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In my memory yeye was always alone in his room, playing cards. In the afternoons he played go; in the evening, mahjong. Before dinner, he always clapped his hands and said, in English, "HALLO HALLO EAT". The other English word he knew was "MONSTER". I remember the green jacket he wore in his photos from his first visit to LA. One day, in the winter, when I was two or three years old and living in Hefei, I watched him walk out with a plastic bag to fill with snow for us to play with. From the balcony overhead, I could see the footsteps trailing behind him, and the green jacket.
在我的記憶里，爺爺總是一個人在他的房間里打牌。他下午玩圍棋，晚上打麻將。晚飯前他總會拍拍手，用英語說：“哈羅，哈羅，吃飯吧”。他知道的另一個英語單詞是“怪物”。我還記得他第一次去洛杉磯時在照片里穿的那件綠色夾克。有一年冬天的一天，那時我兩三歲，住在合肥，我看著他拿著一個裝滿雪的塑料袋走了出來讓我們玩。從頭頂的陽臺上，我可以看到他身后的腳步聲和那件綠色的夾克。
In the Hefei apartment, I spent several days paging through old photos. My, as a soldier in black-and-white, and then, in full colour, swinging in a hammock in the US, grinning over a deck of pinup cards on the carpet, sitting on the front step of a very American porch. The pictures of him when he was younger filled me with a sense of loss. The family joke had always been how robust he was, how healthy despite his age and all his drinking and smoking. He could walk for miles, his back never drooping.
在合肥的公寓里，我花了好幾天的時間翻看舊照片。我曾是一名身穿黑白服飾的士兵，后來，在美國的一張吊床上晃蕩，對著地毯上的一摞海報卡咧嘴笑，坐在一個非常美式門廊的前臺階上。他年輕時的照片讓我有一種失落感。家里人總是開玩笑說盡管他上了年紀，又抽煙又喝酒，但他的身體很健壯。他還能走好幾里路，他的背一直都是筆直的。
Instead of talking to him, I looked through what was left of his writings. I found two essays, including an autobiographical piece he wrote when he was 86, titled My Legacy, which looked back on his life. "From the time my memory begins, my most enduring impression is of my father lying sick in his bed," he began. "I constantly brewed herbal medicine for him, drained the dregs, washed out the jars. One night, my mother woke me suddenly. My father had already been carried outside and his body placed on to a wooden board. His head faced north, at his side was a burning dusk-yellow rushlight, and my mother was wailing, exhorting us children to quickly call out to our father, to not let him go … "
我沒有和他說話，而是瀏覽了一下他剩下的作品。我找到了兩篇散文，其中包括他86歲時寫的自傳，題為《我的遺產》，它回顧了他自己的一生。“從我記事起，我印象最深的就是我那臥病在床的父親，”開頭寫道。“我要一直給他煮草藥，吸干渣滓，洗瓶子。一天晚上，媽媽突然把我叫醒。我父親已經被抬到外面，他的尸體被放在一塊木板上。他頭朝北，身旁是燃燒著的暗黃色的燈光，我的母親在慟哭，叮勸我們這些孩子趕快喊父親，不要讓他走……”
At the end of the essay, he reflected: "From 1940, when I enlisted in the New Fourth Army, until now, history has leapt 70 years."
在文章的結尾他回憶道：“從1940年我應征新四軍到現在，歷史已經不知不覺跨越了70年。”
