience, having undergone eight surgeries, lost many of the precious organs God had gifted to me, suffered through the unimaginable pain of side effects from anti-cancer medications—if I were to rely on willpower alone, it would be impossible for me to endure the pains that death brings with it. If I didn’t have God’s grace and mercy, I’d likely have given up a long time ago. It’s just as Jesus said in the Bible: “...In me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart, for I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

In the sixth stanza, the poet believes that the attitude with which you treat death is really just the difference of a moment. You just need a moment to understand that death can turn a person’s greatest weaknesses into their greatest strengths, and turn the most cowardly into the most brave. This signifies death opening the doors to Heaven, when all the darkness of this world, all the ugliness of human nature, all the roars of the devil, are left far behind. This is the war between God and the devil, a war which God will ultimately win. From a human point of view, this poet seems like someone in a fantasy story: How could a dying man suddenly turn the worst parts of himself into the greatest courage? But looking at it from the point of view of God, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” (Mark 9:23) There’s proof of this in a letter I received from one of my readers, by the name of “Meimei”. This is what she wrote:

“The first time I saw your writing, I was honestly shocked that someone who lost many of his organs could still have such a joyful spirit, and write so many popular, rewarding, and wonderful works. Many people treat their illnesses very seriously, to the point that a loss of hope brings despair along with it; I feel that God is showing you to the world like you’re a living, breathing recommendation letter, because the comfort a man who has been sick can give to people is different from that which someone who has never suffered before can offer. When someone who has suffered before shares with another suffering the same pain, the feelings they get are one and the same: There’s someone else out there who’s gone through the same experiences as me, there’s someone in this world who has it worse than me. This gives the reader a sense of comfort, not a superficial consolation but one that comes from the heart. Being an emissary who can comfort and encourage others isn’t an innate ability; one must first pay a great price, collecting much suffering throughout your own life, in order to pour out help to others. There is really no way for us to control everything that happens in a person’s life, every illness or suffering that may suddenly catch us unawares. There is no way for us to know what unexpected mishap might meet us first tomorrow. All we can do is trust in the eternal faith of God, in order to change our attitudes toward suffering. The sweet dew of Heaven will only appear in the dark night of the soul.

In the final seventh stanza, the poet speaks in my ear with an extremely tender tone, saying,  rest assured, everything will change, all the suffering on this earth will come to an end with death; pain will change to tranquility, you will obtain radiance and joy, meet with your father in Heaven, and find rest in the Lord’s embrace.

As my wife Diana drove me home from the hospital that day, she asked with concern: “How do you feel?”

“I feel at peace in my heart,” I truthfully answered. “This might be the most peaceful I’ve ever felt in all these eleven years of continued death sentences. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate so hard on translating this poem back in the hospital hallway; this is the first time I’ve ever translated an English poem.”

“I feel the same way,” my wife softly agreed: “Let’s fight Death one more time.” So one fight more…

Written September 11, 2019

Buying a Used Car

Six years ago in March of 2013, my wife Diana and I bought a used car, a Lexus LS460. Once we reached home with it I wrote a diary to record the process of our buying this used car. This bookkeeping-like diary of mine holds extraordinary meaning to me, because it was my maiden work, the beginning of all my writing, written in Chinese back when I was dying of stage IV kidney cancer. These past few years, I’d never considered that I might write a continuation of my car-buying adventures, because I’d always considered my unforgettable experience of six years ago to be the last time my wife and I would ever be able to buy one together.

But this August, when the tumors in my body all made a re-appearance, Diana and I were prompted by the sudden impulse to do something which surprised even ourselves: We went to buy another used car! Our shopping experience was all-around even more theatrical than the time six years ago, and so I was unable to resist picking up my pen to write this new article.

Our motivation for buying a car this time wasn’t because anything had happened to our last one. Our 9-year-old Lexus is still working perfectly, and has never given us any sort of problems. Add to that the fact that we rarely drive anywhere aside from visiting the hospital or buying groceries, our car at the time only had 80,000 miles on it, and was still in the “prime of its life”, so to speak—it hadn’t changed much in the six years since we’d bought it, and we could keep driving it for many years to come.

Our reason for buying a car this time arose from our son Mark’s 2003 Lexus LS350. This 16-year-old, 200,000-mile car was constantly showing malfunctions. When Mark graduated from medical school this past May, we’d had a discussion with him, suggesting he buy a used car that was maybe around three years old. We told him we could help with the down payment for the car, and for the rest he could borrow a loan from the bank. But Mark politely turned down our offer, saying that the loans for his four years of medical school had already put him in huge debt, and he didn’t want to add any more to that. According to him, this old 2003 car just needed a little fixing up, and it’d be able to get by for another two or three years.

So this June, before Mark went off to work at the UNLV School of Medicine, we spent $2,000 on maintenance for the old car, changed out its cylinders, and made it able to start running again (this car’s market value is probably only a few thousand itself). Because the car was too old, Mark wouldn’t let us fix up any of the unnecessary little problems, saying it wasn’t worth spending any more money on repairing the thing.

