Young Writers Society

When I think of my childhood, that chunk of time spanning a decade. I think in snippets of sharp sensory details that weave together a tapestry of memories. Much of it, was spent in my grandparent’s house, on weekends when I was free from homework, school and piano practice.

The smell of ink, in winter, a sharp, sable blanket underlied my visits, and the clumsy strokes that appeared on the paper marked the beginnings of my foray into calligraphy that would continue to span until it gave way to daily visits to the bookstore. In summer, it was the sweet, refreshing smell of watermelon combined with the gentle cacophony of my grandma washing dishes, grandpa’s snores and the sound of TV in the background. There are other snippets, smaller ones. In Autumn, when the panoply of plants turned into gradients of yellow and red, and the wind turned cool enough to rise the goosebumps on my bare arm. I stayed inside and watched Fair Princess and Journey to the West on their TV, hopping from chair to chair trying to find a comfortable position. The wintery months were also blurred in my memory, partially because winters in shunde was bitterly cold. In the morning, breathing was a kind of pain that manifested it cold stitches of air that pierced through the bare parts of my body. So most of the day was spent indoors, flexing my cold fingers in an attempt to bring some colour into them and wishing the clothes I wore actually allowed me enough freedom to walk.

My grandparents’ house though consisting of the same number of storey as my parents’ house. We only ever used the first two levels, the third and fourth level served as storage rooms and the fifth, was entirely dedicated to grandpa cultivating his beloved orchids. Where underneath a black tarp that ran alongside the entire length of the balcony, he’d painstakingly water, trim all the orchids. To me, though that was just a humid room filled with far too many plants. Because the house was so much more contained, at night the emptiness didn’t seem to bounce off the walls and lurk in corners. I had company, whenever my parents left of overseas trips I slept over at grandparents. Before bed, my grandma would give me a boiled egg mixed with soy sauce. The sound of the metal spoon against the bowl, and the slight sounds of disapproval from my grandmother than didn’t deter my enjoyment of mashing the egg into a dark pool. Food, was another aspect that separated the two different lifestyles.

The food in my grandparents’ house were simple, down-to-earth food. Boiled vegetables, sweet and sour pork, every ingredient was bought fresh from the market, seasoned by my grandmother and cooked by her, they carried with it that unique blend of homeliness, love and simplicity that could not be found anywhere else. On the contrary, the food my nanny cooked was equally delicious, so I had never had the misfortune of eating anything ‘bad’ in my childhood but it was rather on a continuum of ‘I like this’ and ‘I don’t like this that much.’ She specialised in rendering the foods we cooked at home with the same taste as eating out, a handful of spice there, another bowlful of wine. What was common though was that neither of them measured in cups, never exactly, always a pinch, a handful, a rough estimate.

Instead of obeying soundless ink on a page, detailing the exact measurements of individual ingredients. They cooked based on experience and intuition, the best recipe was never one cartographically mapped out in lists. It was one in their hearts and minds, they knew the one pinch would be too weak, yet two would be too strong. The balance could only be found in the altering based on previous experience, to create a taste that suited our taste buds. In my childhood, I always looked forward to these visits, because apart from food it also meant a day of freedom. No essays to write, no maths to do. My grandma though, was a stern woman. But as the saying goes 刀子嘴，豆腐心, though she always reprimanded us running in and out of house leaving stray bits of rubbish on her freshly mopped floor. She never stopped us.

Grandparents’ house were the first in a series of houses in an alleyway. Many of these houses bore the markings of their age in the form of grit and dirt on its exterior. With it, they carried a beauty carved out by the very hands of time. Being children, we were able to fit into some of the smaller passageway in between houses. The heightened sense of secrecy intermingling with childlike curiosity meant that we explored each and everyone of them, the dark damp smell of sewage water and the occasional trickle that resonated in the narrow passage only encouraged the fearlessness in us. They were afterall, places that were only accessible to us. So my cousin and I roamed the surrounding streets, neither of us were extremely creative. We didn’t imagine castles, wars, forests. We were not kings, queens, princes or princess. We took the streets as they were with all the vendors selling their wares, the casted plastic cover for packaged goods tumbled by the wind that weaved between our footsteps. 

And either way, we found solace in the limestone walls and rough concrete ground, we found joy in the pure act of exploration for no other purpose than to discover.