One
That evening, I was playing games when I got a call from my cousin. There was a clear unease in her voice. She said the village party secretary had contacted her—my uncle, back in our hometown, had been drinking and riding a motorcycle, and he’d crashed into someone else’s car. He wasn’t hurt, but they couldn’t reach his family. My cousin is the daughter of my mother’s second sister; my uncle is her uncle too, and since she’s well-connected in the village, it naturally fell to her to handle this.
I hung up and called my male cousin right away—my uncle’s only son. He answered quickly, said he already knew, and that he also couldn’t reach his father. Less than half an hour later, he called me back, asking for our eldest aunt’s number—my mother’s oldest sister, who still lives in the village. He was hoping she could go over and check on things. He’d heard that after the accident, my uncle had only taken a breathalyzer test, not a blood draw, and he was still hoping there might be some way to turn things around.
Another hour passed, and my cousin called again. He said that after the accident, my uncle’s first move was to hop back on the bike and ride to the next county over—probably thinking he could just hide out. The next time we talked, he said he’d already arranged for my uncle to take a hired car back to Guangdong overnight.
I’ve worked in law for years, and frankly, I found this approach a bit absurd. So I asked: how was he able to leave at all? My cousin relayed what my uncle had told him—that the traffic officer who responded was a former student of his, and the officer let him go. To be honest, I’ve heard enough about the state of judicial affairs in certain parts of Hunan that this explanation didn’t really surprise me. In the countryside, personal connections trump rules—this kind of thing isn’t uncommon.
But before I could even breathe that sigh of relief, less than half an hour later, the phone rang again. My uncle had been taken to the hospital for a blood draw, and his blood alcohol content was very high. A DUI conviction was all but certain. From “a student officer let him go” to “a blood test on the spot,” the facts had split wide open. Which version was true, and which was made up to reassure the family? I didn’t bother to ask, and I’ll never know for sure.
What followed was a long phone call. My cousin talked about his son—a student at the best high school in our area, with good grades. The family had been hoping he might go on to a military or police academy. But those schools conduct a political review that goes back three generations. With this DUI on his grandfather’s record, no one knew if it would block the grandson’s path. On my end, I tried to reassure him—minor criminal records can sometimes be sealed these days, so it might not necessarily affect the third generation. But even as I said it, I knew I wasn’t sure.
The real tragedy, though, was my uncle himself. He’d spent his whole life as a teacher. His pension alone would have been enough to see him through a comfortable, dignified retirement in the village. But now, with a criminal conviction on the horizon, the bulk of that pension was likely gone, leaving only the bare minimum. A lifetime of stability, undone by one drink, one reckless decision, one moment of foolishness.
Thinking back now, I remember that fabricated detail about the “student officer.” Maybe my uncle made up that detail not just to calm the family, but to calm himself—in that moment, he must have desperately wanted to believe that somewhere in this world, there was someone who would cut him some slack. But that’s not how reality works. It wasn’t just one foolish decision; it was an entire mindset—the ingrained habit of thinking, “If I run, it’ll blow over,” “If I pull some strings, it’ll be handled.” Drunk driving was foolish. Running away was even more foolish. And believing that human connections could override the law—that was the biggest foolishness of all.
And yet, I can’t bring myself to blame him. In the countryside, there are many old people like my uncle who have never left the logic of a close-knit, familiar society. They don’t understand procedural justice. They only know that when something goes wrong, the first instinct is to run, to call in favors, to make a big problem small. But that deeply ingrained way of living is worthless in the face of the law.
In the end, there was no way out but to face it. As his nephew, all I could do was think about the kid’s education and try to comfort my cousin. “The law is merciless”—this time, my uncle’s family had learned that lesson the hard way.
Two
Now that I’ve told that story, I think it’s worth tracing who my uncle really is. Otherwise, it’s hard to understand how a man who spent his whole life as a teacher could do something so foolish—drinking and driving, crashing, and then trying to run.
My uncle was born in 1962, the Year of the Tiger. But in the village, he had a more famous nickname: “Niú Yá Zǐ.” Actually, it’s not really a nickname—it’s his childhood name, the one my grandmother always called him. And he lived up to it: my uncle’s defining trait was stubbornness. He had a way of “bàn mán”—a Hunan dialect word for throwing yourself into something with brute, unyielding force. Once he’d made up his mind, nothing could change it. When he was young, that stubbornness was drive. In old age, it curdled into rigidity—and even foolishness.