Near the end of June, Mark drove off to Las Vegas, Nevada, to start his new resident job. This was a day worth commemorating - the day he began his independent life. Watching him load his suitcases into the car, everything prepared nice and neatly, we two old folks stepped out the front door to give him goodbye hugs at the entrance; we understood, deep down, that once he left it would be very difficult for us to see him again as often as we used to, because America’s resident doctors are incredibly busy, needing to work even during holidays, and rarely ever finding the time to take a break and go home. We watched him back the car down the driveway, fix its direction, then step on the gas—it was at this moment that a black board fell from the bottom of the car, letting out an ear-piercing noise as it scraped against the ground. Diana immediately rushed over, gesticulating wildly at Mark to get him to stop the car. After Mark got out, the two of them both went underneath the car in an attempt to locate the source of the problem.

It turns out that what fell from the upper half of the chassis was the engine splash shield. This protective cover had actually fallen off once a long time ago; according to proper procedure, we should have taken the car to a Lexus dealer’s repair center, and let professional mechanics change it out for a new splash shield. But we hadn’t thought this old car was worth the cost of sending it to a Lexus dealer for repairs, and decided to do some home repairs instead—we’d used tape to stick the splash shield back onto the car’s chassis. It was clear now that the tape wasn’t strong enough to handle the car’s jolting, and had all come loose.

I stood at a distance, watching as Mark pulled spare tape from the car and, together with Diana under the blazing Southern California sun, spent a tremendous amount of effort underneath the car taping that splash shield back onto the chassis. I couldn’t help getting worried as I watched: What if, during Mark’s five-hour drive to Las Vegas, this tape fell off again?

One day in July, a guest from Qingdao named Mr. Fang Liu came to visit me, together with his teenage son. As I chatted with this fellow Qingdao countryman I was meeting for the first time, I casually brought up the worry I felt over Mark’s old car. Half-jokingly, I commented that it was really unbelievable how thrifty my medical school graduate of a son could be, insisting on driving such an old hunk of junk to work. In truth, this car had a lot of other little issues as well: For example, the right side-view mirror was broken in that it could no longer be adjusted, so we’d taped that in place as well. Another problem was that three of the car’s four doors were broken, particularly the right side - they’d creak loudly every time you opened them, making you worry that they might fall right off at any moment. Aside from that, the front-right door couldn’t be opened from the outside, a fact which made things particularly inconvenient for our Doctor Chang, who’s currently dating a beautiful girl studying in a dental school. Just imagine: Doctor Chang drives over to pick his girlfriend up for a date, only to be entirely unable to perform that gentlemanly action of opening the door and helping get her seated, and has to leave the poor girl standing alone on the curb while he goes around and climbs in through the driver’s side to push the door open from inside. That would be pretty embarrassingly awkward, wouldn’t it?

When I told the guest from Qingdao the story of Mark and his car, it was no more than an attempt at finding a casual topic to talk about; I didn’t have any particular goal behind it, nor did I hope for any suggestions from him. But to my surprise, after hearing this story, Mr. Liu immediately turned to his teenage son with a stern look on his face and said: “Did you hear that? This man’s son finished medical school and is working as a resident doctor, yet he’s still driving an almost 20-year-old car. Then here you’re just a high school student and you’re already trying to get your dad to buy you a new car for college. We need to learn to follow Dr. Chang’s example!” Mr. Liu’s reaction was far beyond anything I’d expected.

Speaking of Mark stubbornly refusing to replace the old car, his main reason for it was that he felt his student loans from four years of medical school had already put him in deep enough debt, plus American resident doctors do not have particularly high pay, so it would be another three years before he can finish his residency and gain the financial ability to start paying it back. Until then, his student loans will continue to accumulate interests, and will grow to be even greater; he does not want to add another liability to the pile.

Mark’s first job in residency began in July, in the intensive care unit of the hospital’s ER ward. The kind of patients one finds in an intensive care unit are all people toeing the line between life and death; this is a department with heavy responsibilities, whose residents are incredibly busy. Because he was a novice in this department, Mark began getting up early and coming home late to better get himself into working form, his average work day stretching as long as 12-16 hours. Sometimes when things got busy, he didn’t have any time to eat a single meal all day. Hearing how difficult his job was, and knowing there was no way for us two old folks to help him, all we could do was sit at home and quietly pray to our Heavenly Father, so that He may grant him the strength and wisdom to succeed in a position with such heavy responsibilities. We rarely even had the courage to call him on the phone, afraid we might interrupt what little free time he had to sleep in his otherwise hectic work day. He rarely called us either, during this time, so we could only ever get news about him from the short messages he’d occasionally post on Facebook.

