Category: Life

Reading Time: 4 minutes

温馨提示：主要是用谷歌翻译的中文翻译在后面。

An old family picture (I published this photo earlier, actually, in this blog post). I talked a bit about my paternal grandma and my big uncle in that blog post.

Interestingly I saw that my grandma holds me, and my dad holds my little big bro. I think our mom was probably at work, and at the time she doesn’t have much freedom to walk off work. But in real world, my grandma likes me the most among 3 grand sons, my dad likes my little big bro the most, and my mom likes my big bro the most 🙂

I think this is probably taken in year 1974 or 1975. Let me will explain why. My big bro is wearing a red scarf 红领巾 which also means he already attends the primary school (or elementary school). You have to believe it’s red although it’s a black and white picture. Both my little big bro and I don’t have red scarf and we haven’t started attending primary school yet (we are all about 2 years apart), kids usually start attending elementary school at about age of 7 (in the case of our big bro, he was 6 and a half when he stared). My big bro started school on 09/01/1974, my little big bro on 09/01/1976 and I started school on 09/01/1978.

Back to my grandma

My grandma Zhang San’mei 张三妹 was born in year 1904. Her name 三妹 means she is the 3rd daughter of the family. She was born in 北仑霞浦. And she died in year 1988, in November 1988, when I was attending the Zhenhai Middle (High) School as a senior*.

Explanation about the High School in CHN: in China there are only 3 grades in school, and I was in the last year of high school. Note in China, the middle school includes both Junior Middle, which is equivalent to Junior High or Middle School in the USA. And Senior Middle, which is equivalent to Senior High in the USA.

My grandma gave birth to 7 kids: 6 girls and 1 boy (my dad, also he is also the youngest). Only 4 out 7 kids grew to their adulthood. My grandma sometimes would tell me the story of one daughter (she was probably between my two younger aunts 姑妈), and she was very beautiful. But she died before 14 or 16: I don’t know the exact age or circumstance under which she died. Keep in mind in those days girls were treated much worse than boys (I mean 1930s), and the fact they lived in rural areas does not help either.

My grandma is quite smart, as I talked about her smartness in my maternal grandma’s piece. Keep in mind 2 grandmas have different kinds of smarts: my paternal grandma can read a bit (she probably attended a few years of school when she was a little kid), my maternal grandma doesn’t read, but she has attention to details on household work and homemaking, cooking and sewing (mostly by hand). Also, I am both grandma’s favorite grandson, among my two older bro and me.

My primary caregiver

I have no memory of my grandpa because he died in December 1972, when I was only one year and 5 months old. My grandma helped my parents to raise us 3 boys – note this is very common arrangement in China, up until in recent decades. The social contract is we take care of our parents when they are aging, and the grandparents (our parents) usually help with babysitting when possible. This is pretty much true when my mom took care of my big brother’s daughter, and because they both live in Beilun, and also because both my mom and my dad were fairly young. They are each 53, and 52 years respectively, older than my niece – my big brother’s daughter. But I saw issues around those kinds of social contracts as increasingly one side doesn’t honor her/his side of the contract. Because it’s mainly just a custom, or moral responsibility, there are very little the justice system can do about it.

Back to caregiving part, as I think it’s more important. Keep in mind both my parents work full time even when we were babies (infants). Some of the job of taking care of babies fall to my grandmas (I think both my maternal and paternal grandma). Things such trivial as help baby fall into sleep or co-sleep. My understanding, in China co-sleeping with parents or grandparents when kids were little, is still quite common. I understand co-sleeping does cause other types of issues, which I am not getting into in this blog post.

She cooked and fed us

This is especially true in the summer breaks, when we spent about 2 months at our home in Xiao’men. I have said in other occasions, I did hide behind her back during vaccine drive, and especially when the Da Tou He Shang （大头和尚) showed up, during Chinese new year celebrations.

She bring umbrellas to us, the Xiao’men Elementary School, during rain.

She has some money from my aunts – she would buy candies for us when she goes to the 小店; she saves moon cakes for us, they were sent by the aunts in Shanghai; she also buys fishes and cooks for us, sometimes.

Some fun episodes or stories

In most of her life, she doesn’t have a TV. Our family bought a TV in winter 1986 (note she passed away in fall 1988). She doesn’t understand or appreciate all the sports such as basketball, badminton, gymnastics or soccer. I recall we played badminton in the courtyard during very hot summer afternoon. We were kids then, and we were not that scared of the hot sun and so on. She just felt frustrated when we won’t listen to her and stop playing. She would say: boys, if you have that much of energy, why go to the fields or farm do some real farm work 🙂

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一张老旧的全家福（其实，我之前在这篇博文中已经发布过这张照片）。在那篇博文中，我稍微聊了聊我的祖母和大舅。

有趣的是，我注意到照片里是奶奶抱着我，而爸爸抱着我的二哥。我想当时妈妈大概正在上班，毕竟在那个年代，她并没有太多自由可以随意请假离岗。但在现实生活中，奶奶在三个孙子中最疼爱的是我；爸爸最喜欢二哥；而妈妈则最偏爱大哥 🙂