He was the only son in the family, with three older sisters and my mother, the youngest. My grandfather died early, leaving a household full of women. In a rural village in those days, without a man to hold things together, life was unimaginably hard. After graduating from high school, my uncle started working as a substitute teacher. By that time, his older sisters had already married off one by one, and my mother was still a student at the school where he taught. You could say that from the time he was a teenager, my uncle was the pillar of the family. He did his utmost for all his sisters—especially my mother, the baby of the family.
Around 1979, my uncle began his career as a substitute teacher and kept at it until 1998. In those days, rural teachers had a tough time—a monthly salary of twenty or thirty yuan, and even that was often delayed by the government. Later, the education department encouraged teachers to take unpaid leave. My uncle gritted his teeth, borrowed two hundred yuan, and headed south to Guangdong.
A rural teacher, he started out in a hat factory, then a plating factory, then bounced around a few more places before he and my aunt rented a stall in a computer mall and started a small business. They scrimped and saved, penny by penny, and around 2010, they finally scraped together enough to buy an apartment in Guangdong—5,000 yuan per square meter, total price over 700,000. That was the peak of my uncle’s life. That apartment became the home for three generations of the family, and it still is. Honestly, for a former rural substitute teacher to make it that far—my uncle really fought his way up.
But there was a price.
My uncle and aunt were away working in Guangdong for years, and my male cousin was only about ten at the time—the age when he needed his parents most. With only my grandmother looking after him, he was more or less raised on his own. Internet cafes and arcades were everywhere. My cousin’s grades had been excellent, but slowly he started going down the wrong path. On top of that, with his parents doing okay in business, the family was relatively well-off by village standards; he had spending money and fell in with the wrong crowd. By high school, he’d gotten into everything: early dating, partying, the works. My uncle, frustrated beyond measure, made him repeat his senior year twice. Eventually, he barely scraped above the cutoff for the college entrance exam and got into a university.
During those four years of college, my cousin didn’t really make much of himself academically, though he had a whirlwind romance. Fortunately, his girlfriend had a good character, and after graduation they got married and had a child—all things considered, a silver lining in an otherwise tough story.
Around 2010, after graduating, my cousin took over his parents’ small business. It’s a common ailment of the young—you read a few books and think you know everything. He refused to settle for a small-time trade and insisted on starting his own ventures. In the end, he lost money on every one. Worse, he fell into the real estate industry, which is currently in a downturn, and pretty much squandered the savings my uncle and aunt had worked so hard to accumulate.
Around that time, the school started calling my uncle back to teaching—his unpaid leave was up, and if he didn’t return, he’d lose his permanent position and his pension. So in 2013, my uncle went back to that rural school, returning to the lectern until his retirement in 2022.
Think about that: a sixty-year-old man, after spending more than a decade away, finally buying a home, then going right back to the starting line—all for a pension. A lifetime like an ox pulling a cart, and in the end, right back to the ridge of the same field.
Because of all this, my uncle occupied a special place in the family. He was the one who held up the family’s dignity, the one who bore the most hardship, the one everyone rushed to protect in times of trouble. That’s why my female cousin immediately started making calls; that’s why my male cousin’s first thought was to work connections; that’s even why I initially believed the story about the “student officer letting him go.” It wasn’t that we were stupid—it’s that deep down, none of us wanted to see him take another fall.
And yet, he fell.
A man born in the Year of the Tiger, nicknamed “Ox,” who pushed forward with brute force his whole life—in the end, it was that very brute force that tripped him up. Drinking and riding was brute force. Running after the accident was brute force. Believing that connections could fix it—that was brute force too. He got through his whole life on that force. But this time, he couldn’t get through it.
Three
Believe it or not, for all his tough-guy act, my uncle had one well-known weakness at home: he was terrified of his wife.
My aunt came from a much better background. Her father was a railway worker; in the 1980s, the whole family moved to Guangdong. But my aunt was the eldest daughter, and she married my uncle in ‘82—by the standards of their circumstances at the time, it was marrying down. That disparity stayed with my aunt for life. In her eyes, my uncle was good for nothing except teaching, drinking, and bragging. They fought for decades, but from what I could see, it was mostly one-sided—my aunt doing the shouting, my uncle taking it.