However, in the last week of July, we received an unexpected phone call from him. Over the phone, he told us that his old car had suddenly broken down on the way to work, and after being towed to a nearby repair shop, it was discovered that the alternator had broken. He was now waiting for a colleague to come pick him up to take him to the hospital. Mark’s phone call led the two of us to wonder if maybe letting him drive off in that old car hadn’t been the smartest choice. This aged car with its constantly occurring mechanical problems didn’t seem capable of keeping up with the frenetic work pace of a resident doctor working a 12-to-16-hour daily schedule.

What finally completely destroyed what remaining faith we had in the car was at the end of July, when Mark drove home from Las Vegas to take part in a friend’s wedding. When he got out of the car, I saw him pull out a tattered black plate; it turned out the engine plash shield had fallen off yet again. As I stared at the unbelievably damaged shield in his hands, a wave of pity towards Mark washed over me. Although I didn’t ask for the details of his breakdown this time, I could imagine him stopping the car by the side of the road, in that barren and empty desert wasteland that stretches between Nevada and California, laying on the burning hot ground beneath a blazing hot sun to check on an engine splash shield that had fallen due to loose tape...this was really too unsafe. But Mark didn’t seem to think it was a big problem at all; he told us that if he drove it to a Lexus dealer and changed out the shield it would cost him $400, whereas he could buy a shield online for about $30 and ask a nearby repair shop to install it, thus saving him $300.

That night Diana and I came to a consensus: During Mark’s time as an overworked and busy resident doctor, he shouldn’t be using what little energy he has left to keep fixing this car. We decided to give our 9-year-old Lexus LS 460 to him, and we could go out to buy ourselves a new used car with not too many years on it.

Finding used cars online is one of my specialties. These past years, from my three children learning to drive in high school, to buying their own cars after graduating college, the cars they got were all used cars I found online myself. Over time, some of my friends have heard about my car-buying experience, and often ask me to help them find good-quality, affordable used cars for them. This time was no exception: On July 31st, I only needed the one day’s time to set my sights on a used car I’d found through Carfax. Carfax is a website focused on providing information on used cars in North America - with its enormous database, it’s known to have access to twenty billion records from more than 100,000 sources, including motor vehicle departments for all 50 US states and all 10 Canadian provinces. What leaves me the greatest impression is the vehicle history report this site provides, which gives a detailed record of each car’s manufacture date, maintenance record, whether or not it’s been in an accident, how many miles it has at present, and a lot of other important information. This site’s founder, Ewin Barnet III, originally created this database in opposition to the many used car lots full of cars with falsified miles, a move which was highly welcomed by consumers.

What I found on this website was a used car of the same make as the one I’d bought six years ago, a Lexus LS 460; this 2015 car had only run 26,000 miles, and yet the price was half that of a new car. Its vehicle history report included a complete maintenance, which didn’t show records of any sort of accidents.

The next morning, on August 1st, I used the phone number provided on Carfax to call the seller, hoping to ask whether this car was still up for sale. The dealership representative who answered my call was Romio Gorgis, an employee with noticeable salesmanship skills; he told me that someone from out-of-state already had interest in this car (I’m not sure if this was true or not), but if I came to their dealership today, he could guarantee that my purchase would take priority. He also said that this car had no margin for haggling - it had to go out at the listed price of $42,000 (this was true). I told him over the phone that we didn’t have this much cash available off-hand, and that aside from our bank savings and what last-minute money we could borrow off our credit card, we’d have to go to Credit Union Bank and ask for a car loan; we’d have to wait until the bank approved our loan before we could look at the car. I checked the map to find that this dealership was situated in the western end of San Diego close to the border of Mexico, a 2-hour drive away. Driving such a long way just to look at a car we couldn’t yet afford certainly wouldn’t be a very wise decision. But Romio offered an attractive suggestion: If my credit score was good, he said, then even if the bank had yet to approve my loan, I would still be able to take the car home today.

Romio’s suggestion sounded very attractive, and so Diana and I decided to drive down to the dealership to look at the car. As we were on our way out the door, we pulled Mark along into the car with us. But Mark was at a loss as to our impulsive decision; he didn’t understand why we would want to go through the trouble of borrowing loans to buy another car again when we were aging and riddled with illness, or rush into it so quickly like a troop heading into battle. There was no way for us to explain it clearly to him at the time, either - we simply implored him to help act as our driver, because this dealership was too far from our home.

Mark drove for over two hours before finally bringing us to our destination. The moment we got out of the car, we saw Romio already standing by the entrance of the building, waiting to welcome us. He enthusiastically led us to a room with an automatic coffee machine in it, inviting us to rest a while and drink some coffee. We were told he’d already brought out the car we were interested in and parked it outside the hall.

The moment I set eyes on this shiny white Lexus model, she had me hooked. Although this car was also a Lexus LS460, she wasn’t anything like the LS460 we’d bought six years ago; this was an F Sport model sports car. The first impression I got from her was that of an art piece brimming over with inspiration. The fenders on both sides had the distinctive “F SPORT” label engraved in them, showcasing the car’s special status as a sports model. The contours of her body were designed in a dynamic, flowing style, outlining the still-graceful curves of her novelty and fashion.

