By EVELYN CHI
Dear 阿公, (“A Gong.” Grandfather in Taiwanese.)
阿公，jiă bà buāi? 你吃了沒？(Taiwanese and Mandarin for, “Have you eaten?” This is also a common greeting among friends and family members, since hospitality and food are an important part of Taiwanese culture.)
I’m your granddaughter. 我是你的孫女。Do you remember me? 你記不記得我嗎? I never knew you because you died of cancer before I was born.
This is a prayer: a letter to you in my mind. But where do I begin?
What language do I introduce myself to you in, when I know that you did not know English but I do not know Taiwanese?
I only know three phrases in Taiwanese: “Hello,” “Have you eaten?,” and “I am American.”
Maybe I can start with my name: Evelyn. 季慈茵.
阿嬤 (“A Ma.” Grandmother in Taiwanese.) gave me my Chinese name – 慈 means kind and compassionate. 茵 means open-hearted, coming from the idiom 綠草如茵 (Literally, “carpet-like lush green grass,” or “green meadow so inviting you would want to sleep on.”) meaning lush, wide meadow.
Last week, I learned your name: 鍾樹霖.
樹 as in tree, 霖 as in continuous rain.
鍾 is your family’s last name, but it can also mean clock, time, or to concentrate one’s affections.
I love how you were named Tree Rain. It’s as if the rain in 霖 (雨) would nourish the forest (林) underneath and give strength to the 樹 within you. It makes me think of the pouring monsoons and typhoons during summers in Taiwan, where it feels like the heavens are weeping, the wind wants to tear the world apart, and the earth cannot hold enough of its tears. But the rain always stops, and the bamboo and banana trees stand taller and appear greener. It feels like the life cycle of a tree: growing, receiving rain, spreading leaves and branches, shedding seeds, dying, and then being reborn once again.
Even if you aren’t here, I like to think your rain would nourish my meadow, my soft tufts of grass brushing against the roots of your giant tree.
And it feels nice that our names rhyme: Cí Yīn. 慈茵。Shù Lín. 樹霖。Líng Líng, 玲玲，媽媽的名字。(Lingling, Mom’s name.)
When 媽媽 (“Ma Ma.” Mother in Chinese.) told me your name over a text message last week, I felt so sad that I didn’t know until now – that I had lived for 21 years without hearing the sound of you. I could not stop repeating your name in my head, saying it as I fell asleep, wanting to dream of trees and to hear the name I would’ve heard over and over again if you were alive.
I wrote your name out in my notebook, tracing and retracing the lines in hopes of finding a deeper meaning in these three small characters. I felt like a little girl again, remembering how to write in stroke order (left to right, top to bottom, the dot in 樹 at the last stroke), like how 媽媽 taught me when I was younger.
媽媽 gave me my English name – Evelyn.
I always felt estranged from my name. It felt too white, like a name that an old American grandmother would have. When I was in England studying abroad, everyone thought I was named after Evelyn Waugh, the British writer and novelist (pronounced “Eve-lin,” like Adam and Eve).
When I pray to you and say my name is Evelyn, it always feels strange and foreign. I don’t know if you would be able to pronounce it, to say the closed “v” sound or the flat “l” sound. You would probably say it like how 阿嬤 does: “E-be-ryn.” For convenience, maybe you would just call me Mei Mei (妹妹) (Little sister.), like what 阿嬤 does.
I wish I met you. I wish I knew you because I would hear stories from 媽媽 all the time – stories about how you loved nature and would take the family hiking in the mountains when my mother was growing up. You would tell 阿嬤, 媽媽, and 舅舅 (“Jiu Jiu.” Uncle in Chinese.) stories during those hikes: about Taiwan, your family, and the trees. You would talk about your past growing up as a poor farming boy in 屏東 (Pingtung, a county in southern Taiwan.), raising geese and planting crops like yam, squash, and winter melon. How you would walk an hour to and from school every day, wearing thin shoes woven from bamboo leaves and stiff, linen uniforms, hand-washed by your mother.
As a child, maybe you heard news of the 228 Massacre in 1947 through an old, rusty Japanese radio with only two dials, watching the expressions of your parents with anxious eyes. Maybe your parents shouted angrily at the radio after hearing Chinese governor Chen Yi lie: “Only 100 people were killed,” “The country is under control,” and “There are no protests in Taipei” while tens of thousands of Taiwanese were shot dead on the streets across the country protesting for their rights and the freedom of speech. Or maybe your parents shook their heads in despair, walking back outside to toss dried corn to the geese, understanding that they could do nothing in this new, cruel government where Chinese soldiers patrolled the streets carrying guns and weapons. They could not stop the rising cost of rice, the mass arrests, the political corruption, or the thousands of doctors, lawyers, journalists, and professors from being kidnapped, tortured, and killed.
In this era, all people could do was survive.
You survived. You preserved, in fact, and became the chief accountant of Chunghwa Telecom, the largest government communication agency in Taiwan. You did your work diligently and honestly, rising to the top ladders of the company. People respected you and you treated them well, giving your employees extra bonuses every year.
Yet, this work consumed you; with long hours and increasing demands, you developed chronic stress and fatigue, something that doctors said attributed to your cancer.
I wish I knew more about your life, but I know so little.
I feel like the pieces of you surround me – hovering, floating, just out of my reach. Sometimes, I feel suffocated by generations of grief, the silence and melancholy that hangs over any mention of you.
Other times, I want to beg 媽媽 for stories about you…
What was your favorite food? Your favorite color?
Your most worn pair of shoes, your best pair of linen slacks?
The color of your watch, the brand of your shaving cream, the size of the old abacus you used for accounting?
What would your laugh sound like?
How would you smile? How would you frown?
Would you show love like 舅舅 does – quietly, but generously through acts of service like buying my favorite egg roll snack whenever I visit?
Or loudly and hurriedly like 媽媽, rushing me from eating breakfast to the airport to 阿嬤’s apartment, walking faster than everyone in the crowd?
I wonder where you are if you are reincarnated.
Are you a red cypress tree in Alishan National Park, spreading your lush, green leaves while birds make nests between your branches?
A horse, galloping free across the grassy cliffside meadows in Kenting?
A mountain dog, lounging in the sun and eating leftover chicken bones from a local restaurant in YangMingShan National Park?
Or maybe – a powerful dragon with shining scales in heaven, flying, soaring, and swirling through the clouds?
I don’t know, but I’d like to think that you are free.
You are a piece of history I will never know. I will never hear your voice.
I miss you. 我想你。
我想你。
我想你。
阿公，我想你。阿公，我希望你能聽到我在跟你說什麼。( A Gong, I miss you. A Gong, I wish you could hear what I am saying to you.)
Writer | Evelyn Chi ’25 | etchi25@amherst.edu
Editor | Venumi Gamage ’26 | vthotagodagamage26@amherst.edu