As the patriarch of the shop, he never turned anyone away who needed a meal or a temporary roof over their heads. But his generosity extended beyond the neighbourhood and was remembered by a particular young man from over the seas.
One day in the mid 1980s (I don’t have the exact date but it would have been before I went to study in England because we were still living in the family’s Chinese medicine shop), an elderly Asian man walked into our shop. He turned out to be Japanese, but with the help of a pen and piece of paper, and the fact that written Japanese was similar enough to Chinese for my parents to understand him, he wrote out the purpose of his visit.
During the Japanese Occupation, he’d been with the military patrol and assigned to our neighbourhood. Everytime he was on duty, my grandfather would invite him to eat in the shop. He never forgot my grandfather and many years later, on a visit to Malaysia, he found his way to the old neighbourhood and the shop. By then, grandfather had been dead more than 20 years, but this elderly man and my parents continued to keep in touch, mainly through annual greeting cards. Even after we moved from the neighbourhood, the annual exchange of cards continued.
One day sometime in the early 1990s, out of the blue, a taxi drove up to the gate of our new home in the suburbs. It was the ex Japanese soldier, this time armed with the new address that he gave the taxi driver who managed to find the house.
The annual exchange of cards continued after that second visit, but after a few years, they stopped. And four years ago, in 2005, my father left us. I wonder where this ex-Japanese soldier is now. He was much older than my father so perhaps he, too, had gone to the other side.
Note – there are many holes in this story, including the dates of his two visits, and particularly his name. I will need to look through my diaries for the information, but for now, the need to tell this particular story is strong so the details will have to wait. There is also a picture of him with my father in the shop, which I cannot find for now; all this will be added later on.
She is the award-winning creative director of tv commercials for such companies like Petronas (her multi-racial festive ads always remind me of my childhood) who transferred her storytelling talents to films a few years ago, resulting in such classics as Sepet and Gubra.
Now she’s made a short film for the Singapore Government. Don’t let the title turn you off. Yasmin is THE storytelling filmmaker.
Her blog post and the many comments the film received.
This is something from my QT (quiet time, aka daily appointment with God) on Friday, 10 April 2009. I use the daily devotional, Every Day With Jesus, written by the late Selwyn Hughes.
The title of the day’s devotional was “What happened at Calvary?”
Jesus was crucified at Calvary.
The day He was crucified is Good Friday, “the blackest yet one of the brightest days on the Christian calendar”.
At the cross, Jesus turned what seemed to be the most negative event in history into the most positive.
The crucifixion was the result of sin, but He turned it into redemption from sin.
The crucifixion was the result of hate, but He turned it into a revelation of love.
The crucifixion was the most evil act of man, but God used it to vanquish the Evil One.
At the cross, Jesus did not say “I am finished”, but “It is finished”.
The cross was the transformation of the seemingly negative into the truly positive.
It’s Easter. Historically, today (sandwiched between His death and resurrection) was a dark time for His disciples. They’d just lost Him and apparently all hope, but did not know that the best is yet to come!
I found the following story on Guy Kawasaki’s “less than a blog but more than a tweet” site, and thought it very true. The more traditional Christians among us might find this “blasphemous”, but it’s true – Jesus is everything. Whoever we are, He identifies with us. He came down to earth, and for a little while, became one of us – human, suffering as we suffer, so He understands. He identifies with us, so we can identify with Him.
The original post is here, but I’m also posting it in full below.
Was Jesus Black, Jewish, Italian, Californian, American Indian, Irish, or a Woman?
There were 3 good arguments that Jesus was Black:
He called everyone brother
He liked Gospel
He didn’t get a fair trial
But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Jewish:
He went into His Father’s business
He lived at home until he was 33
He was sure his Mother was a virgin and his Mother was sure He was God
But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Italian:
He talked with His hands
He had wine with His meals
He used olive oil
But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:
He never cut His hair
He walked around barefoot all the time
He started a new religion
But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was an American Indian:
He was at peace with nature
He ate a lot of fish
He talked about the Great Spirit
But then there were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was Irish:
He never got married
He was always telling stories
He loved green pastures
But the most compelling evidence of all – 3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:
He fed a crowd at a moment’s notice when there was virtually no food
He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn’t get it
And even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was still work to do
So there I was one afternoon, channel hopping, when I found a channel showing a giant panda documentary. It was the CCTV English channel, so the narration was in English. I settled down to watch and caught the narrator calling the giant panda in the scene “Ginger”.
Ginger?
In all my encounters with giant pandas, I’ve never heard of a giant panda named Ginger. Especially not one located in China, as the scenery in the documentary shows.
Ginger?
I don’t remember any giant pandas in Wolong or Bifengxia named Ginger. Maybe Ginger is in Chengdu.
As I kept thinking about where Ginger is located, the documentary cut to a scene of a keeper being interviewed. As she was speaking in Mandarin, there were English sub-titles on the lower part of the TV screen, and a familiar name appeared – Jing Zhu.
Jing Zhu = Ginger
Yes, Ginger is how the narrator pronounced Jing Zhu.
And I know Jing Zhu. Well, I know her through her daughter, Jin Yi, who I took some pictures with during my trip last year. I later found out that Jin Yi is the 100th cub to be born to Wolong Panda Centre’s giant panda breeding programme. Here’s a picture we took together:
And here’s how Jing Zhu sounds like. Does it sound like Ginger to you?