The fights were always about lifestyle differences and clashing values. My grandmother had never left the village; she lived by a thousand-year-old rural way of life, including cooking and hygiene habits that drove my aunt crazy. Before my mother got married, she was also scolded by my aunt for supposedly stealing from her. The house was in an uproar. Later we found out that my male cousin had lost those things—it had nothing to do with my mother. Back then, when material goods were scarce, every little thing seemed like a huge deal. But decades later, none of it really mattered.
The strange thing is, for all the fighting, the family never broke apart. They stuck together for decades, through arguments and noise, and somehow managed to keep things going. No matter how bad the fights got, they still ate at the same table and slept in the same bed. Sometimes I think that’s just how older generations’ marriages worked—not romantic, not even warm, but held together by a stubborn resilience that wouldn’t let them break, no matter what came.
One thing that stands out: I haven’t seen my uncle in two or three years. Even though we live in the same city, every time I say I want to visit, he refuses. Same for the New Year. At first I didn’t understand, but eventually I realized: he probably didn’t want us to see him like this.
The last time I saw him was during the Spring Festival three years ago. He looked so much older than his years. Half his teeth were gone. He was curled up in the sofa, listless—a far cry from the “Niú Yá Zǐ” of his youth. He couldn’t stand being cooped up at home, so after retiring he took on odd jobs—security guard, storekeeper, shop assistant. Not just for the extra money, but to give himself something to do, to avoid listening to my aunt’s nagging all day.
So when he went back to the village alone this time, honestly, I understood. It was his chance to let loose. After all those years of being stifled—away from home, at home, under his wife’s thumb—finally, no one was watching him, no one was nagging him. He was like a penned-up ox let out of its stall, running wild. Drinking, riding motorcycles, boasting—these were the things he’d loved in his youth. He couldn’t do them in Guangdong, couldn’t do them in front of his wife. But back home among old friends, he could finally do them again.
He just didn’t expect that one wild run would end in disaster.
A man held in check his whole life, finally cut loose—and that freedom turned into pain. When I think about it, I can’t describe the feeling. He’s not a bad man. He’s just an ordinary old man, crushed by life, by his wife, by a thousand responsibilities, and the one time he tried to catch his breath, he spent the peace of his later years for it.
Four
When it comes to my uncle’s drinking, I’ve got a mental catalog of images.
He was practically pickled in alcohol his whole life. No drink, no day—that’s no exaggeration. Over the years, I’ve seen and heard about so many of his drunken episodes. Back on his bicycle, later on his motorcycle—after every drinking session, the bike ended up beaten and battered. The worst was when he just passed out on the roadside and slept there all night, then woke up the next morning, dusted himself off, and walked home like nothing happened.
To be honest, by any strict definition, pretty much everything he did before this counted as drunk driving. But before this, he’d always been lucky—the only person he hurt was himself, and there was no one around to stop him. Fall off the bicycle? Get back on. Wipe out on the motorcycle? Get back on. In those days, in the countryside, nobody checked for drunk driving. As long as no one else got hurt, it was your own business.
But this time was different. This time, he crashed into someone else’s vehicle. And finally, the law caught up with him.
To put it bluntly, the bill he’d been dodging for most of his life—this time, it came due with interest.
But here’s the thing: as long as my aunt was around, he wouldn’t touch a drop. She’d curse him, and he’d take it; she’d hit him, and he’d duck. Forget drinking—if she even smelled it on him, he’d be in for a beating. So his years in Guangdong were probably pure frustration. Going back home, free of the “monkey on his back,” gathering with old classmates and colleagues, raising his glass—he threw all caution to the wind.
That was classic him: when no one’s watching, he’d completely let go, no sense of proportion.
There’s another story I think captures his personality perfectly. When I was in middle school and staying at his house, he had a terrible toothache. But instead of going to a doctor, he took a pair of needle-nose pliers, yanked the bad tooth out himself, blood and all, without even disinfecting it. That’s the kind of “bàn mán” approach he used his whole life. If his body acted up, he’d tough it out. If he hit a wall, he’d bull through it. If something went wrong, he’d handle it himself—badly. If it could be solved alone, he’d never ask for help. If it couldn’t be solved alone, he’d insist on solving it alone anyway.