我想这张照片大概拍摄于1974年或1975年。让我来解释一下原因。照片里的大哥戴着“红领巾”，这意味着他当时已经开始上小学了。尽管这是一张黑白照片，但请相信我，那确实是一条红色的领巾。我和二哥都没有戴红领巾，说明我们当时还没开始上小学（我们兄弟三人年龄相仿，彼此相差大约两岁）；通常孩子们是在7岁左右开始上小学的（就大哥而言，他入学时是6岁半）。大哥是在1974年9月1日入学的；二哥是在1976年9月1日入学；而我则是在1978年9月1日入学的。

言归正传，回到我的奶奶身上。

我的奶奶名叫张三妹，出生于1904年。她的名字“三妹”寓意着她是家里的第三个女儿。她出生在北仑霞浦。奶奶于1988年去世，具体是在1988年的11月；当时我正在镇海中学（高中部）就读，正值高三（毕业班）的学生*。

关于中国高中学制的说明：在中国，高中阶段通常只有三个年级，而我当时正处于高中学业的最后一年。值得注意的是，在中国的教育体系中，“中学”这一概念涵盖了两个阶段：一是“初中”，这相当于美国学制中的“初级中学”（Junior High或Middle School）；二是“高中”，这相当于美国学制中的“高级中学”（Senior High）。

奶奶一生共生育了七个子女：六个女儿和一个儿子（也就是我的父亲，他也是家里最小的孩子）。在这七个孩子中，最终只有四人得以顺利长大成人。我奶奶有时会给我讲她一个女儿的故事（那个女儿的年纪大概介于我那两个较年轻的姑妈之间），她长得非常漂亮。但她在十四五岁（具体是14岁还是16岁我不确定）之前就去世了；我不知道她确切的年龄，也不清楚她是在何种境遇下离世的。值得注意的是，在那个年代（我是指20世纪30年代），女孩受到的待遇远不如男孩；再加上他们当时生活在农村地区，处境就更加艰难了。

我奶奶相当聪明——这一点我在之前那篇关于我外婆的文章中也曾提到过。不过要明白，这两位奶奶的聪明之处各有不同：我奶奶（指父系这边的奶奶）识得几个字（她小时候大概上过几年学）；而我外婆虽然不识字，但在家务管理、操持家务、烹饪以及缝纫（主要是手工缝制）方面，她却有着对细节的极高关注度。此外，在我那两个哥哥和我这三个孙辈中，我可是两位奶奶共同的“心头肉”——最受她们疼爱的孙子。

我的主要照料者

我对爷爷没有任何记忆，因为他在1972年12月就去世了，那时我才刚满一岁零五个月。我奶奶协助我父母抚养我们这三个男孩——值得一提的是，这种家庭分工模式在中国曾非常普遍，直到近几十年才逐渐发生变化。这种模式背后存在一种“社会契约”：即子女在父母年迈时负责赡养他们，而祖父母（也就是我们的父母辈）则在力所能及的情况下协助照看孙辈。这种模式在我母亲照看我大哥的女儿（我的侄女）时得到了很好的印证——这不仅是因为他们两家都住在北仑地区，还因为我父母当时都还相对年轻。我母亲当时53岁，父亲52岁，虽然比我侄女年长，但身体状况依然很好。然而，我逐渐察觉到这种“社会契约”中潜藏着一些问题：随着时间的推移，契约的某一方往往不再履行其应尽的义务。由于这主要只是一种社会习俗或道德责任，法律司法体系对此往往无能为力。

言归正传，让我们把话题拉回到“照料抚养”这一部分，因为我认为这才是更重要的内容。请大家记住，即使在我们还是嗷嗷待哺的婴儿时期，我的父母也始终在全职工作。因此，照看婴儿的部分重担便落到了我两位奶奶的肩上（据我所知，我外婆和奶奶都曾参与过照看我们的工作）。诸如哄孩子入睡或与孩子同睡这类琐碎小事。据我所知，在中国，孩子年幼时与父母或祖父母同睡的情况至今仍相当普遍。我也明白，同睡确实会引发其他类型的问题，不过在本文中我就不深入探讨这些了。

她为我们做饭，并亲手喂我们吃饭。

这种情况在暑假期间尤为明显——那时我们会回到位于小门的老家，一住就是两个月左右。我曾在其他场合提到过：在接种疫苗时，我总是躲在她身后寻求庇护；尤其是在庆祝春节期间，每当那个扮成“大头和尚”的游行人物出现时，我更是紧紧躲在她身后不敢露头。

每逢下雨天，她都会特意把伞送到我们所在的“小门小学”。

她手里常有些钱——那是我的几位姑姑给她的。每当去村里的小卖部时，她总会给我们买些糖果；她还会特意把上海的姑姑们寄来的月饼留存下来，留给我们吃；有时，她也会买些鱼回来，亲手做给我们吃。

一些趣闻轶事

在她大半辈子的生活中，家里都没有电视机。直到1986年的冬天，我们家才买了一台电视（值得一提的是，她在1988年的秋天便离世了）。她既看不懂，也无法欣赏篮球、羽毛球、体操或足球这类体育赛事。我记得，在那些炎热难耐的夏日午后，我们曾在院子里打羽毛球。那时我们还只是孩子，并不怎么惧怕烈日暴晒之类的苦头。而她却觉得……当我们不肯听她的话、不肯停下玩耍时，她就会感到很无奈。她常说：“小伙子们，既然你们精力这么旺盛，何不去田里或农场干点真正的农活呢？”🙂