Romio invited the three of us to sit inside the car for a test drive, with Diana driving, Romio in the front passenger seat, and Mark and me sitting in the back. Diana drove very carefully as she listened to Romio explain different details about the car’s interior, particularly the central console’s complicated electronic system, with its navigation, radio, multimedia, phone, system settings, air conditioning, and other functions. I wasn’t listening to the details of their conversation, because even if I did put effort into listening, I knew I wouldn’t be able to understand all this new technology. The only thing I could understand was when Romio said this Lexus F Sport model sports car was a rare find in the used car market, because most owners of this sport car model would keep it for many years.

 I quietly sat in the spacious and cozy back seat. The seats were covered in real leather, and supported the body very well. The car’s inner decor and design were rather conservative compared to its extravagant exterior, giving it a cozy, comfortable atmosphere I enjoyed.

Once we’d finished the test drive, Romio led us to the dealership’s financial department, where we were received by a young finance manager who’d only just begun working this year. After exchanging handshakes and greetings, this young man got straight to the point, and said to me: “I’ve checked your credit report, and you have the highest credit score I’ve seen.”

“What is my credit score?” I curiously asked him. Having been stuck convalescing at home for so long, I hadn’t bothered checking my own credit report in years.

“Your credit score is 837, almost 850, which is really incredibly rare - only 10% of consumers can manage to get a credit score that high.”

“Then can I take the car home with me today?” I asked, half-joking.

“Of course you can, your credit is amazing! I’ll get the contract written up right now, and once you’ve signed it you can take the car home. But remember, you have to have the bank loan ready within a week.”

I could barely believe my ears - I’d lived in America for almost 40 years, but this was the first time I’d been able to take home a car from a car dealer before ever getting a bank loan. Before we left the dealership, in order to commemorate this extraordinary car-buying experience, we took a photo together with Romio.

In the dealership parking lot, I gave Mark the key of our 9-year-old Lexus LS460, saying: “From now on, you’re going to be the owner of this car. Thank you for coming with us today - if you weren’t willing to come, Mom and I would have had to drive these two cars home separately.”

Mark seemed still not to have recovered from the lightning-quick decision we had made today; he took the key from my hand, then sincerely said: “Thank you, both of you, but I don’t think I deserve to have a car this nice.” I thought to myself, it looks like this frugal son of mine still needs some time to completely forget that old car.

On the way home, I sat in the front-right seat of the new used sports car, watching as Diana uncharacteristically drove at high speed down the freeway. Because this was a sports car, it could go from 0 to 60 mph in a span of only six seconds. It seemed Diana wanted to test this ability, racing down the freeway at top speed, sometimes even getting up to 100 mph. Seeing all the cars that got left behind in our dust, the two of us felt a great sense of rejuvenation.

Afterwards Diana explained to me that she actually hadn’t realized how fast she was going; because this car was situated lower than the average automobile, making people feel closer to the ground and giving a greater sense of motion, it was very easy to excite the driver into wanting to drive faster. Aside from that, this particular sports car had an electronically-controlled adaptive variable air suspension system, which lowered the center of gravitational force, decreased the jolting you’d get from high-speed driving, and improved the car’s stability and agility, all of which combined to cause Diana to push it up to 100 mph and still have us feeling like the ride was as smooth as ever.

The next day, August 2nd, I joyfully uploaded a few pictures from our dealership experience onto social media Wechat. Many of my friends expressed their congratulations, all agreeing that I’d bought a good quality used car at a real bargain. But my old friend Chen from Shandong Province left a very curious message. This is what he wrote: “Can someone at your age still take out loans in America? Here in China it’s impossible.”

I immediately started talking with Chen, asking why people my age were unable to get bank loans in China. His reply was that China’s banks had no trust in the repayment ability of people 65 and up. He went on to say: “We can’t even get a home equity loan against our house, let alone consumer goods like cars…”

Chen’s words were a stark reminder which got me worrying about whether my car loan might suffer the same fate of rejection as the elderly people of China did. After all, I was an old retiree and, even worse, a late-stage cancer patient. Would the bank feel at ease loaning money to a sick old man like me, who could go off to see the Lord at any moment?

I quickly called up the bank’s loan department. A female staff member answered the phone; I sent her copies of the car’s sales contract, as well as the Lexus finance manager’s contact information, then told her that I’d only been given a week to obtain the loan and hoped that she could approve my loan application as quickly as possible. She told me that, because my credit score was very high, I could get the best interest rate of 2.7%, and that the process could be completed in only two days.

After hanging up the phone, I let out a deep sigh of relief - it looks like American banks only focus on debtors’ credit history when it comes to judging their ability and willingness to repay, not on other factors such as my life expectancy as a cancer patient. My guess is that this is due to Western civilization’s overwhelming belief in spirit of contract. Because my credit score is extremely high, the bank’s loan department had no doubt whatsoever in my trustworthiness; even if they knew I was an old man, a man who could lose my life to cancer at any moment, they still approved my loan without the slightest hesitation.

