Li Chengpeng: Father is the most wretched fighter in the world

Li Chengpeng / Essay

When I was a child I watched a Japanese film, "Suna-ki". It tells the story of a father and son in post‑war Japan’s Kanto region who have lost their land. They wander everywhere, trekking rugged mountain paths, traveling in torrential rain, begging in the snow. Once, the son is beaten by a rich kid’s gang, and the thin father desperately uses his body to block fists and sticks, falling into a ditch. Another time, during heavy snow, the father obtains a bowl of porridge, heats it in a sand pot for his son to drink; the son insists the father drink first. They push each other, burn their mouths, jump up in pain, then embrace and laugh heartily...

That warm scene made me cry. I still don’t know why.

Later the father contracts leprosy and is forcibly taken to a hospital; the son ends up on the streets and is taken in by a kind family. Eventually the son flees to Tokyo, accidentally learns piano, becomes an emerging pianist, and meets a financier’s daughter when his reputation soars. Just as they are discussing marriage, his former foster father spots him on TV, finds him, and tells him to meet his biological father. At that time Japan still valued family lineage, so to hide his origins he kills his foster father at a station. The subsequent investigation is complex; I only recall the final scene: a police detective hands a photo of the pianist to the leprosy patient’s biological father. To protect his son, the father refuses to acknowledge the boy as his, silently looks at the photo, and suddenly tears flow...

That shot was voted the most classic scene in the Japanese human‑nature film series, without equal. In the cinema the audience wept loudly, but I did not. I do not understand why the father acted that way. By the time I understood, I had become a father myself...

A father is the most unbearable fighter in the world.

Our fathers lack the majestic wisdom of the great leader on Tiananmen’s Gate, lack the unspoken authority of the male lead in the domestic drama "Supreme Honor", and even the bronze‑toned diligence in Luo Zhongli’s painting "Father" is hard to discern. Most of them are trapped by life, their faces dull, bearing minor ailments that age them prematurely, even making them look shabby; their emotions are often unsatisfactory. Yet they love their children deeply, like foolish yet brave worker ants, never missing a single task.

In my residential complex there is an elderly man who picks up trash, surname Zou, whose full name I never learned. He is not a shabby rag‑collector; he dresses cleanly, greets people politely, and carefully sorts cardboard, old clothes, and soda bottles on his hand‑cart. When he finds a decent small appliance, he hides his excitement, gently wipes dust, and places it in a padded box. That meticulous care makes one feel as if he is rescuing a newborn. I once thought he was a lonely old man, then learned his son works in the city; I thought the son was unfilial, but later discovered the father strongly opposed his son’s garbage‑picking, once even locking him inside the house. Still, the trash‑picking elder sneaks out to collect, telling his son he found a job at a company.

He often comes to my house for cardboard; my mother offers him food, and each time he reverently bows to the Guanyin statue my family provides, helps replace filtered water and fruit. I once talked with him; he said that whenever he goes out to collect trash he wears good clothes so security won’t chase him away or embarrass his son. He also said his son will eventually start a family and need a house in the city; if he keeps collecting trash for half a year, he’ll have enough for a down payment and can return home.

Half a year passed, many half‑years passed, yet he never returned home. Housing prices rose too fast; his pace of trash collection could not keep up with the price surge. His stooped back became even more pronounced compared to the soaring real‑estate market.

Chinese fathers differ from those elsewhere for well‑known reasons: they must sacrifice dignity to support their families. The trash‑picking Mr. Zou is relatively lucky. Others, like the illegal street vendor Xia Junfeng, fare far worse. He only wanted his son to have money to study painting, so he set up a stall, but the massive city could not accommodate a barbecue stand. He was insulted, beaten, and kicked in the groin by city‑management officers; he fought back, ultimately being driven to murder… Imagine his thin frame thrusting a knife at a towering officer, a tiny ant shaking a tree, how tragic his heart must feel.

My father is a third‑rate musician, looking like the conductor in "Tiger’s Mouth Escape", irritable and neurotic. When I was very young he forced me to practice piano; if I refused or played a wrong note, he would beat me. I was agile and dodged; once I crawled under the bed (the kind of Xinjiang regiment beds that can hide half a class). He followed, and I fought him with a broom, causing the bed frame to collapse; his nose was broken and bled. He stuffed blood‑soaked paper in his nostrils, stared solemnly, supervised me for four hours of piano practice, then smiled satisfactorily and cooked a bowl of pulled noodles for me in the kitchen.

That night we lay side by side on the bed, the window showing Xinjiang’s usual star‑filled sky. He kept muttering how his poor background had shattered his musical dreams and urged me to fulfill my own musical aspirations. Suddenly he jumped out of bed, ran to the kitchen, grabbed chopsticks, and, like Karajan, waved his hands conducting the "Fifth Symphony". I watched him; Karajan had flowing white hair, while my father was bald, making him look more like a chef.

Once the school served "big meat" (Xinjiang’s term for pork). It was so cold that the meat froze hard and the kitchen knife could not cut it, so we used an axe in the courtyard. While chopping, I shouted, "Chop dad to death!" That day a heavy snow fell in Hami; snow covered his nose, and when he asked what I was saying, I shouted again, "Chop dad to death!" He listened silently and then wept quietly. It was the only time he cried in front of me.

I have never asked him why he cried; there is no need to ask.

