Remembering My Mother Jindi

Jindi Tian

July 22, 1932-March 11, 2019 

My mother Jindi Tian passed peacefully on March 11, 2019. She was 86. A private memorial service was held on March 16, at Chun Fook Funeral Services in Flushing, New York.

Jindi started her life with a tragic bang. At age three, she lost her mother who died from a difficult childbirth. To seek a better future in Shanghai, her father Ruixin Tian left her in his mother’s care in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province. After her grandmother died, Jindi joined her father who by then had established himself in both family and career: he was remarried, and promoted to a head foreman in the Yufeng Textile Mill (later changed to the Shanghai #17 Textile Mill). At age ten, Jindi began working in the same textile mill to help support her new family.

Despite her calamitous beginning, Jindi lived a full life by taking charge of her own destiny. She managed to receive an alternative education by attending the Textile Mill’s Evening School. It was there that Jindi met her future husband Rushan Huang. They married in 1953, and had three daughters (the firstborn died in infancy), and one son. In her mid-thirties, Jindi became a director, managing thousands of workers and technical personnel. However, her professional life was not entirely smooth sailing. During the Cultural Revolution, she was thrown out of power and bodily injured, as she did not kowtow to unjustified accusations.  

Jindi was a firm believer in education and lifelong learning. From 1989 to 1997, she and Rushan were fulltime caregivers of their grandson Nick, while his mother was in the States for her graduate degrees. Seeing her second son-in-law doing his postdoctoral work at Johns Hopkins University, she succeeded in encouraging her second daughter, to study and obtain her Master’s in biotechnology. Inspired by Jindi, her three children all graduated from prestigious universities, such as Fudan, Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Stanford. Her five grandchildren have followed in their parents’ footsteps by also graduating from top universities on both coasts.

Jindi considered herself a lifetime worker. By her retirement in 1988, her three children had all departed for America. She reorganized the remaining four family members: she and her husband, her 91-year-old father-in-law, and 4-year-old grandson. After the passing of the grandfather and then of her husband, she immigrated to this country in 2003. In 2012, following a hip replacement and diagnosed with advanced Alzheimer’s, she was transferred to Cedar Manor Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Ossining, New York. There she would help the staff with activities in the dayroom, under the supervision of Helena O’Brien, a staff member who incredibly shared the same birth year as Jindi. When asked, Jindi would tell people that she worked there, still not retired.

Jindi visited Santa Cruz for the first time in July 1997. She came back several more times on her way to New York or Shanghai. When those visits coincided with the Independence Day, she thoroughly enjoyed the “Shortest Parade in the World” in Aptos, and the Fourth of July parade in La Selva Beach. Jindi loved to pamper her daughter’s cat Chippy with treats. They spent many mornings listening to tapes together, as she did her Tai Chi. Chippy was concerned whenever the sound of the tape stopped; and she truly worried when Jindi suffered from one of her Alzheimer’s episodes, and remained outside for hours.

Jindi is preceded in death by her parents, Ruixin Tian and Aibao Shao, and, stepmother Qianmei Luo, her first daughter Jian Huang, and her husband Rushan Huang. She is survived by her daughters Hui-Lan (Paul) Titangos of Santa Cruz, Hui Huang (Baolin Wang) of Croton-on-Hudson, NY, and son Ying (Sue) Huang of Yorktown Heights, NY. She is also survived by five grandchildren, Nicolas C. (Lee Anne) Titangos, Wendy Wang (Peter Lubell-Doughtie), Stephanie Wang, Eric and Emily Huang, and two great grandchildren, Elena Lee and Paul George Titangos. Back in Shanghai, Jindi left behind her stepbrother Cunmin Luo (Rongxie Yao), two half sisters, Rongdi Tian (Youxin Ma) and Xindi Tian (Youmin Song), plus six nephews; and one niece in Cupertino, CA.

My family would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to Cedar Manor and it’s nursing staff for their professional loving care. We would like to thank her roommate’s daughter, Mariam Walker, for her highly skilled nursing advice, and help. We would also like to thank Doris, Lisa and Bob’s family, and colleagues and management of Regeneron for coming to the memorial service, and for feeding Jindi last year. The caring feeding team includes Na, Li Pan, Shirley Jiang, Amy, etc. In Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz Public Libraries in particular, we are equally grateful to the many colleagues and friends who have expressed their deepest condolences and sympathy for the passing of Jindi.

