This Is Andrew, and He Is Not Just My Grandfather

This is Andrew.

My grandfather.

Seventy-six years old.

The first time I saw him as someone other than my grandfather, he was squatting in the yard with a small trowel, changing the soil for a pot of jasmine. His movements were slow but steady. Beside him was an enamel mug with tea stains at the bottom and tea leaves soaked pale.

He looked up, saw me, and said, “You’re back? There’s a bowl of mung bean soup on the stove. Get it yourself.”

That was all. No “I missed you to death, Grandpa.” No “You’ve gotten thinner.” He went back to changing the soil, dirt packed under his fingernails.

Later I learned that the jasmine had been dug up from the old house. When the old house was demolished, he did not take anything else. He took this pot of flowers. My mom said that on the day of the demolition, he told no one. He rode his tricycle there alone, put the flower, roots and soil and all, into a woven plastic sack, tied it to the back seat, and rode forty minutes home.

He never mentioned this to anyone. My mom let it slip once, and he waved his hand beside her: “What’s there to talk about?”

1

I don’t know much about his younger days. He rarely talks about them. When he does, it’s three sentences and done.

The only thing that surprised me was something my dad told me. In 1968, Andrew was twenty-two and worked at the commune’s farm machinery station, repairing tractors. One day, a tractor just would not be fixed. The master said, “We need to replace the part and wait for approval from above.” He waited two days. Nothing came. In the middle of the night, he climbed over the wall into the warehouse, took a part off another scrapped tractor, and installed it.

The next day, the tractor started. The station chief investigated. He stepped forward and said, “I took it. If there’s a punishment, punish me.”

He was punished. Half a month’s work points were deducted. But from then on, the people at the machinery station called him “Andrew the Bold.”

I asked him if it was true. He was splitting firewood in the yard and did not even look up: “I was young then. Hot-headed.” Then he brought the axe down and the wood split in two.

2

There was a habit of his that I stumbled on.

One summer vacation I was staying at his house. A little after five in the morning, I heard a sound in the yard. I got up and looked. He was sitting on the doorstep, wearing a pair of reading glasses with one arm wrapped in tape, reading a copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The pages were badly yellowed, the corners curled up as if they had been soaked in water and dried in the sun. He read very slowly, his lips moving slightly, as if reading silently.

I did not make a sound. I went back inside.

Later I noticed he read every morning. Not much. Just one chapter. When he finished, he tucked the book back under his pillow. The pillowcase was old, washed white, with a pair of mandarin ducks embroidered on it. My grandmother had embroidered it.

Grandmother has been gone for twelve years. How many times he has read that book, I don’t know.

3

If you asked what he was most proud of in his life, he never said.

But I guess it was that winter.

I was in the third grade. The winter was especially cold. My parents were away on a business trip and left me at his house. One day after school, it was snowing heavily and the road had frozen over. I fell, cut my knee, and soaked my pants. He saw me come in and said nothing. He turned around and went to the stove to boil water. When the water was ready, he soaked a towel in it, wrung it out, and pressed it to my knee. Then he squatted down, took off my wet pants, and put a pair of his cotton-padded trousers on me. They were too big. The legs were rolled up three times, and the waist was tied with a red string.

While he was squatting on the ground rolling up the trouser legs for me, I saw the white hair on top of his head, thin, with a patch of scalp showing through.

That night he cooked me a bowl of noodles. He poached an egg in it and added a few slices of cured meat. He ate his own without the egg.

I have never told anyone about this. Because if you say it out loud, it doesn’t seem like much. But I remember that red string. It was tied in a dead knot. I tried for a long time and could not untie it. In the end, he bit it loose.

4

Now he is seventy-six.

He still gets up a little after five every morning. First he waters the jasmine, then he sits on the doorstep and reads. That copy of Romance of the Three Kingdoms has been read to pieces. He wrapped it in a new cover made from calendar paper and wrote two words on it in pen: Three Kingdoms.

He learned to use WeChat, but he only sends voice messages, never types. Every voice message begins the same way: “Hey, this is Grandpa.” Once I taught him how to make a video call. He stared at himself on the screen for a long time and said, “This thing makes you look dark.”

He doesn’t like fruit. Says it’s too cold. But every day he peels an apple, cuts it into small pieces, puts them in a bowl, and pushes the bowl in front of Grandmother’s portrait. The apple oxidizes and turns yellow, and he doesn’t throw it away. The next day he replaces it with a new one.

I asked him, “Grandma doesn’t eat it anyway. Why do you peel one every day?”

He said, “She’s watching.”

As he said it, he was wiping the frame of the portrait with a rag. Wiping very carefully, even the corners.

5

Yesterday I called him. He said, “Hey, this is Grandpa. That AI thing you mentioned last time. Can you help me ask it why the jasmine leaves are turning yellow?”

I said, take a photo and send it to me, and I’ll ask for you.

He said, “I don’t know how to take photos. Come back sometime.”

I said okay.

He said, “No rush. You’re busy. I was just asking.”

Before hanging up, he added, “Tell me when you’re coming back. I’ll cook you noodles.”

I said okay.

Then he said, “I’ll poach two eggs for you.”