A few days ago, an elder­ly woman well past the age of retire­ment served me in a pop­u­lar, mod­ern tea shop, enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly telling me to take my time in look­ing over the menu and decid­ing what I want­ed to order. She would con­stant­ly thank me for the patron­age, even before I ordered any­thing, and was prob­a­bly more than twice the age of any­one else work­ing there.

The cul­ture here is very accept­ing of senior cit­i­zens. They have active jobs, and often walk around with their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren instead of hid­ing in rest homes. This is part­ly due to the fact that liv­ing space is extreme­ly expen­sive, so fam­i­lies end up liv­ing togeth­er for their entire lives. My eldest pater­nal uncle, his wife and daugh­ter all cur­rent­ly live with my grand­moth­er (in a rough­ly 1000 square foot apart­ment), and have been doing so for almost their entire lives. Generally it’s the par­ents that work, while the retired grand­par­ents become the babysit­ters, the gro­cery shop­pers, etc. Everyone is will­ing to be patient when wait­ing for a slow old lady to cross the street at an excru­ci­at­ing pace, or help any elder­ly with canes get on and off the bus­es. I caught some grand­par­ents tak­ing their grand­chil­dren to school, and it remind­ed me of my mater­nal grand­par­ents fly­ing to Canada to take care of me when my par­ents were work­ing on their careers and I had no school in the sum­mer.

All the beg­gars here are elder­ly, unlike the younger ones back home. They can’t afford oper­a­tions for their cataracts and have already lost their minds. These are peo­ple with bare­ly enough strength to stay awake or shake their bowls, peo­ple who don’t ask for mon­ey to buy cig­a­rettes or booze. It’s hard to look at because they remind me too much of my grand­par­ents. I start to imag­ine them aban­doned on the street, and won­der who could do such a thing.

When I was young, my mater­nal grand­par­ents came to Canada from Hong Kong to look after me. It was sum­mer and my par­ents were work­ing while I was left at home. I had no friends, so much of my time was spent being enter­tained by my grand­fa­ther.

He was born and raised in China, and stud­ied at one of the uni­ver­si­ties there after high school. Being able to attend uni­ver­si­ty was quite an accom­plish­ment back then, and he had only one year left before civ­il war broke out. He joined the ill-fat­ed Nationalist side, where he would have had a chance to be a comis­sioned offi­cer had there not been a need for English speak­ing Chinese peo­ple. He spoke English flu­ent­ly, so he was used as a trans­la­tor for the British troops. He recov­ered from a shot to the arm, and fled to Hong Kong to avoid pros­e­cu­tion when the war was over. There he met my grand­moth­er, and assumed a career as a mete­o­rol­o­gist.

I knew him as a large, but del­i­cate man, who always took the time to explain things to me (some­thing quite rare for a kid who’s only six or sev­en). I spent the warm sum­mer days fol­low­ing him around, play­ing with him, learn­ing from him. Eventually, he became my favourite per­son in the world, the first per­son I’ve ever looked up to.

On the day that my grand­fa­ther passed away, I was crushed. It was my first fam­i­ly death ever, and when my moth­er gave me the news, all I could think about was how I would nev­er have him as my teacher again.

Eventually, I went to Hong Kong to take some time off from the North American world, and learn more about my fam­i­ly his­to­ry. I stayed at my uncle’s house, the same house that my grand­fa­ther bought over 40 years ago. It was December, and Hong Kong win­ters are pleas­ant­ly brisk, so I stepped out­side onto the bal­cony after wak­ing up and get­ting dressed. There was an elder­ly man in white socks and black shoes hold­ing a lit­tle girl wear­ing Mary Janes’ just below. The man, who bore a strik­ing resem­blance to my grand­fa­ther, was keep­ing his grand­daugh­ter com­pa­ny while she wait­ed for the school bus to come. I liked how frail, yet tena­cious, they looked, as if this weak old man would pro­tect this lit­tle girl to the death. Seeing them sit­ting there, a patient man with a doll of a girl in his arms, remind­ed me of my grand­fa­ther, a strong and gen­tle man all at once.

And it made me hap­py to know that he was not the only one.