Reading Joyce Kilmer

I was deeply moved by Trees, one of the poems by Joyce Kilmer (December 6, 1886 – July 30, 1918). Criticized as being too sentimental and simple, it has nonetheless withstood the test of time, since its first publication in 1913. It demonstrates how beautiful the natural world is, and its close connection with us.

Unfamiliar with many poets of WWI, I made my unexpected acquaintance with Trees through  W. - The Killer of Flanders Fields, a 2014 Skyline Entertainment production. Despite its gruesome murder scenes, and unfortunate victims, the poem shines through the layers of ugliness, to give both characters and audience, courage, hope, and simplicity in pursuing the real truth to the very end. Just listen:

Trees

By Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Celebrating Chinese New Year

My sister sent me her Chinese New Year celebration performance for 2019. Every year her company honors important festivals in both China and India, as well as major holidays in this country. What a commitment! Here is her Taichi Showcase.

Viewing ISS: Short but Bright

Paul and I dashed out right after our dinner to view the passing ISS (International Space Station) over Santa Cruz at 7:00pm this evening.

Three minutes before the time, we situated ourselves at our usual lookout point nearby the 36th Avenue beach. As it predicted, the ISS appeared just after 6:59pm above a giant cypress tree. It went straight according to its charted route towards us. It was right above us for about a couple of seconds, bright and proud. I was on the point of wondering why it was predicted to be a short view this time, since it was right on top of the sky, and ready to proceed eastward, when suddenly the ISS was gone and seen no more.

Later, we realized that the ISS abruptly disappeared because, right after reaching it's zenith in the sky, the Earth's shadow interceded, and cast the ISS into darkness. Otherwise, We would have seen it continuing  eastward, and followed it's usual gradual dimming as it got further and further away, until it blinked out of sight at around 900 miles distant.

The abrupt behavior of ISS departure is interesting.  It shows the accuracy of its ISS Tracker App schedule. It also displays the unpredictability of everything. Not everything has a beginning, middle/peak, and ending. Sometimes, the middle/peak is the ending. We need to look at our world with flexibility and accept people as they are. Sometimes short but bright is equally excellent.

That'll Be Interesting: My Life in America

Nine days ago, January 3, 2019, marked 30 years of my living in America. It is a rewarding experience, letting me live a life I had never imagined. As Socrates believes that the unexamined life is not worth living, I will write a few words for my 30th anniversary.

I remember that morning of January 3, 1989, a friend of my brother's at Stanford picked me up from San Francisco International Airport, and drove me over Highway 17 to Santa Cruz. I could not help but remark how uniquely twisting the road was with dark green mountains on both sides. "Yes, it is unique alright," the friend agreed but not totally amused with the stress of driving.

Around noon, I was dropped off at the my contact's door, near the county jail, waiting to be led to a rental on Laurel Street. Hours later, after meeting with the landlady, I was settled in my new room,  feeling as though I had landed on the moon. Thus I restarted my student career at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), and Berkeley the following fall.

Academic life at UCSC might not be quite as challenging as the one at Berkeley, however, it helped me tremendously to transit for the latter. Even though I did not take any compulsory language classes, studies at UCSC provided me with basic Americana, preparing me for a brand-new field, library and information science.

Looking back, I have found that the beginning of everything was particularly challenging and thrilling in my 30 years' life and work here. During my first week of class at Berkeley, once a required class on cataloging was over, a very nice Chinese American classmate asked me if I had ever worked in a library. "No," I replied honestly. "That'll be interesting," he concluded and walked away sympathetically. Visualizing his prediction for me to quit school, I was discouraged but not totally in despair. Our 4-member study group consisting of two experienced copy catalogers, one inspiring one, and myself, came to my rescue. I attended every group activity, a big improvement from my ignorance of group discussions at UCSC. One semester later, I finally grasped enough of the concepts and practices of cataloging and classification to go on with the advanced class. Our term project to automate the Pacific Rim Library based on a real library collection at University of San Francisco was a success among class projects.

