The Destination of the Face: Reading Ou Daxu's "The Stranger on the Dock"

“When I was studying at university in England, a blond boy from an old and huge family was briefing me on his family history. Only part of our family was aristocratic, he laughs, and the other part came from industrial wealth in the 19th century. I listened carefully to his explanations of dukes, marquises, earls, etc. When I first arrived, I was fascinated by people's fascination with social background, and the ability to talk about family background in casual chatter without harming it."

In contrast, in several paragraphs, the author, who is a descendant of Malaysian immigrants, has repeatedly pointed out that these own family memories are always gently put down by the parties involved. On a rare occasion, my father talked about his childhood memories - growing up with relatives in the jungle towns north of the border, looking for work opportunities. father said,

 "It's just a story about a bunch of poor people, and it's not interesting to you at all."

The grandfather insisted on bringing the mentally ill man home. He was a companion who immigrated to Malaya with his grandfather when he was a child. He had no relatives and no reason, and he only remembered his grandfather's name (and the mental hospital used this to contact his family). The man was silent, but extremely polite. Three days later, he committed suicide by jumping into a river. At this point, the mother said, the two fell into a silence, "So, where are you going to have dinner later?" I asked my mother why, and she said,

 "Oh, these are all boring things, what's there to say."

Everyone has a story, but not everyone's story will be remembered, and even the person concerned considers his experience "boring" and refuses to mention it. This is not a book of family history, but rather an attempt to capture the family's memory and reshape the author's own face. Where did my face come from?

 My sister, who received a scholarship from the Singapore government, is living with a group of peers in a dormitory two hours away from the school. When we got to her dorm, even my father, who had a Spartan childhood, said, "It's not good at all." My sister is lonely and homesick, and studies for a long time every day, just not to lose the scholarship. Only my grandfather, who came to Malaya alone to work hard, does not understand what homesickness is. Mother tried to explain it to him. "But we are immigrants" seemed to explain everything to my grandfather.

What my grandfather didn't understand was that he was an immigrant and I was the grandson of an immigrant. We see the world differently.

The conflict is that this does not change the fact of being a national minority (Chinese).

In Malaysia, the unchallengeable ethnic status and relationship force the minority to adjust to a certain extent. Adapting yourself is called an immigrant, but it is impossible to be sure that you are an immigrant, because the generation born and raised here has no origin of origin. Maybe there are people living somewhere who speak your grandparents' accent, but you don't belong to them after all.

 "In fact, the sooner you identify yourself as an immigrant, the less you'll be confused by being accused of going back to country X/Y/Z. The only problem is, you can't really feel like you're an immigrant. It's just someone else's perception of you describe."

When I was first called a Chinese pig (Cina Babi, a common discriminatory term against Chinese in Malaysia), I actually wondered whether the Chinese are pigs because the Chinese eat boiled (Muslims who account for the majority of the population do not eat pork), or Some kind of deeper reason. I was six years old at the time, and my grandmother laughed and said they were just kids and didn't know what they were talking about. Your words quickly dispelled my doubts. And what I didn't say is that they are not children, but adults.

Tash Aw was born in Taipei, grew up in Malaysia, and settled in the UK. "Strangers on A Pier" (Strangers on A Pier) is his work on the exploration of his own background. In a short interview , nicely summed up (accurately, the same summation as my reading comprehension) the intent of the book:

 "My parents always said to me, 'Why are you interested in these stories? They're boring. There's no need to write about people like us, we don't matter, why don't you write about more interesting people?'" Such a statement also means that in a hundred years, the stories of ordinary people like my parents and grandparents will disappear, just because they are immigrants without power and power. In the world of literature, their stories are considered trivial, and literature will be filled only with bourgeois narratives. So this book is an attempt to bring back some of the past, to commemorate what my parents and grandparents went through—that's part of my life story. "

I finished reading "Strangers on the Dock" during a few days of commuting in Taipei MRT. They are also the third generation of Malaysian Chinese immigrants. Although there is a gap in the time of birth, there are so many parts that I can empathize with. I often stop thinking on the same page and cannot easily turn the page. "Strangers on the Dock" could at least be written as a long novel, but it was condensed into a hundred pages by Daxu. I don't know how readers from other backgrounds will feel.

This paragraph is mostly a free translation from English works according to my own understanding. The traditional Chinese translation will be published by the Times soon, and there will be more precise wording. Malaysian idiomatic words are interspersed in it from time to time. I don’t know how the translation will be presented, but when Malaysian Chinese readers read the original work, they will probably smile and even feel the self-mockery in it.