Grandpa’s Room
by Betty Lau
Grandpa moved out; our extended family having become even more extended. Mom, dad, two younger siblings and I, Aunty Alice Louie with her three, and Dad’s 14-year-old cousin Ken Lowe, all lived above our machine laundry in an 1892 building in the remnants of the 2nd Chinatown. Located on the northeast corner of 5th Ave. S. and S. Washington Street, our machine laundry took up the former ground floor spaces of two long-shuttered businesses – Puget Sound Hotel and the Yee Chong Company beside it.
Grandpa wanted lodgings in Chinatown proper, close by his friends and the shops he frequented: grocery and herbal stores, cafes and restaurants. Sometime in the late 1940s or early ‘50s, he rented a room in the West Kong Yick building on South King Street, the “spine” of the current, 3rd Chinatown.
Grandpa chose the West Kong Yick building because Long Kung Tin Yee, our family association, had a large meeting room there. The association was comprised of four families: the Laus, Quans, Changs, and Chews. I asked Dad why our association included other families while others only had themselves. He stated there weren’t enough Laus. And there weren’t enough people in other families, too, so a very long time ago, four founding ancestors banded together for mutual aid and protection, collectively naming themselves Long Kung, or the Dragon Ridge Family Association.
Dad liked to say we were the descendants of Liu Bang, founder of the Han Dynasty and that Liu, Lew, Lieu, and Lowe were all Laus, depending on which immigration official questioned hapless Chinese immigrants.
“Last name?” demanded the immigration officer of Grandpa. “What? Is that spelled L-A-U?”
Grandpa, not knowing what to say, nodded.
Grandpa’s younger brother ended up in a different line on a different day.
“How do you spell your last name?” the official demanded, venturing a guess: “L-O-W-E?”
And lai soak (father’s uncle), having a modicum of English, simply answered, “Yes,” even though he had no idea how to spell his Chinese name in English.
So, we are Laus, while paternal cousins are Lowes and one Lau branch became Kays because the immigration officer thought the Kay in Lew Kay was his last name. In the Chinese system, the family name comes first, followed by a one or two character given name.
My parents often took us to the West Kong Yick building for Grandpa to babysit us. Dropping us off at the central doorway, they would remind us to do exactly what grandpa said. My younger sister Linda, little brother Eddie, and I would troop up to the top of a long, steep flight of stairs. At the top, I liked to grab the banister post and swing myself in a sharp U turn to the left. Grandpa’s room was at the other end of the stairwell, facing King Street.
As we entered his room, the first furnishing on the right was a white porcelain sink with a bar of soap, a glass of water for his dentures, and his shaving gear: a shaving brush, shaving cream, and a razor, not the kind used today. His was a long, thin blade. Above the sink hung a small, unadorned mirror. Grandpa’s morning shave always captured my attention. I never tired of standing by the sink, staring at how he applied the shaving cream to soften his stubble, and then with swift, deft movements, turn his head this way and that, sweeping the razor upwards from under his jaw, his cheeks, and finally, under his nose. When he finished patting on the after-shave, we knew he would take us out to stroll Chinatown!
On the left side of the room, he kept his few belongings in an old-style wardrobe with a wide drawer at the bottom. It smelled of mothballs, but sometimes the herbal concoctions he prepared and boiled in a hand painted porcelain jar on a hot plate overcame the odor of the mothballs! The wardrobe sometimes turned into a cave for our imaginative adventures, along with the floor’s shared bathroom and family association space.
As for a table, the sole wooden chair in the room made do when Grandpa wasn’t sitting in it. An upended crate doubled as a nightstand for our favorite furnishing, the bed—a large cot, really. A basic affair made of metal, covered by a thin mattress and customer abandoned sheets and blankets from the laundry.
I loved Grandpa’s company. He took us everywhere in Chinatown, proudly introducing us to his friends —the Aunties and Uncles who worked in their shops — buying us meals of wonton noodles at Siu Sahm Guon (Little Three Grand Cafe) and Chinese treats, such as chun pei mui (preserved plums), an hein mui (seedless preserved plums), lahm (football shaped preserved olives, red ginger, candied ginger, and hom mui (dried salty plums), good for sore throats. At empty lots, we squealed with delight when he stopped to pick horsetail weeds and pinch them off at various joints, creating green spires of art for us. Dandelion seed heads became airborne parachutes when blown. Held aloft while running, they carried our childish wishes up into the sky dragon’s realm.
