回憶錄之一

這是我為社區大學回憶錄寫作課而寫的第一篇文章

A Barbershop I Called Home


I was born in a small town, called Danshui (meaning Fresh Water) in northern Taiwan in the sixties. Once it was a major harbor, located where the Danshui River merged with the Pacific Ocean, and it brought in wealth, merchants, and exotic cultures from all over the world, but because of silting, it was later replaced by other ports. Across the river lies the Mount Kwan-Yin, named because it looks like a goddess’s head in profile. Today Danshui is a flourishing tourist attraction for its natural beauty and historic architectures. But I believe only the authentic natives, like me, know where to find the best fish ball shop and how to maneuver through town in speedy shortcuts.

Cars play such an important role in American life, but in my small town we could get our every need met within walking distance. There were restaurants, bakeries, movie theaters, banks, Chinese herb shops, bookstores, a junior college and a university. We could take a ferry to the other side of the river, and take buses and trains for longer journeys. My father never owned a car or even a cheap motor scooter. The only adult-size bike, which was too high for me to ride on, was a windfall from a lottery.

From grades three to six, each day I walked four times between school and home, 15 minutes each way. From grades seven to nine, I brought my own lunch, so I only walked twice. The schools were all on a hill, so I was privileged to have a daily scenic walk, viewing the river, the mountain and the red steeple of the only Presbyterian Church, which, by the way, has become a historic landmark in Taiwan today. However, the best part was that I always ran into a friend or two, so that we got to chat and to know each other better. Also, I got to do some window shopping and to overhear people gossiping on the main street.

My grandparents and their parents were farmers, living on a rural hill near Danshui. Since they didn’t own any land, they decided to move to the downtown area to start a new life. My grandfather landed a menial job as a porter at the train station and my grandma washed clothes for working women, and they could only afford to sublet a small space in a large house.

Only four of their eight children survived. My dad was the oldest son, and he sold popsicles and delivered newspapers as a kid, and started to take on odd jobs after finishing elementary school, and ironically, he studied Japanese instead of Chinese, because Taiwan was a colony of Japan at that time. But he still spoke Taiwanese more fluently than Japanese.

My dad went through a lot of hardship in his formative years, but he was luckier than my mom, who grew up in a small remote fishing village, in terms of education. She never went to school, nor did her seven siblings. Two of her sisters were adopted by other relatives, because raising daughters was not considered worthwhile, since they would marry someday and would not be helpful to the original family. However, we always receive a warm welcoming every time my mother takes us to visit her mother and brothers, who all live in the same village.

I never met my grandfather on my mother’s side. I only heard about him. “I dared not to move when my father was around,” said my mother. “He asked me to borrow money from the stores. I felt so embarrassed, but I dared not to refuse him. “And when he was drunk, he’d beat up his wife, and she’d run away from home, but always came back. He died at age 50 and my grandmother outlived him by 30 years.

By the time I was born, one sister and one brother having preceded me, my dad had his own barbershop in a rental space. When my younger sister was born two years later, my parents got a loan and bought their first home down the street from the barbershop. It seemed like a huge house to me as a little kid, but it was actually only around 1,000 square feet, a long narrow flat with an attic. The house shared brick walls with neighbors’ houses. When I was in first or second grade, my parents moved the barbershop to our own residence down the street, where they still live today.

On the left side was a bathhouse where families paid to have an occasional good hot bath. One the right side was a pawn shop with a cloth curtain in the front. What was it like inside? Who would go in? It intrigued me, so one day I ventured to go in to take a peek. I saw a small window with bars high up. I heard the owner and his family, but I could not see them. It reminds me of the priest’s confession room as an adult. On its second floor was my best friend Flora’s home. On the third floor was a home office for paralegal services.

I don’t know when my dad started to hire employees but it was a common practice to provide room and board for one’s workers. This made our extended family life, with grandparents living with us, a bit more complicated. Furthermore, to increase their income, my parents rented out the front part of the house to a couple to run a tea house, and added a loft above it to accommodate the workers. The rest of the house had a dining room with a skylight, a kitchen, with an attic above, a patio where we raised some chickens in a cage and kept a coal burning water boiler, a shower room, a toilet stall, and a urinal.

My parents and we, the four kids, shared a huge “bed”, big enough for maybe ten little people like me. It was a wood platform with some bamboo mats on top of it, sort of like a variation of Japanese wall-to-wall Tatami, a practice influenced by the Japanese occupation. We could choose any corner to lie down with our individual blankets. There were a couple of built-in overhead cabinets for storage which were also used for hiding and playing games by us kids.

My grandparents lived in the attic tucked away at the back side of the house. It had an unusual door in the floor, like a trap door, held open by a rope. When my cousins came to visit, this attic was turned into a cozy den (cave), and we laughed and screamed to our heart’s content.