Years later I started to work for Dialog, as a member on its Product Support Team. As I was not born in the US, nor did I grow up here, my lack of pop culture background, and my accented English have not been a problem to most people, but imposed a big scarlet letter to a few narrow-minded people. At one of my beginning shifts, I got a call from a corporate librarian in the deep south. She was screaming for help and demanding credits, for she was unable to get the right data for her clients due to a file error. After I told her that I would report the problem to the right team, and emailed her the desired data with credits, she was still unhappy, because she detected my accent which shook her confidence. I asked her if the accent in question interfered with my analysis and handling of her problems. Partly because of the passing of time, partly because of her realization of the uncalled for bias, the librarian was never difficult after that, though I am keenly aware of the root of such bias, when it pops out from time to time.

In 2002, Gail and I adopted two sibling kittens at the bottom of the steps at the Santa Cruz Main Post Office. When Paul came to pick up our kitten to take home, Pat, one of my old workmates, asked me if I had ever had any cats before. "No," I admitted honestly once again. "That'll be interesting," she shot back, echoing my classmate's doubts. Contrary to her doomed prediction, our Chippy has turned from an ugly kitten into a beautiful white cat, featured as the October girl in the 2014 Baker and Taylor cat calendar. TLC is the key.

It is true that the remark "That that'll be interesting" is negative semantically; nevertheless, we can turn it into an incentive for going forward, if we are courageous enough. Bias of any sorts is like a poison, all of us need to fight it to make sure it has no ground to grow or spread. That's the summary of my 30 years in America. 

Finding Angle of Repose

It took me nearly a year to finish reading Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, a novel of 632 pages published in 1971. The reason for my slow reading is manifold.

The subject matter is complex, with minor themes like East coast vs. West coast, traditional values vs. 70s cultural rebellion, marriage vs. individual desire, success vs. failure, loyalty vs. betrayal, etc. But Jackson J. Benson has pointed out in his 2000 Introduction, that there is a main theme running through, namely, how we as a people, or more accurately cultural transplants, define ourselves in this new land, and what we have actually inherited.

The book starts at Grass Valley, California with Lyman Ward, the grandson and a retired historian. Right after being diagnosed with a rare bone disease and having had a leg amputated, he is abandoned by his wife. Defying the fate of being helpless and useless, Lyman decides to organize hundreds of letters written by his grandmother to her good friend Augusta from 1876 to 1891, with a plan to write a biography. Hiring a schoolgirl from Berkeley as his secretary, he manages to reconstruct his grandmother's life, and allows us to look into the inner world of a 19th century American woman artist and writer, Susan Burling Ward (based on the real person of Mary Hallock Foote). Uprooted from Milton, and Brooklyn, New York to marry a mining engineer, she move around, from New Almaden, Santa Cruz (California), Leadville (Colorado), Michoacán (Mexico), Boise Canyon, the Mesa (Idaho) and finally back to the Zodiac Cottage in Grass Valley.

The web of complex relationships is a factor that, at times, hindered my reading. During the investigation of his grandmother's life through illustrated letters, Lyman also discovers the complicated relationship between his grandparents, his father with his parents, his own with his son and ex-wife, and his ambiguous feeling towards his secretary. Grandma breaks something she cannot mend by falling in love with her husband's assistant at the expense of losing three family members, namely, the drowning of her youngest daughter and lifelong estrangement of both son and husband. Such a tragedy is reenacted in Lyman's lifetime. His own wife Ellen elopes with his surgeon who has amputated his leg.

What makes the reading endurable is the very courage many characters have demonstrated to choose to live on and complete their life journey despite their flaws and mistakes. Instead of feeling sorry for themselves, Lyman and his grandmother accept their misfortune with courage, and live a parallel life with the rest of the world by finding and maintaining a perfect angle of repose, even though it might take half a century to do so.

After Bohemian Rhapsody

Last Saturday afternoon, Paul and I celebrated his birthday by going to CineLux Capitola Cafe & Lounge to see the just released Bohemian Rhapsody. It is a truly visual treat to enjoy musicals on a big screen and theater quality audio. It is our second wonderful experience since Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

Unlike Mike Myers who is deeply rooted in his Liverpool family ties and has grown up with playing Rhapsody with his two brothers, I knew very little about the legendary Farrokh Bulsara, more famously known as Freddie Mercury, of Queen. In a little over two hours of seeing the film, I became not only impressed by his path to stardom, but more importantly, fascinated with his determination to do good things in life. 