Call it grit if you want to be kind; call it pigheaded if you don’t.
Five
But when it comes to the most complicated, contradictory feelings I have about my uncle, there’s one other story.
After my father passed away, my mother’s mental state changed drastically. She became hazy, detached from everything, like she’d lost her soul. At the time I was away at college and couldn’t be there. She was staying with my uncle and grandmother. For a while, she became severely disturbed—lashing out at my uncle, at my grandmother, seeming not to recognize anyone. My uncle panicked and couldn’t think of any other solution. His “bàn mán” reflex kicked in: he gave her seven or eight sleeping pills at once. She slept for three full days, and when she woke up, her mind had somehow returned to normal.
Frankly, my feelings about this are very mixed.
On one hand, I’m truly grateful. I was still a student then and couldn’t have gone back to take care of my mother. If he hadn’t taken that drastic step, I don’t know what would have become of her. His method was frighteningly rough, but under those circumstances, there might not have been a better option.
On the other hand, I’m also very resentful. Ever since that incident, every time he sees me, he tells the whole story again. No matter who’s around, no matter the occasion, he’ll announce it in front of others: “Your mother went crazy and was hitting me, so I gave her seven or eight sleeping pills, she slept for three days, and she was fine—but I wasn’t sure if she’d wake up, I was really worried…” He says it with this smug look, like he’s recounting a heroic rescue. And I just have to sit there, hearing it over and over—my mother’s breakdown turned into one of his “legendary tales.” He never seems to consider whether I want to hear it, whether I want others to know.
But he’s my uncle. My mother’s older brother. What can I do? Every time, I just sit there, smile, and listen to the whole thing from start to finish.
That’s my uncle. He never asks if you’re okay with something. If he thinks it’s right, he does it. Sleeping pills, pulling teeth, drinking and driving—same instinct. He spent his whole life operating on that “bàn mán” logic. Ask him to do it any other way—he can’t, and he won’t.
In the end, that brute force raised him up, and that same brute force brought him down.
Six
There’s another story that creates a striking contrast with my uncle’s fear of his wife, and it also helps me see his life more clearly.
In front of my aunt, my uncle was a total pushover. But in front of outsiders, he was always the epitome of a “real man.” He said what he meant and meant what he said; he acted decisively and would see things through once decided. When he lectured us nephews, he’d always get this grand, stirring tone: “A true man, standing between heaven and earth, should hold his head high and act with honor!” He sounded like a rustic philosopher. As kids, we’d get all fired up, thinking our uncle was the manliest man on earth.
Then he’d go home, my aunt would yell, and he’d shrink. A tiger outside, a mouse at home. We younger generations had seen this since childhood and were used to it; we even found it kind of endearing. My grandmother used to say it was fate—he was born in the Year of the Tiger and she was born in the Year of the Dragon, a “dragon-tiger rivalry,” and a fortune-teller had predicted it long ago. It was only natural. The tiger may be king of beasts, but under the dragon’s watch, he’s no match. And besides, a man being afraid of his wife isn’t really shameful—it’s almost charming.
But another story gave me a deeper understanding of my uncle’s “manly” side.
My mother’s second sister—my second eldest aunt—was born around 1954. In the mid-1970s, she married a man from a neighboring village whose surname was Zhu. He was a local “legend,” nicknamed “Commander Zhu”—a typical Red Guard leader with little education and a lot of recklessness. During the Cultural Revolution, he’d led hundreds of commune members to besiege the Provincial Revolutionary Committee in Changsha. Bold and short-tempered.
But at home, he was a monster. My second aunt’s first two children were daughters, and he despised her for it. In 1985, she finally had twin sons, thinking things might improve—but he only got worse, treating her even more harshly. The worst incident: he dug a pit more than a meter deep in his own living room and said he was going to “bury his wife.”
To my uncle, a “scumbag” like that was an eyesore—a thorn in his side.
My second aunt withered in that environment, her health and spirit declining day by day. Her twin sons had polio and didn’t get much education. In 1992, she finally couldn’t hold on and died young, barely in her thirties.