Living on the busy market street, I encountered ants, flies, mosquitoes, and cockroaches daily, but I was most afraid of the filthy rats. I could hear them chattering but I hardly ever spotted them. I tried to imitate the “meows” of the cats to scare them away, but it did not seem to work. My mother told me that these were not ordinary rats, but the “money rats”, and that they would bring fortune to our family.

Not everybody had a bathtub, so families like us occasionally patronized the bathhouse next door for a treat. Once the old granny of the bathhouse accidently started a fire, and it almost spread to our home. It was a close call. I became very cautious about using any candles or gas burners as a result. My younger sister Su-mei developed a phobia after a big earthquake a few years ago, but she claimed that this fire in our childhood was the root cause. I think it’s a type of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Most families burned coals and wood to heat up the water boiler for hot water. The water only stayed hot while someone was attending the fire, so we all had to queue up for a quick shower. During the hot humid summer months, kids would flock out to the street right before dinner when the temperature was cooler. While in the middle of a hide-and-seek game, my playmates and I would disappear one by one, due to the loud mother birds calling, “Come home for shower!” or “Time for dinner.”

On the back side of my dad’s barbershop was the temple of Kwan-Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. Whether Kwan-Yin was male or female is controversial these days, but to us she was a goddess who blessed you with children. The temple was the spiritual center for many town people. There were a couple of Christian churches in other parts of the town, but Christianity was a minority religion which I was not familiar with at all.

If you were a visitor to the temple, you’d climb a few steps up to the landing where you’d see two stone lions cracking open their mouths, each with a rolling stone ball inside. Such a design was too tempting to resist for any child, and I tried to mount on one of them and attempted in vain, since the opening was not very big, to get that ball out. I did not know the significance of the lions and never asked.

Then you’d see the two huge doors with paintings of two giants with bulging eyes, sharp canine-like teeth in ancient costume--the “door gods”. You’d cross a high threshold, and when you get inside you’d see a large decorated incense burner censer. You’d had brought some offerings such as fruit or fresh flowers and put them on the altar, and you’d burn three sticks of incense and say your requests silently. You’d throw two pieces of wooden divinatory blocks, shaped like half-moons with one flat side and one round side, on the ground.

If you got both round sides up, God was smiling at you and said “Yes”. On the other hand, if you got both flat sides up and other combinations, it was “No”. You’d better change your plan or come back later to ask again. And don’t forget to put some money in the donation box when you leave. That’s it, no weekly congregation or Sunday school required.

On one side of the barbershop was a blacksmith shop where the workers pounded metal into knifes and tools with penetrating noises. Fortunately, they called it a day at around 6 o’clock, so our poor ears could take a break.

On the other side was a tea house, which was the equivalent of the coffee shop in the US, except it was occupied by older people who had free time and extra money to spare. My father never had the time to go, but I went with my grandma and her boyfriend a couple of times. The Oolong tea was too bitter for my taste, but the sweets were delicious.

The barbershop was located in a prominent location with many family-owned shops which also were their dwellings: several inns and restaurants, two grocery stores, one fabric store, one shoe store, and two tea houses, among others. People had to shop for fresh meat and vegetables every day. People had to buy fabric and ask tailors to make clothes for them. People had to go to the temple to worship.

My dad’s business was booming. He and his three employees worked from morning until bedtime. They ate, read newspapers, and took naps whenever there was a break between customers. The radio was on all day long: the news, talk shows, soap operas, ghost stories, you name it. The commercials for medicine were most popular since most people purchased over-the-counter medicine rather than going to a doctor for minor problems. “Blurry eyes, teary eyes, one drop takes it away.” A lot of audience was illiterate, so the ads would emphasize the manufacture’s mark or logo. “A-a-a-choo, take a bottle of our syrup for colds with the best traditional secret ingredients. Remember to look for the symbol of three umbrellas.”

My mother, though she could not read, had good sense and practical knowledge, so she cooked, washed, and kept the books. She was eight years younger than my dad, and had a beautiful skin like Snow White. They met through some kind of match-maker. My mother refused him at first due to my father’s not-so-glamorous profession, but after some time they did date and finally got married.

My parents never considered it necessary to buy us birthday gifts or toys. Why should they? The Chinese value paying respect to the elders. Only the elders get to celebrate their birthdays. I, of course, never took any private piano or dance lessons. But it didn’t prevent me from having a taste of it. I often stayed outside of a dance studio watching the entire ballet lesson, and then I’d practice the turns and twirls in private. I borrowed the life-size paper printout of a piano keyboard from a friend, pretending to play on it. And I grabbed any rare opportunity to put my fingers on the piano in the school auditorium, randomly hitting a few keys here and there, and had a blast.