It is understandable to be intoxicated with success; it is also normal to argue or even fight with family members, for this is what family is supposed to do, as Freddie stated on the eve of the 1985 Live Aid Concert. But whenever a critical moment comes, the family needs to put their heads together by combining their strength and talents to perform important tasks in front of them. Queen did so more than 33 years ago at the Live Aid concert in London!
 

 

Courtesy of http://flavorwire.com/609931/watch-rami-malek-perform-queens-live-aid-set-as-freddie-mercury

Brother Ying Visting Santa Cruz In October

I always think that October is a golden month of the year. While the weather is perfect, people like to visit places far and near before winter sets in. The last few years, we usually spent part of October and November in New York while my sister was out of town with her husband. The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze has become the center of our activities on the east coast.

This October we are staying home after a number of trips completed earlier in the year, alone but not lonely with a string of friends and family members' weekend visits. Last weekend right after Nick and Leni settled down Friday night, Ying drove in Saturday at noon. We enjoyed one of the most relaxing (or exhausting) and enlightening weekends, chatting at home, going out to Riva for an early dinner, and driving along East Cliff, and through Capitola Village. The waves were big enough to let Ying see surfers riding waves all the way to the end, while the sea lions at the wharf greeted us with their deep roaring or happy snoring. Ying was especially happy to see them again as a constant symbol of Santa Cruz. Instantly, we felt fortunate to have them as our permanent neighbors. They do seem to prefer their relaxed residence here over Monterey.

As dusk set in, Ying needed to leave early next morning.for his annual conference in Vancouver. We all felt kind of sad to say Goodbye. For little Leni, the sea lions and Ying fascinated her no end. She was shy at the beginning, but towards the end we had a hard time tearing her away from either. She won the hearts of both. Ying, Paul and Nick exchanged tech tips and life experience all afternoon, which helped me to reach a certain equilibrium after hearing about his real reason to leave IBM. It seems that, more often than not, our decision making process is not based totally on common good, but can be affected by the personal and racial preferences of others, which is a universal phenomenon. With such a strong force confronting us, every one of us has to find a way to cope, or will be crushed.

After seeing Ying's car disappear around the corner, we were comforted by the smiling faces of Nick and Leni. Next Friday, Joe is coming, Sunday Debbie is visiting. Too busy to dwell on anything, unfortunately.

We Saw Crazy Rich Asians

Yesterday noon, my brother-in-law drove us (Paul, my sister and I) in his shining black BMW X5 to see Crazy Rich Asians in Cortlandt Town Center. After securing our tickets, and about an hour and half's time to spare, we were treated to a King Buffet lunch.

Courtesy of Cosmopolitan

According to the ticket boy, the movie was no longer quite as hot as its first weekend. Nonetheless, we found Theater 6 quite full at 1:30 pm when commercials started. The audience consisted chiefly of the curious elderly and young generations for Crazy Rich Asians, book 1 in Kevin Kwan's Rich novels series.

I was prepared to see an updated edition of The Joy Luck Club, or a modern version of a dragon lady. To a great extent, the show does not disappoint me: there is a mahjong game, and there are several dragon ladies, Nick's mother Eleanor in particular. She is an Oxford-educated modern woman, but because of traditional values, she has totally given up her academic ambitions by taking care of family affairs, husband and a pair of children. But she is always the number two choice, due to her humble family background. Seeing almost a carbon copy, or worse, of herself in Rachel Chu, she cannot help but discourage the young woman from becoming her daughter-in-law.

What Eleanor fails to anticipate is that today's Cinderellas are stronger than ever before. If Megan Markell can celebrate her first 100 married days with Prince Harry in Britain, Rachel can be proposed to by Nick Young of Singapore. A woman's humble origin is no longer a roadblock, but a badge of honor, as long as they have beauty or intellect. Those young millennials, real or fictitious, are entering royal palaces, and super-rich families. It is a brave new world!