Papa Ho

Chinese American Melding: How an elderly Asian man became a father figure to a little, lonely, soldier’s child from America.

A True Tale

Some of my fondest childhood memories center around a little elderly Chinese man I knew as Papa Ho. As the son of an American soldier, I attended the first and second grades at Taipei American School in Taipei, Taiwan in the late 1960’s. Still, to this day, 54 years later, I remember the school song. It’s the only Chinese language I actually remember. The other thing I remember, and will to the day I die, was Papa Ho.

Papa Ho was our landlord. He and his wife ran a small store off the rear of the home our family rented. Their stock in trade seemed to be sweets and crafts mainly. Many was the treat I was snuck by a dimple faced, dark eyed, matron who always had a ready smile and a wink. No language barrier between Chinese adults and small American children was unbreachable – with the right cookie or candy. I’m really not sure how old Papa Ho actually was at the time, but While Martin Luther King was preaching about racial equality and dreams of peace between whites and blacks in this nation, a runty little Caucasian American boy was learning about peace, love, and racial equality riding around the Peoples Republic of China on the back of a rickety motor scooter behind a wizened Chinese man. Boy, the stares we did get – especially after I contracted a rare bone disease in my feet and ended up in a cast unable to walk for well over a year. Said disease was a hell of it’s own. A rare tropical disease which caused bones in my feet to swell, shatter, dissolve, and, thankfully, regrow.

That experience is what led me to be the lifelong bookworm I am indeed guilty of being. That’s okay. Two years in a cast due to a tropical disease most of the military base doctors had never even heard of was quite the formative event for a little bibliophile in training. Many days I spent on the couch, on my knees, hands gripping the top of my parent’s new leather sofa as I watched through the window my two brothers, and two sisters play in the yard with the puppies. Sigh. Back to Danny Dunn and the Bobbsey Twins. Accompanied by a snuck treat from Mrs. Ho. I hesitate to mention how the holes I bit in said leather sofa cushions led to some consequences of their own, but that is for another essay – possibly on discipline. Dad was NOT pleased.

Those puppies – progeny of Dixie and Bullet - were also a story unto themselves. The Chinese people in town didn’t quite grasp the concept of keeping dogs as pets. They were considered just another food animal to most and nuisances to the rest. But a group of construction workers allowed my siblings and I to bring home two little furry barkers from a pile of debris on their work site one day. I recall them scratching their heads as the laughing white children ran off with their squirming prizes. Crazy American kids. Papa Ho and his lovely wife merely shook their heads and smiled at the vagaries of strange tiny Americans.

Dixie and Bullet eventually had pups of their own, a playful balm to the emotionally scarred, crippled child chewing little holes on couch cushions between chapters in the Boxcar Kids. I’m sure you get that picture. The advent of dogs as pets in town was much commented upon. Unfortunately, so was the advent of some – probably teenaged – miscreants that climbed our fence one day and poisoned those puppies while we were out. Papa Ho was quite incensed himself at the intentional hurt his peers or fellow culture members inflicted solely out of malice directed at different views. That callous cruelty hurt me, my parents, and my siblings.. However, I digress from the topic at hand: Papa and Mrs. Ho and I.

Interesting experience for the crippled child of an Amercan soldier being carried to the top of a giant smiling statue of tremendous girth in the arms of a crinkled Asian man. But the view…, my lord what a view to see from the eyes of a giant hollow statue of the Buddha. Ah, the wide-eyed innocence of a six-year-old. That boy did not realize it was culture he was absorbing as he smiled and laughed to see Giant Chinese dragons in street parades surrounded by dancing people in fascinating masks; sloped colorful tiled roofs; Asian women in brightly colored costumes. Culture he was absorbing as he interacted with a rickshaw driver trying to earn enough rice for dinner. Culture when he shook hands with a smiling matron with white paint on her face and sticks in her hair in a bright gown shimmering like a silken rainbow. Yes culture - poor, wealthy, upper and lower middle-class culture. A culture varied and older than our nation by millennia. I won’t ever forget open markets with produce and goods laid out all over – including the olfactory treats of meats and fish hung and festooned with buzzing flies. Also, fifty-five years later, I recall stares of flabbergasted Asians who couldn’t figure out for the life of them what that tiny American boy was doing with Papa Ho. To the best of my ability to discern, Papa Ho cared not one whit for their stares. Mrs. Ho understood just fine and laughed whenever I clambered with my casted feet onto the back of that Moped. Upon our return she would have a sweet treat waiting and a kiss on the cheek prepared.

Yes, my own parents were there as well. Thrilled to see cross cultural bonds being formed as their youngest child wormed his way into the hearts of their friendly, otherly cultured landlords. They trusted Papa & Mrs. Ho, as did I.

Papa Ho taught me important life lessons. lessons in humor. lessons in life, understanding, and acceptance. These lessons overrode those taught in the vein of intolerance and venality proffered by those less accepting of other viewpoints. Those lessons have taken me upon a path far different than I would otherwise have trod. Papa Ho’s lessons, along with those taught by my own father, left an indelible stamp upon my character.

While my stern, authoritative father taught me lessons in respect, duty, responsibility, loyalty and morals… Papa Ho was instilling gentler lessons. Lessons of tolerance, acceptance, and, yes, love. I love and honor him still to this day though I am as old now as he was then…, or thereabouts.

Rice paddies and water buffalo. Open air markets and street theater. Perhaps my reflections today are colored yellow by the patina of time. If so, it may be because on my birthday, the entire island nation celebrated with fireworks and street parades. October 10, my birthday, is the PRC’s Independence Day. Their versoion of July 4th. Regardless: I loved Papa and Mrs. Ho unequivocally and with all my heart. May they Rest in Peace. While Dad and Mom may smile down from above, I know that my guardian angel, rather than someone named Michael or Peter, is a little Chinese man with a twinkle in his eye, a ready smile, wisdom in his soul, and acceptance for a little crippled American boy in his heart.

A second father in my heart. A friend. A teacher. An influencer. Papa Ho. My Mr. Miagi minus the Karate.

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I have updated this story which was previously posted in order to enter it in the Father’s Day contest. I hope you enjoy it.