The Bible says: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (Thessalonians 5:16-18) These past few days Diana and I have been overflowing with thanksgiving. We give thanks to the Lord, for giving us a humble and grateful son who is not obsessed with materialism; we give thanks to the Lord, for letting us do what little we can as parents in giving Mark our old car, and letting him focus his energy on his sacred duty as a resident doctor helping people in need; we give thanks to the Lord, for keeping my heart full of joy even on the sixth cancer recurrence; we give thanks to the Lord, for allowing the two of us to feel rejuvenated again, driving a sports car fast as a wild whirlwind  down the freeway…

Originally written in Chinese by Joseph Chang on Aug 22, 2019

Translated to English by Ida von Mizaner on Sept. 12, 2019

Edited by Joseph Chang on Sept 19, 2019

One birthday, two half-decades

This article was written on my birthday six years ago, 7/24/2013.  The original writing was in Chinese, and now a English translation is available to my readers.
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Today is my birthday, a co-worker Vickie in my company asked me how I planned to celebrate; I told her I was going to the hospital for infusion, because today also happens to be the day of my weekly visit to the clinical trial department of City of Hope hospital, where I’ll receive new trial medications for my stage IV kidney cancer. In other words, I’m spending my birthday at the hospital.

There’s nothing particularly special about the day I was born, but there are two five-year periods relating to it which could be considered the most important - and oddest - periods of my life.

61 years ago, when I was no more than a few-month-old fetus sitting peacefully in my young mother’s womb, I accompanied her into Qingdao’s heavily-guarded, terrifying Licun Chinese Prison. This prison was built in 1903 by a German company Baufirma F. H. Schmidt (Chinese name Guangbao Company). It was originally for the purpose to imprison Chinese criminals during the German occupation of Qingdao. After Chinese communists won the civil war in 1949, it became a notorious facility to imprison the “counter-revolutionists” in Qingdao.   

Because Licun Prison had no medical facilities, the day I was born, my mother was “humanely” sent back home to give birth to me, and then she was taken back to Licun Prison to continue serving her jail term.  

I came wailing into this world 61 years ago today; during my first five years of life I didn’t have a single opportunity to suckle my mother’s milk, and was instead brought up by the loving Christian sisters of the church. It wasn’t until five years later that my mother left prison, and I was once again able to return to her embrace.

What was it that created this tragedy, forcing a young mother to leave her own flesh and blood and sit in a gloomy prison for five long years, experiencing torment to both her physical and mental well-being? During those turbulent years, with China fighting through a seemingly interminable class struggle, I was never given a single explanation.

When my mother died in China 25 years ago, I began investigating the secret of that tragic experience from our past; after some effort, I finally managed to uncover the startling secret of the day of my birth.

In the early 1950’s, aside from raising children and being a housewife, my mother also gave sermons at “God’s Church”, a small Christian church on Guangyao Road (now Dengzhou Road) in Qingdao. One Sabbath Sunday, an elder of the church brought an unfamiliar youth to meet her after she’d finished her sermon. This youth claimed to be a student at Qingdao’s naval academy, and needed 30 yuan for train tickets to visit his elderly, ailing mother in Sichuan province. My kindhearted mother felt no suspicion at all, promptly donating 30 yuan to this youth she’d never met before.

According to the sentence the Qingdao People’s Court gave to my mother at the time, this youth was actually someone who’d been conscripted by the Nationalist Party and sent to the Qingdao Naval Academy. The Communist People’s Liberation Army had taken over this national military academy after establishing themselves in Qingdao in 1949, but this youth who’d been forcefully conscripted into the army was unable to bear the torment of homesickness, and had come up with the idea of abandoning his post to return home. This naive young man never would have imagined that with this hasty action, not only would he have committed the “heinous” crime of desertion, but would also involve my mother, who’d so kindly donated his travel fare.

Just like this, because my mother had given a stranger an insignificant 30 yuan (approximately equal to 5 US dollars today), she received a criminal charge of “Undermining the Chinese People’s Navy” and a sentence of five years in prison. And I, sitting in her womb, spent most of my ten months as a fetus in that gloomy and terrifying Licun Prison.

My mother, because she’d donated five dollars, suffered five years in prison. Having followed her in as a fetus, I was separated from her embrace immediately after birth, unable to see her for the first five years of my life. It’s hard to say how many similarly unbelievable tragedies happened during the years of that “red terror”...

Coincidentally, this same day five years ago was also the day I left the hospital after my very first surgery to remove my left kidney, as well as my first post-surgery birthday. From that point onward I’ve treated this day as my second birth, the day I began a new life. And the seasons have now passed five times in this new life.