Later he divorced my mother; I returned to Sichuan, and we saw each other less often. Later I learned his remarriage was also unhappy; he lived in destitution, and his daughter grew so estranged that she ran away from home. Years ago, in Chengdu’s Kejia Alley, we had a grand reunion; I bought him many clothes, he tried them all happily, then solemnly walked back and forth before a mirror, saluting his reflection as if conducting a grand self‑inspection.

He buttoned his suit down to the very bottom without noticing, and I did not point it out.

My dad is such an unbearable fighter; he wanted to raise me into a musical master, but I became a writer. He wanted his son to become a musical master, but his son became a tennis player. This made him sorrowful, feeling that his life’s ideals fell into the hands of the next two generations. When he returned to Henan, at the station he took a close look at Kezi’s long fingers, saying, "Such long fingers, such open tendons, what a waste..." He left without looking back, melancholy.

My dad grew older; when eating noodles, more soup drips from his front collar. I only noticed this at his 80th birthday; he now has many false teeth, his appetite has declined, and his whole body seems to have shrunk, as if a needle quietly let the air out. I plan to spend quality time with him and take him traveling. He once took me walking; now I take him, and when I am old, my son will take me. Life is a generational hike: the older generation walks until they can’t, the younger takes over, and so on.

For some reason, again at a station, he looked at Kezi’s slender, piano‑ready fingers and the calloused pads from years of holding a racket, and said, "Good, that’s perfect..." He rode a bicycle tangled with various wires and rubber bands, and rode away. My dad, at eighty, still rides his bike wildly through the city daily, unstoppable. It was a bleak winter in Kaifeng; strong winds lifted many leaves and paper scraps. I thought the wind would sweep this thin, dry old man and his bike away, but it didn’t. He was the most stable and swift rider on the street, his route clear, then he vanished.

That silhouette was the last glimpse I saw of him in this temporal dimension. Fourteen months later, after he finished that oddly ugly bike ride, he fell on the stairs. On the day of cremation, the three tall smokestacks of the Kaifeng Cemetery Road crematorium spewed thick smoke upward, swirling leaves and paper in the sky. I stared hard at the sky, but saw no dry little old man on a broken bike.

Nevertheless, according to my understanding of the Diamond Sutra, life is a series of stations; at the next stop, we may meet again. Perhaps one day at a station, a terribly mischievous boy cries for candy from his parents; that boy is my father, and I am the old man with drooling chin and soup‑soaked collar sitting on a bench.

The Diamond Sutra says, "No form, no form."

So you ask, "What’s the difference between you and your father?" I once thought we were very different; now I feel we are the same. We both try to appear calm in front of our sons, while inside we are panicked. On the day my son was born, I was discussing an important matter; when I heard the news, I drove hundreds of miles to the riverside town. By the time I arrived, he was already born. He lay quietly in the swaddling cloth, neither happy nor angry, sleeping drowsily. He looked familiar yet utterly strange, like a mysterious letter from afar. I dared not open it, fearing that doing so would bind me to a profound, unknowable task. Midway, he woke, his eyes not fully open, gave me a brief, proud, perhaps disdainful glance, then fell asleep again. I stared at him, feeling the weight of responsibility, inescapable.

I do not know if other fathers feel the same, seeing their child for the first time and being overwhelmed by sudden life. I once cried and fussed at him in the middle of the night, angry that he turned the house into a whirlwind of chaos.

Burned in fire. Gradually, at some unknown time and for unknown reasons, he became my best friend. I know without a promise that I must protect him, help him, lead him forward, see the world’s scenery, and sacrifice my life if needed. The so‑called father‑son bond: the one in front holds the one behind, looking at scenery together; eventually you fall, you become the scenery, and I will be the next scenery.

When I see people disparaging Chinese fathers as greasy, weak, and inadequate, I think it’s unfair to judge Chinese fathers by the standards of a father drenched in North American sunshine. In earlier years during the Spring Festival travel rush, I saw migrant‑worker fathers leaping into long‑distance buses through the windows with lightning speed, their movements coarse and expressions grim; after grabbing a seat they would loudly call out, then immediately start making instant noodles with hot water, and crudely wipe an apple with rough hands for their child to eat. In recent years, those so‑called “middle‑class” fathers, working overtime with adrenaline to pay mortgages and save for school fees, suddenly suffer sudden death at their desks—originally striving for a head start for their children, they instead reach their own finish line. They fight like lions, live like mutts; they love their children, yet must act as if nothing is wrong in front of them, because if the child discovers their inadequacy, that becomes our greatest inadequacy. That year, because I ran for a People’s Congress seat, something happened: Kezi cried, saying he never wanted to play tennis again; I was exhausted from writing and earning money daily to fund his training. I laughed and lied to him: “You don’t know, dad actually has a lot of money; secretly I’m rich. Look, this is a passbook, this is a bank card…” He believed me and was proud of me.

So when the Soloist Magazine asked, “What will Li Dayan do for his child, will he immigrate?” my answer was that I must carefully hide my own inadequate struggles and create conditions where he never has to answer such questions.

In other words, I must work hard, shave my beard cleanly every day, wear tidy clothes, walk the unpredictable streets with a straight back, confidence in my chest, neither rushing ahead nor lagging behind. I don’t want my child to see my inadequacy.

Because I am already a father.

(Originally published in Li Chengpeng’s essay collection “Everyone in the World Knows”, modified on some day in 2020)