Grandfather, the Opera Singer

My father used to tell me that I had to be mindful as how I present myself to the outside world.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because your grandfather is well-known and you are his oldest granddaughter. Your appearance matters. You have to be well-groomed, well-dressed, and well-behaved at all times, or you would bring shame to him."

My grandfather loved and collected paintings, porcelains, and antiques besides being an amateur opera singer. We had most of his collections which he brought from Manchuria to Shanghai. Then, of course, we left all of them in Shanghai when we fled to Hong Kong years later.       
I have no memory of him on his private stage in Manchuria, but I do remember his many elaborate and dazzling costumes that he had. For whatever reason, the costumes that he brought to Shanghai ended at our house instead of at his own house. Maybe my grandma would not have them at their house.
Anyway, my mother, not my grandmother, was the one being assigned to take care of the costumes. Oh, those beautiful headdresses, I was mesmerized by them. Their colors and their brilliance would blind you in the sun.
Every year, in the spring, mother would oversee the task of taking the gold-thread embroidered robes and the massive head-gears out to air and to clean.
"Careful! Careful! We can't have molds on them."
"Don't drop them!"She would say.
At the same time, she grumbled about this annual task and wondering why my grandfather hung on to all this, as he was not likely ever to wear them again. 
How I would have liked to have one of those beautiful costumes today.  

Grandfather had a stroke sometime during the late 1930's. He lived with us for a time before he passed away.
He could not talk or move most parts of his body. 
But, I saw him, a somewhat shriveled figure, half lying and half sitting in a chair. I would see his good hand beating the arm of the chair at regular intervals. It appeared to me that he was silently singing his beloved arias to himself. And when he saw me peering at him, he would give me a half-lopsided smile. I would smile back. 
He left me with some records, which I had played over and over again on our hand-cranked record player to entertain myself during those years under Japanese occupation. I even learned to sing along with the records though I could hardly understand any of what was sung since they were in classical poetry form. However, I did know the stories. It mattered not whether I understood the words or not. I understand the emotion. It was the music that enchanted me and it lived with me throughout many of my childhood years and much later. 

Grandfather died in October of 1941, at the age of sixty. The Japanese had already occupied the areas outside the Settlements. But those of us living in the French Settlement or the International Settlement were not directly affected at that time. We heard horror stories of the looting, the raping, the killings. But we did not see anything of the sort in the Settlements. We would hear bombings and gunshots. Believe it or not, we would go up to our rooftop terrace to watch the bombings. The planes were far away and they looked like birds. We had no idea that we could very well have put ourselves in harm's way. We thought that those of us living in the Settlements were untouchables.
Grandfather's funeral was a grand event. His body laid in the Funeral Parlor for three days for people to come and pay their respects. For three days, all the family members, his friends and acquaintances, his former business partners and associates, and his employees came. There were a lot of people we had to feed and keep entertained. All this may sound strange, but that was the custom. So, people ate, drank, smoked, played games, etc. 
The monks and nuns chanted. 
The Taoist priests danced.
The visitors bowed. 
The women cried.
All the immediate family members had to take turns staying with the body - including me. At 12, I had never seen a dead body before and was very much afraid when my turn for the "wake" came upon me. Although the body was covered with a sheet, but the flickering candle lights at either end of the body made the atmosphere eerier than ever. Mother had nanny's son, our houseboy, stay with me. Evan so, it was the longest few hours of my life. 
I was never afraid of grandfather when he was alive. But the strange-looking heap under the thin sheet conjure up unspeakable images in my young mind. I could not sleep for nights afterwards. But I did not cry. 

The funeral procession was blocks long. It consisted of the hearse; the immediate family members on foot, in rough unbleached muslin; the monks with their gongs, bells, and their chantings; the Taoist priests with their hand-held lotus-shaped candles, flutes, and their dances; the Western (European) marching band; and the long line of people in cars and on foot, mostly men with their black arm- bands on their left arms. The long procession ended at the funeral home, The burial was to be forty-nine days later, after the seven-week ceremonies. 
My grandfather was gone. 
But Life went on with a vengeance as the Japanese marched into the Settlements two months later. December 1941. 
World War II. 

I did not cry.