Who wouldn’t want to own a doll as a little girl? In Chinese it’s called “Yang Wawa”, which literally means “foreign doll”. All dolls seemed to look the same, just in different sizes and clothes, all with pink skin, blond hair, blue eyes and long eyelashes. I never got one. I either made my own toys, such as drawing paper dolls, or searched in other people’s garbage cans, which were kept outside of their homes, to retrieve useable items to keep as playthings, like today’s recycling.

I never went to a kindergarten because the nearest one was full when my parents wanted to sign me up, so until I was 6, I hung out at the barbershop. I saw my folks all the time, but they weren’t really available for playing. And I did not care. If I needed some playmates, I just looked on the street and there was no lack of them. We would just invent our games, chasing, jumping ropes, or drawing hopscotch squares on the ground.

It seemed that there was a period of time when the employees frequently changed, either quitting or getting fired. It wasn’t easy for these young men to leave home and start to live with a bunch of strangers. Some of them were ill-mannered, uneducated, and liked to tease children. I had to learn to protect myself at a young age by battling with them. Some stayed for years, and became our family friends.

The last employee in my father’s long career was Mo, so called because of his addiction to morphine. Mo was from mainland China, having retreated to Taiwan with the Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT government to avoid being ruled by the Communists. People like him were uprooted, lonely, and poor in a new land. He was once a soldier, his body extensively tattooed. He worked for my dad when I was very young, and then disappeared for a couple of years, jailed due to the drug usage. My dad was kind enough to take him back. However, he never overcame his addiction. He was not a vicious person; as he said, “I’m just harming myself. I don’t hurt anyone.” But I think he paid a toll by not being able to have a family of his own, and he never got married. He adored me so much that he wanted to adopt me on paper so that I could inherit his retirement fund after he died. I did not like the idea. Mo lived with us for over 40 years until a couple of years ago when he got sick and had to move to a nursing home.

In my dad’s shop, men from all walks of life gathered for a haircut, a shave, or just to chat: the mayor, policemen, teachers, gamblers, businessmen, even gang members. Some men would easily get into verbal, or even physical, fights over trivial remarks. I was most frightened when one time my dad thought he was insulted by someone and they had to have a “duel” to clear the thing out, sort of like the Japanese samurai’s honor code. How did it end? I don’t remember.

And all men seemed to smoke. The most courteous thing to do when people met was to offer a cigarette. My dad often asked me to buy him a pack of cigarette from the old lady down the road, who also sold candy to me. His favorite brand was “Double Happiness”, one of the major brands, but less expensive than the top selling “Longevity”.

I was exposed to the clouds of smoke daily, and if my dad saw me try to fan the smoke away in disgust, he would say, “If you don’t like it, why don’t you just go outside!” He was eventually forced to quit smoking after having a heart attack when he was 50.

Young kids seemed terrifying about having a haircut. This was puzzling for someone like me who grew up in a barbershop. The only time that I cried over a haircut by my dad was when it was too short, but my mother was delighted because it was easier for her to wash my hair. Even as an adult, my mother and I continued this warfare over hair for years.

The moment young kids stepped into the barbershop, they intuitively felt they were in great danger, and started to make high-pitched screams as if they were the pigs who were to be slaughtered. However, parents liked to bring their little ones to my dad’s shop because he had a skill in quieting them.

The ritual went like this: first he would distract them by talking to them, or by presenting a novelty comb or spreading some white powder on their noses to surprise them. If this did not work, then he would raise his voice in a tone like a drill sergeant, “Stop It! Right NOW! Shut Your Mouth, No Crying!” If it still did not work, he would hit any surface with a loud thump and said, “I am going to hit you, if you keep on crying. It does not hurt, why are you crying?” Maybe out of shock, the kid did stop crying. Usually, the haircut would be finished in one way or the other. Only very seldom it was half-done. I doubt parents in the US would like it.

My dad is over 80 and he still runs his barbershop from home. His clientele is much smaller and more selective, most of them in their 70s or 80s or the grand sons of those people. Nowadays, the more fashionable beauty salons are everywhere in Taiwan. They give you a massage, use organic shampoos, and serve drinks, magazines, and even provide a personal DVD player.

I once urged my dad to update his barbershop, so that he could attract younger clientele. He laughed, “Why bother?” None of us were interested in taking over his business and he never asked.

One day, on one of my visits home, I saw a man knocking on the door at 5 or 6 a.m. for a haircut. He looked like a country bumpkin, and said he just walked an hour from his home on the hilltop to have an early haircut, to avoid the morning crowds. My father rose up immediately without any complaints.

I thought to myself, “This is why my dad’s barbershop exists. He serves some people well.” I salute my dad.