At first, the surgeon had surgically removed both a fist-sized malignant tumor and my left kidney, all in one sweep. Unexpectedly, my fate was to be an unfortunate one; barely four months after the first surgery, the cancer tumors rapidly spread again, soon invading upon one of the most important organs in the human body—my pancreas. When Dr. Smith, the head surgeon at UCLA’s urology department, told me the grievous news that the cancer had spread to my pancreas, I burst into tears, my mind flooded with grief.

The overwhelming majority of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are already in the late stages, beyond any viable help, and can do nothing but wait helplessly for death. Over 90% of patients will die within the year, with only 10-25% of them being lucky enough for the doctor to consider surgery - though the recovery rate for those who do get surgery is very low. As I took my first step towards death, God extended a hand of His compassion. In the City of Hope Hospital, a surgeon, Doctor Eilenhower, consented to perform a complex surgery known as the Whipple procedure on me. Dr. Eilenhower was candid with me about this Whipple procedure, which has a five year survival rate of up to 25%.  Because the pancreas was hidden deep in a person’s upper-left abdominal cavity, surgical removal of the organ was extremely difficult; throughout the history of his own surgical career, he’d only performed Whipple surgery for pancreatic tumors eight or nine times. Although he didn’t have an absolute handle of the situation, he was still willing to exhaust all his knowledge and experience in putting me under his care.

This was both an extremely difficult and extremely dangerous surgery. Dr. Eilenhower displayed his top-grade surgical skills and plentiful clinical experience during an operation which extended to become six hours long. The pancreas is a long, flat gland of tiny size, around 12cm in length and 2.5cm in width. It weighs only 80 grams. Because it’s positioned in the back of the abdomen’s upper-left side, a pancreatectomy is like penetrating into a tiger’s den, faced with a myriad of difficult challenges as you cross the liver, stomach, duodenum, spleen—layer upon layer of internal organs. To get straight to the point, Dr. Eilenhower needed to fish out all my innards in order to reach that position deep in the back of my abdominal cavity, just to start the task of removing my pancreas.

Just like that, one morning around six months after my first surgery, my naked body was once more pushed onto a cold and frightening operating table. As the anesthetist began administering anesthesia, I couldn’t resist silently letting out a tearful sigh: When I was a baby, I arrived wailing and naked in this world; after experiencing a short and bumpy series of changes in this mortal life, I was now naked and lingering around the valley of death.

The anesthesia slowly flowed into my veins. As I was on the verge of sinking into unconsciousness, a solemn Bible verse appeared within my head: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

Through the haze, I could feel myself slowly recovering consciousness. I woke from my anesthesia-induced sleep to find myself in the intensive care ward of the surgical unit. The first thing to appear in my cloudy vision was what appeared to be a pair of angelic silhouettes in red. As the blurry images gradually became clearer, I saw that it was my wife and my sister Angela, wearing red clothes and smiling. The clock hanging on the wall behind them silently pointed out that six hours had passed. My sixth sense immediately told me that God’s graceful hand had not taken my “cup” away. I was still alive: The surgery was a success!

Sixty-one years ago today, my wrongfully imprisoned mother gave birth to me, and the two of us suffered through five years of separation. Five years ago today, God guided me out of the valley of death, giving me a second chance at life, and caused the doctor’s original one-year sentence to extend all the way to today. Having experienced the unrestrained ups and downs of life, I now hold a profound belief—that enlightenment is everywhere, and that this day is no coincidence.

Five years have passed, and most of my fellow kidney cancer patients have since left this mortal coil, making me an incredibly rare surviving “endangered species” in the eyes of the doctors. My case has become a never-before-seen spectacle among clinical trial reports.

This morning, as I was getting an IV for the latest clinical trial medication, I remembered the conversation I’d had with my co-worker Vickie the night before: How should I celebrate the day that’s given me two different chances at life? A powerful desire to write suddenly arose within me. So I wrote this entire essay in one go while still in the hospital - partly in remembrance of my beloved mother, as well as that previous generation of faithful servants of God who, together with her, had lived through those same preposterous years of being forced to suffer because of their faith; but also in part to recount the amazing grace that the Lord has bestowed upon me, encouraging me to appreciate every day that God has allowed me to stay on this earth, passing on God’s love with the best of my ability to all around me who may be in need of it, and sowing seeds of hope and faith within their hearts.

Originally written in Chinese by Joseph Chang on July 24, 2013

Translated to English by Ida von Mizaner on July 16, 2019

Edited by Joseph Chang on July 24, 2019

A Casual Essay of Father’s Day

The week before Father’s Day, my wife and I spent the weekend in a seaside apartment in San Diego, also taking the opportunity to celebrate an early Father’s Day with my oldest son Luke, who works in the area. I very much treasure every beautiful moment I get to spend with my children like this.

We had lunch at Mimi’s Cafe. It’s an American chain restaurant we used to visit quite often, because we enjoy its French aesthetic and food. The restaurant was originally founded by an American aviator named Arthur Simms, who’d been stationed in France during World War II. After France’s liberation, he ran into a French girl named Mimi at a party, and thus christened his cafe in her name. Coming back to the present, this restaurant chain has now extended across 24 states in the US.

