Thai-Mon
I just had a short conversation with my mother a few minutes ago and learnt a little bit more about my family. My great grandma was born and raised in Siam (old name for Thailand) not China as I thought. She and her husband came to visit their son once when my mother young so it was hard for my mother to remember anything about them. She only knew their faces and names; that was all. I’m not certain if it was a Thai culture or just my family traditional, children were not allowed to ask too many questions no matter how curious they were.
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My grandma’s ancestors were one of the earlier ethnic groups occupying Burma called ‘Mon’. Since Siam and Burma fought like cats and dogs, the winner would always capture the loser’s population and herd them to the capital. The commoners would automatically become the slaves and the noblemen would live comfortably in their new country. Some might even be granted a position in a government.
Because of the bellicose situation, my grandma’s ancestors were brought to Siam. They served under a protection of the Royal families from that point on and never went back to Burma. I believe it’s called under “Royal Decrees”. Grandma said that her ancestors had never been slaves. In my opinion, to be under a control of other people was not much different than being the slaves. Luckily, Siam abolished the slavery a few centuries ago during King Rama V. Whether or not my ancestors had ever been the slaves, now we are all free in certain aspects.
I asked my mother how grandma and grandpa met; she said her dad’s sister introduced them. My great aunt (grandpa’s sister) happened to work in a palace where grandma grew up so these two women knew each other all of their lives. My grand-parents married and had several children. The first couple of children were all boys; she wanted badly to have a girl. For some reasons, it didn’t happen. One day she heard that a Chinese couple just had a baby and they were not thrilled to see a baby girl. They had nothing to do with her so my grandma was excited to welcome this little baby girl in to her life.
Every Chinese people in the old days preferred their oldest child to be a boy because he would take a responsibility in a family business, carry on a family name, take care of his parents, and bring in a wife after he got married. They believed that having a girl was a lost cause; she would soon marry and became a member of her husband’s family. A mind-set like this should be abandoned. A baby can’t choose her own gender; it was not her fault to be born a girl. I can’t help being upset just to think about it. That was a reason the Chinese couple wanted to rid their baby, my adopted aunt. Less than a year after my Chinese aunt came to our family, grandma gave birth to her first biological daughter. Two years later, my mother was born followed by my youngest aunt.
Our family was rather big but it was typical back then. Grandpa was a teacher while grandma was a housewife. During the Manhattan Project in 1945, my grandpa passed away leaving all children and his wife behind. Life at that time must have been very harsh for a big family like this. Two of my uncles, the oldest and the youngest, were killed by a bomb when Japan invaded Siam. My mother said that the sound of an emergency warning was heard every day. When it occurred, people would abandon whatever they were doing at that moment to seek for shelters. Smokes and the voices of wounded people could be heard; it was horrific memories for my mother. Her two brothers ran as soon as they heard the warning sound; unfortunately, they were not quick enough. The impact from the bomb nearby caused them to fall down from the bridge and died in an instance.
My grandma was rather myterious and didn’t like to talk about herself. No matter how much I tried to get it out of her or the tricks I pulled, she declined to reveal anything. That really made me be more curious so I always called her Princess just to tick her off. My grandma’s silence didn’t stop me from getting a story out of my mother and my aunt but they could only tell me what they knew from a horse’s mouth.