Along the River During the Qingming Festival 清明上河圖
（Jennifer’s note: This is a post I wrote on Facebook last year. Today I feel like publishing it on my website too. The series I wrote, " The Story of My Father", won the third prize in the international “Red Lie” Essay Contest sponsored by the Epoch Times . My father’s experience and memory about him belong to the entire generation of Chinese people. Just as my father never discussed politics with me in his life, I recently heard a friend say that his father was killed by the Chinese Communist Party and he didn't even know how he died. After his father left, only when he read the “self-criticism” material, did he learn that it was because his father had been a Kuomintang member ......)
（曾錚按：這是去年在臉書上寫的一個帖子，今天覺得，還把它發表到網站上吧。我寫的長篇的《我的父親》系列，曾經得過徵文比賽大獎呢。那是一代人的共同經歷和遭遇吧。正如我的父親一輩子未與我談論過政治一樣，最近聽一位朋友說，他父親被共產黨整死了，他都不知道父親是怎麼死的。他父親走後，他看父親生前的「交代材料」，才知道原來是因爲他父親曾經當過國民黨……）
When my late father was on business trips, he liked to collect some strange things, such as this replica of "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", which was painted on a tree bark from some unknown era. When my mother visited me in Australia from China in 2009, she brought it to me. I've kept it at home for many years and finally hung it up today.
父親生前出差時，常常喜歡收羅些奇奇怪怪的東西，比如這幅不知什麼年代的仿真的《清明上河圖》，畫在樹皮上的。母親2009年從大陸到澳洲去看我時，專門給我捎出來的。我存在家裏許多年，今天終於把它掛出來了。
There was another time when my father went to Northeast China on a business trip, when I had just started a family and had a humble nest. We built a small kitchen opposite the nest that was an "illegal building", with no heating, no water , and no sewage inside...... Then when my father visited me in Beijing after he finished his business trip to a city in Northeast China. He brought me a big heavy chopping block. It was a complete round section cut from a huge tree trunk. It must have taken at least a hundred years for a tree to grow that big. It was absolutely durable and would not break no matter how hard you chopped things on it, unlike those thin chopping boards made of plastic or wood chips nowadays ......
還有一次，父親到東北出差，那時我剛剛成家，有個簡陋的小窩，自己在小窩對面搭了個屬於「違章建築」的小廚房，無暖氣，無上下水……然後父親從東北路過北京到我那裏歇腳時，就給我拎來一個好沉好沉的大菜燉，是一截完整的圓木，長了許多年才能長那麼大吧，絕對耐用，怎麼砍也不會壞，不像現在那些用塑料或木屑做成的薄菜板……
In China, we call this “The Great Devotion of Parents”.
這就叫可憐天下父母心吧……
How I miss the days when both my parents were around. Unfortunately, I was not able to enjoy too many of such days, as my father has already gone ......
父母雙全的日子真好，可惜未能承歡膝下太多，父親就已經走了……
(Read my awards-wining articles or watch my videos about The Story of My Father here. )
(我的獲獎文章及視頻系列《我的父親》中英文雙語版在此。）
7/17/2020