There weren’t many people there for lunch that day; I contentedly sat in the spacious, brightly-lit restaurant, cracked open the menu, and picked out a seafood pasta, while my wife ordered a salad. The person serving us was a beautiful young waitress. She had a refined and courteous way of speaking and always had a smile on her face, giving off a feeling of friendly familiarity. There was a little lapel badge on her chest that said Trainer; apparently, despite her young age, she was already a senior employee in this job.

I casually turned to Luke and said, “This girl is very sweet. She’s both good-looking and capable, it makes this place feel like a home away from home for us customers.” I didn’t say this expecting any particular kind of reaction from Luke; I was just trying to express how cheerful I was feeling at that particular moment in time.

But my son apparently didn’t quite agree with my opinion, showing what seemed to be doubt towards my aesthetic sense and judgmental abilities. He smiled and said, “Dad, you’re always saying things like this. No matter where you go, I’ve never once heard you say a single negative thing about others. When you were staying in the hospital, you constantly praised the nurses; when we went to get medicine at the pharmacy, you had unending praise for the pharmacist; now here you are in this restaurant, praising the waitress.”

Caught off-guard by hearing these words from my own son, I was for a moment entirely unable to think of a reply.  Was there a problem with my judgment? These past few years my health has been getting increasingly worse due to the constant torment from cancer, and my mind has been getting more slow-witted along with it. At home I’ve changed from being the head of the household to the “tail” of it; fortunately I still know myself perfectly well; whenever anything comes up at home I always listen to my wife and children’s decisions.

Seeing my delay in answering him, Luke quickly moved to smooth things over so that his old man wouldn’t feel embarrassed: “To tell the truth, a lot of my coworkers and friends from church say the same thing about me.”

I curiously asked him, “What do they say about you?”

“Their comments about me are about the same as what I just said about you: I’m always saying good things about people. They say they always have to “minus 3” from my words to figure out the truth about whoever I’m evaluating.” This was the first time I’d ever heard my son mention other people describing him this way. Noticing my great interest in the topic, he continued, “If people need to “minus 3” of what I’m saying, then for you it’d be more like ‘minus 7’ ..”

Ancient Chinese writer Yan Zhitui wrote in his book Yanshi Jiaxun: “When one is still young, their personality and worldview have yet to settle; ...the influence of their surroundings will naturally shape them in imperceptible ways.” Although at the time I couldn’t be certain if the truth hidden in my son’s words was doubting my ability to judge, or half-jokingly praising me, one thing I could be certain of was that he was saying my words and actions had created an imperceptible influence upon him.

Thinking carefully, being that kind of person whose friends can jokingly say they need to “minus 3” is no easy task. Someone whose words are “always saying good things about others” must by necessity have a great heart of his own; he must be overflowing with joy in order to reach such a level that he can continue to do that, even if he is going through suffering at the same time. Someone whose heart is filled with dissatisfaction isn’t very likely to harbor gratitude and praise towards others.

I was quietly happy for my son; who gains such high praise from his friends and coworkers, to be called a young man whose kind words needed a “minus 3”! What better present could I have asked for, this Father’s Day? Thinking about how my cancer had recently come back again, this could very well be the last Father’s Day we spent together - but knowing my child can live with a heart full of gratitude and joy, I really feel as if I could leave this world with no regrets.

What Luke said here reminded me of the grandfather he’d never met, my father Chang Zihua. If according to my son’s words I was someone whose words needed a “minus 7”, then this merit of mine should give credit to my father, because when I was still a youth whose “personality and worldview had yet to settle”, he was the one who gave me the greatest influence.

I’ll never forget when my father was kicked out of his house by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution Movement in 1960s. All of his properties were confiscated by communists, and they drove him and my mother away to live in a few dark and musty little rooms behind a villa on 32 Longjiang Street, Qingdao. During that difficult period of our lives, he sang the same hymn every day: “Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory. For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready. Fine linen, bright and clean, was given her to wear.” (Revelation 19:7-8)

I was only fourteen years old back then. As I listened to my father sing this song every day, constantly wondered: How could my father - who’d lost everything he owned, lived in a damp prison-like shed, was treated like Public Enemy Number One by the communist sub-district officers, forced to daily sweep the road outside the door of 32 Longjiang Street, and was ridiculed and humiliated in a thousand different ways - still be able to sing “Rejoice and be glad” every day? Besides that, I didn’t understand a word of the lyrics to this song (back then I didn’t know the lyrics were taken from a passage of Revelation in Bible). Why was a lamb having a wedding? Who was the bride? Why did the bride have to wear linen? I never asked my father any of these questions while he was alive.

Me and my father Chang Zihua. Taken February 1973, in the back yard of 32 Longjiang Street, Qingdao.

