In the autumn of 1911, we returned from Yantai of Shandong Province to our native
place Fuzhou. While on the way, my parents warned me again and again, “Since we’ll be
living in a big family in Fuzhou, remember always to behave properly and never act like a
naughty child. Show respect for your elders, particularly your grandpa, who is head of the
family…”
After settling down in the big family in Fuzhou, however, I found that my previous
worries on the way turned out to be unfounded. My grandpa, uncles, aunties and cousins
never thought me a naughty child. We treated each other lovingly and equally. There never
existed anything like “family rules of good behaviour”. I also found that the big family was
a loose community of several smaller ones, which lived and ate separately. They each had
their own relatives and friends, for example, their own in-laws.
That year, or the year after, Fuzhou began to have its own power company and
electric lights were to be installed in our big house too. That was something new in ourhome town. We kids, wild with excitement and joy, ran here and there in the house at the
heels of the electricians. Each room, I remember, had an electric lamp hanging from the
ceiling. The drawing room had a 50-watt bulb; the bedrooms each a lower-wattage one; the
kitchens each an even-lower-wattage one. The whole big house at least had a total of some
60 electric lamps. The first evening when they were turn on, the whole house was suddenly
ablaze with lights, we kids clapped with joy.
The master switch was fixed in grandpa’s room. Grandpa, who kept early hours,
would switch off all the lights when he went to bed at 9 o’clock in the evening, thus
plunging the whole big house into deep darkness.
Having just set foot in our old home, we seldom slept before 9 o’clock in the evening.
For it was but natural that after the long separation, my parents enjoyed hearty chats about
the old days with their brothers and in-laws, and we kids of the younger generation played
about together to our heart’s content. Hence, in anticipation of the sudden blackout at 9
o’clock, each small family would get a dimly-lit kerosene lamp ready in a couple of their
rooms. No sooner had the big house been blacked out on the hour than we turned up the
wicks of all the kerosene lamps. And, looking and smiling at each other, we would
continue to chat and play merrily by the light of the kerosene lamps.
It was then that I realized what a complete whole our big family was, with grandpa as
its head.