I awoke to the sound of screaming children and found them running amok in the corridors. My Uncle and Aunty attempted to explain who they were to me but alas “the children of the fat one mother in law who took a dump one day on the shore yadayada…” was not enough to provide full clarity on the matter.
Today has been my first day of interviews for my research and it certainly turned up mixed results. To begin we sat and went through the family tree in extensive detail (but simplified enough to make its creation viable in the amount of time and paper that I have available to me). To begin the first names of the women were not listed, but near the 21st generation some began to slip through (we started at the 13th generation of Hou’s). I will attach some photographs of the tree I have constructed later on. The tree gets messy around the time of the India scenario which I spoke briefly to you about on the telephone. There were two wives involved across three countries (India, South Africa and China) alongside several adoptees.
I then asked Norman if I could ask him some non-logistical questions about family Below are a list of questions to be asked that I drafted:
What does it mean to be part of the Hou family? Or to be part of a clan
What does ‘family’ mean to you?
Why do you identify with this clan so strongly still?
How does it benefit you to be part of it?
Does Chinese blood matter in distinguishing who is family?
Or is patrilineal descent more important or important at all?
Does the loss of hakka or Chinese through the generations affect you? OR how you might perceive other family members?
Similarly does a loss of culture (such as Buddism or Chinese cooking etc) affect you?
What purpose does the house have in establishing your sense of family?
Do you count me despite my British heritage?
Does the house still accept funds from other members of the Hou clan?
How have members of the family as ‘overseas chinese’ affected the idea of the family in China? For example would family normally stay in the same area and if so, how has the fact that family have left the area affect their ties to the clan?
How much is finance involved?
Why do you think it is important for members of the family who don’t live in China to visit? Or do you not?
Once he had answered the questions in bold the answers to the others became increasingly apparent as I suspected. I just wanted to have all my bases covered in case. There were several strange moments in the interview where I began to feel those giggles you’ve sometimes seen play on my mouth and it was then that I began to realise that I was uncomfortable. Interestingly, these moments came when I was attempting to discuss Uncle Norman and his children’s marriages to white ‘foreigners’ and my grandfather’s marriage to a coloured woman. He was honest and blunt about it, stating that the culture change makes it acceptable for his children to do what they want – “Love is blind” he said, “they can do what they want”. This was heartening to a degree but somehow the answer left a feeling within me that “they (the children) want” was not what he necessarily wanted. I thought back to the family tree and how it became more difficult to write when Chinese names and customs were no longer a thing, purity becoming muddied as the Hou name slowly disappeared. Asking about myself and my colourful generation was uncomfortable not only for these reasons but because I didn’t feel as though I really wanted to ask what he thought of my existence truly as I suspected that he was polite enough to not tell me the truth whether or not he agreed with it.
I went on a walk this afternoon where I learned the following information from my Uncle (field notes):
To begin, he started as an employee of a Norwegian shipping business courtesy of a man he met in a restaurant drunk when he was working there. He then moved to partner and then full owner. When this happened he employed Uncle Smiley and said to his parents that he would only look after them if they sold the shop because he could see the unpleasant hours they were working and putting Smiley through. He then employed Arthur and Violet (Maude called Norman and asked if he could give Arthur a job) and made it part of the contract when he gave the business away that they continue to be employed as long a they wanted. He said that they were willing to work and made money, the job had a wage and a free car and added commission but they were still willing to be available to work 24 hours a day (whenever the ships came in). He attributed his success to his politeness to shipping staff of all ranks, stating that he greeted everybody, even the rope boys who he would then give his card to give to their superiors. He says that the immigration officers saw how he treated the people an often let him on the ship even before it had moored properly. The people on the ship would back this when people complained saying that they needed him as an interpreter.
Then it got more fuzzy but the tenth richest person in taiwan had two sons. He told the two sons that they must only buy from Norman as he was ‘Hou’. He had forty ships in total. Alongside this, Norman says he had the business of 80%? Hong Kong/ Chinese ships and 90% of the Taiwanese.
He also spoke to me about his marriage with Janey which went like so:
A ship owner wanted him to marry his daughter and he flew to Taiwan to meet her. It went well but the father insisted that in order to marry her he must first promise that she be allowed a trip to Taiwan every year. Norman said that he could not possibly promise this as his business might fail one year and boom another and he could not guarantee either. The marriage was off so he met up with Janey who he met at her brothers(?) funeral. The dinner went well but he left the movie tickets at his house and had to go home to get them. Later Janey confided that she was worried sick that he had left her and she would have to pay for the dinner as she didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Obviously he came back. Later on he called her up and told her he wanted to marry her. She said he was full of nonsense. Then he went to her with an engagement ring and told her she was to be engaged and then later on that she was to be married.
Now enough with the boring stuff! I would love to hear about your melon steak and how that would even work. I’m imagining placing a slice of melon on a barbecue until it looks like a grilled aubergine i.e. wonderful in practice but tasteless, dry and in dire need of a copious amount of sauce. The oats actually do taste pretty good which is strange, considering the baby powder looking dehydrated soy milk. This morning I had this alongside rice boiled with red bean and peanuts. It looked almost like a soupy paste and tasted of almost nothing, but I refused to let a Chinese breakfast beat me.
I’m afraid that i’ve put all of my inner monologue down on screen without censorship and have ended up with an email as long as a novel.
Apologies,Kirtsen (Hou?)
A little bit of a Hou 