But all throughout those torturous days, my father never stopped singing that song. His voice was soft and pleasant when he sang, the music lingering in the air long after he was done; the expression on his face was as pure as that of a child, almost as if he were in an entirely different world. He would sing this song first thing every morning, as he and my mother moved the damp bedding out to the front yard to dry. Whenever Qingdao’s rainy season came, with heavy rain outdoors and a light drizzle in the house, he’d sing this song while placing washbasins to catch raindrops from our leaky rafters. The tiles of our little roof had actually been intentionally destroyed by our young ruffian neighbors, harboring hatred of the class struggle. He’d sing this song whenever he climbed up to fix the tiles. When he was diagnosed with cancer, he and my mother moved to a little house a few square meters wide, in the rear court of No. 6 Xinlin Garden at my older sister’s home in Qinghua University. As my father whiled away the last days of his life in this little house, he continued, as always, to sing this song.

My father Chang Zihua teaching his granddaughter to sing a hymn at Qinghua University’s No. 6 Xinlin Garden. Taken December 1974, four months before he died.

In 1984, ten years after he passed away, I was studying at Biola University in America. That year I took a Bible course focusing on the Book of Revelation, and found to my surprise that the song my father used to sing had originally come from Chapter 19, verse 7-8. It was then that I suddenly understood why he’d continued to sing this song through all his trials and tribulations, as well as the meaning hidden behind those words. This piece of scripture celebrates a grand wedding, a metaphor for the praises those who are redeemed will give to the Lord. Within this metaphor, the Lamb represents the Lord Jesus Christ, and the bride represents the church and all the people who are redeemed by Him. And the bride’s “fine linen, bright and clean”, is a beautiful white wedding dress, representing purity and honesty. This wedding of the Lamb, therefore, is the final union of Jesus Christ and the church at the end of days.

This piece of scripture revealed to me what my father’s inner thoughts had been as he sang it. It turns out that the reason he was able to have a heart full of joy during his times of tribulation was because through this scripture, he saw God’s wonderful promise and the hope that He gave to him: that the marriage between Christ and his people would be everlasting. His singing this song was letting out a voice of praise and admiration to our Father in heaven, expressing his faith and reliance in Him.

My father’s natural voice accompanied me all my life, leaving an imperceptible influence upon me. No matter where I go, I can always hear the lingering sound of his singing voice echoing in my ears. Especially as I approach my eleventh year with late-stage cancer, his angelic song has given me enormous comfort and delight; his words and actions, always so full of happiness and joy, have become the example by which I have modeled my entire life.

As I was immersed in thoughts of my father, a total stranger from the neighboring table suddenly walked over to us, interrupting my contemplation. She gave us two gift cards for Mimi’s Cafe, saying that they could take off twelve dollars each. Because of my delayed reaction to this unexpected gift, by the time I realized what had happened, the stranger had already left the restaurant; luckily my son and wife were quicker to react, and had made sure to express their thanks to her.

I carefully read over the two gift cards: apparently we needed to hand them to the waitress before ordering if we wanted to get those twelve dollars off my meal. I said, “It looks like we aren’t destined to use these gift cards today.”

“You really like that waitress, right? Let’s give a card to her later, and see if she really is as good as you said she is.” Luke showed me a crafty smile as he spoke, as if seeking to prove his theory that you needed to “minus 7” of my praises to approach the truth of the people I mentioned.

“Won’t this cause trouble for her?” I felt as if doing things this way would be a bother to others.

“It doesn’t matter if we can’t use it today, it was a surprise present to begin with,” said my wife, joining in the conversation.

“That’s right, all we’re doing is asking a little question. Don’t worry, we won’t be bothering anyone,” my son agreed, comforting me.

After a while, that young waitress came back to our table, amiably asked how we were doing, refilled our drinks, and asked if there was anything else we needed. Her voice as she spoke was gentle and soft, always keeping up the same “trademark” smile. Just then, her sharp eyes caught the Mimi’s Cafe gift cards in my son’s hand. Quickly taking one, she didn’t wait for him to open his mouth before saying, “Did you want to use this gift card today? No problem, I’ll use it to deduct twelve dollars from your check.”

“My powers of insight and judgment aren’t too bad, huh?” I proudly said to Luke, after the waitress had left.

As we were leaving the restaurant, Luke took the remaining gift card and gave it to a pair of strangers at another table. I stood at a distance, watching him chat with the two women; their faces showed the same pleasantly surprised expression I’d made myself, not too long ago.

That night, I slept in the seaside apartment. Midnight was the time for high tide; the rhythmic sound of the waves against the sand was like a lullaby playing outside my window, lulling me slowly into the land of dreams. I dreamed of my father, and said to him, “Dad, thank you for following me with your song all these years. Before I reunite with you in the Kingdom of Heaven, I’d like to happily say that your grandson Luke will continue your legacy of singing your most favorite song.”

Original written by Joseph Chang in Chinese on June 9, 2019

In a seaside apartment at Pacific Beach, San Diego

Translated by Ida von Mizener on June 16, 2019

Edited by Joseph Chang on June 20, 2019