Canto Cutie - Volume 2

This story was authored by at least 4 or
5 people, stories relayed across
generations, until my Suk Suk was able
to compile them all and then convey it
to me.
Does this make the story less true? Or
does it make it more true, the
accumulated sweat and tears of
generations distilled into a single,
elegant fairy tale, an origin story of a
man heading east on his Journey to the
West?
-
In Cantonese (and in Mandarin), "he,"
"she," and "it" all correspond to the
same spoken word. Gender is only
marked in the written form. My sister
and I used to make fun of our parents
for always slipping up on pronouns,
calling he's she's and she's he's. I realize
now how special it is to not have gender
linguistically and ontologically bound
into our consciousness. Of course,
Chinese culture still contains
uncomfortable Confucian attitudes
toward gender, sex, and reproduction.
But there's still something remarkably
profound about not needing to assign
gendered pronouns to people. Romance
and Germanic languages are so
strongly gendered. Who felt like they
needed to assign gender to chairs, stars,
doors, cups, hats, and boats, anyways?
My maternal grandfather, Gung Gung,
was a gambling addict. But I wouldn't
say he was addicted to chance, as he
was a surprisingly risk-averse man in
other aspects of his life.
He turned down a job offer from his
family because he didn't want to move
away from the racetrack in Happy
Valley, where he'd built up his daily
routine.
He'd calculate the optimal horse to bet
on, studying and researching all the
details that might distinguish him from
the crowd. He was a man who found
comfort in games — the consistency and
dependability, the clear and precise
conditions of defeat and victory that are
absent from the tedium of everyday life.
In games there is only victory and
defeat. The chess pieces don't care who
you are, where you were born, or how
much money you make. There is only
the elegant simplicity of victory or
defeat and whether or not you’re willing
to pick yourself up a!erwards and try
again in search of the sweet dopamine
hit of victory.
Gung Gung was a chain smoker, so
severe an addict that the long flights
from Hong Kong to the United States
were troublesome for him. He passed
away watching a game of chess under a
bridge on Hong Kong island. But just
months before he passed away he
visited Seattle to see my sister and I. My
sister was less than a year old and I was
only a toddler.
I wonder if Gung Gung would have
appreciated my childhood chess
tournament trophies and my passion for
real-time strategy games. I wonder if he
would have taught me to flank using
chariots, pin down with cannons,
connect my elephants.
I was too young to remember him, so I
can't say that I really met him. But I'm
glad that he got to meet me before he
died.
-