Dad, on the other hand, was a harsh disciplinarian, sending us to bed without dinner or whipping our legs with his leather belt for any perceived misbehavior. When that happened, Grandpa waited until after dinner, then secretly brought us hastily warmed leftovers and took away the empty bowls for immediate washing—his way of destroying the evidence that dad’s punishment wasn’t fully carried out.
In his rental room, Grandpa had pushed his bed parallel to the north wall, under a window that overlooked King Street. He liked to see natural light streaming in when he woke up. For the three of us, our favorite pastime was crowding together on that bed to peer out the single window.
I especially liked watching the grand Bing Kung tong balcony off to the right. I hoped to see what the balcony was used for, but no such luck. Instead, we scanned the street below, yearning to get outside to play.
In Grandpa’s room, Rule 1 was: Obey him without question. Rule 2: No playing outside unless accompanied by Grandpa. “Outside” included being quiet in the hallway so as not to disturb other residents. Unfortunately, Grandpa napped a lot, and we chafed at having to be both quiet and trapped while he slept.
One day after lunching in Chinatown, Grandpa took us back to the West Kong Yick, saying he needed his afternoon nap. He sternly admonished, “Do not leave this room!”
But at ages 8, 7, and 5, we were restless. Outside the window, blue skies and fluffy clouds beckoned. I leaned over Grandpa’s sleeping form to scout the situation from the window. I saw shoppers going in and out of the stores lining King Street.
Grandpa loudly snored, mouth open, chest rising and falling rhythmically.
An idea blossomed.
“Let’s go outside! Grandpa’s asleep. He’ll take a long nap, and we can get back before he wakes up! He won’t even know we’re gone.” My sister and brother quickly agreed, eager to escape the room with me.
On the way down the worn staircase, I blurted my next idea, “Let’s visit the stores and see what treats we can get!”
And sure enough, at each place we stopped, the Aunty or Uncle who recognized us would unscrew the lid from a large glass jar of treats, reach in and hand each of us just one. We thanked them and left. We got as far as a small grocery, two blocks from the West Kong Yick. As Aunty shooed us back out the doorway in farewell, she looked up King Street, commenting, “Oh, look! Your grandfather’s coming! He wants you back!”
As soon as Grandpa saw us, he stopped, arms akimbo, cursing and shouting, “Come here NOW! Just wait until I tell your father!”
He took off his narrow belt and rolled the buckle end in his fist. For the first time, fear of grandpa shot through me. Unlike Dad, he had never laid a punishing hand on us.
Panicked, we ran towards him, intending to sprint past; but he was surprisingly agile and accurate. As we dashed by, he gave chase, lashing our legs with the belt to peals of laughter from the Aunties and Uncles who watched from their doorways, having told him his missing grandchildren had visited, gotten treats, and left for the next shop down the street.
Humiliated, we pelted up King Street and up the West Kong Yick stairs as fast as we could, finally throwing ourselves onto the farthest, largest surface in his room, the bed. Crying loudly, we pretended to sob, hiccup, and sniffle ourselves to sleep. Meanwhile, Grandpa cleared the chair-table, plunking it down in front of the door, settling into it. As he nodded off to finish his all too short nap, we whispered our next move to each other.
Hours later, when mom and dad came to fetch us home, we were still “asleep,” ignoring Mom’s gentle entreaties, “Wake up kids, it’s time to go home.”
We feared Dad’s verbal tongue lashing and even more, a whipping with his leather belt when Grandpa reported our disobedience. Having failed to “awaken” us, Mom awkwardly picked me up, Dad lifted Linda, and Grandpa hoisted Eddie over his shoulder, much like hauling a sack of rice. Together, they carried us out, carefully treading their way down the creaky staircase.
Dad asked the inevitable, “How were the kids today? Were they good?”
Tensing, I heard an amazing lie, “Yes, of course; they were perfect, as always.”
Astonishment and gratitude flooded through me; Grandpa saved us again.
Grandpa never brought up the incident to us, and we never sneaked out of his room again.
Acknowledgements
This anecdote is in memory of Grandpa Lau Quon Young, who loved us fiercely, who showed us how to do things intentionally, deliberately and who taught us early lessons about family and community.
Many thanks to Paul Wu, Jim Mahler, ISRD board staff Rebecca Frestedt, and Archivist Midori Okazaki of the Puget Sound Regional Archives for research assistance.
Photos by Betty Lau unless otherwise designated.
