Excavation #9

My father’s biological father was a gambler. He gambled away any resources he had that would have been useful to raise 6 kids. So, his wife (my father’s mother) left to go back to China and took half the kids. She left the youngest child, my father, and the oldest child, my aunt, who would be entrusted to take care of my father and another aunt.

My father’s uncle (by marriage) took the children under his wing and raised them. This is the man in the white suit, holding my father on a bicycle. My father is eternally grateful for this man.

The uncle married three times. The first two wives died during childbirth. My father was 14 years old when the uncle married the second wife. To avoid any “clashes”between the new wife and my father, the uncle sent him away to a boarding school for 2 years. I still don’t know what that means, but my father still remains grateful to this man. By the time he was 16, he returned home, and got a job teaching at a Chinese school until he was 18. The uncle and his third wife never had any children.