My uncle, however, had cut ties with this “Commander Zhu” long before her death. He was the first to see the man’s true nature, and the most resolute in his stance. After my second aunt died, my uncle treated that side of the family like enemies. Later, one of my second aunt’s daughters—another cousin of mine—got married without inviting my grandmother to the wedding. When my uncle learned of this, he announced on the spot that he was cutting off all contact with that cousin. And he stuck to it—decades, no communication.
That’s the other side of my uncle. He feared his wife, but when it came to right and wrong, he never wavered. Anyone who bullied his sister, he’d break with completely, even if it was the notorious “Commander Zhu.” Anyone who disrespected his mother, he’d cut off, even a niece. This vengeful, morally absolute streak ran straight through his “bàn mán” character—in his mind, right was right, wrong was wrong, and there was no middle ground.
But ironically, that very character failed him when it came to his own mistakes. He could cut off “Commander Zhu” cleanly, but he couldn’t cut off his own vices. He couldn’t quit drinking, couldn’t change his stubborn temper, couldn’t let go of his wishful thinking. He could stand up for his sisters, but he couldn’t control his own foot on the motorcycle pedal.
In the end, my uncle was a bundle of contradictions. Tough on outsiders, soft on his wife; harsh on villains, lenient with himself; teaching us to be upright men, yet repeatedly tripping over liquor bottles and motorcycles. He’s no saint, not even what you’d call a smart man. But he is who he is—real enough to make you both admire and resent him, both love and pity him.
A person’s light and shadow often coexist.
Seven
After all this talk about his “bàn mán,” stubbornness, fear of his wife, and loyalty, I can’t help but wonder: how did he become this person? So timid and so tough, so principled yet so brutish—a mass of contradictions packed into one man.
But if you step back and look at the times he grew up in, it all makes sense.
My uncle’s character was forged by survival in the Hunan countryside of the 1960s and 70s.
Back then, in the commune era, every family lived on work points. If no one in a household stood up for themselves, they’d get shoved to the back of the line for grain, assigned the hardest labor, and pushed around constantly. The rules were primitive: the fiercer you were, the more right you had; the harder you were, the less you suffered. My uncle was the only son, and with my grandfather gone early and the house full of women, if he hadn’t gone full “bàn mán”—if he hadn’t armored himself as someone not to be crossed—that family would have been trampled into the mud.
My grandfather’s older brother—my uncle’s uncle—died in the Cultural Revolution. He was executed, implicated in the “AB League” incident in Hunan. I don’t know much about it, and the family rarely talks about it. But think about it: a teenage boy, watching his own uncle executed in a political purge—what conclusion would he draw? That the world was irrational. That the world devoured people. To survive, you had to be meaner and harder than it. No room for gentleness or deference—under those conditions, you wouldn’t last three days.
So my uncle turned himself into an “ox.” Not because he wanted to—but because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t survive. He went to high school and became a substitute teacher, which by rural standards made him an educated man. But education alone wasn’t enough. You also needed a temper and a firm hand to hold your own, to protect your patch of land. He was strict with students, blunt with colleagues, relentless with anyone who bullied his family—all of it shaped by that environment.
He was also fiercely loyal to “his own.” Whenever one of his sisters was mistreated by her in-laws, he was the first to rush over and back her up. After my second aunt married “Commander Zhu” and suffered terribly, my uncle had the guts to break with that fearless “Commander” completely, cutting him off for good. And that took nerve. “Commander Zhu” was a more extreme alcoholic—a “drunk lunatic” capable of anything. But my uncle wasn’t afraid, because he was certain of one principle: mess with my sister, mess with my whole family—and there’s no room for negotiation.
That “us versus them” logic was also a product of that era. To outsiders, you were the fiercer beast. To family, even if they were in the wrong, you protected them. This is the same thing as his “cowardice” in front of his wife and his “toughness” in front of his sisters—his wife was “inside,” and he accepted that; his sisters were “inside,” and he carried them; but if anyone outside dared touch that “inside,” he went all out.
But when that survival logic is brought into today’s world, it falls apart.
The era that taught him to be “bàn mán” in order to survive is long gone. But he carried that era’s way of living into the present. He thought drinking and riding a motorcycle in his hometown was no big deal—hadn’t he been doing it forever? He thought running away and calling in favors would fix it—hadn’t that always worked? He thought laws were dead and people were alive—hadn’t things always been decided by “people”?
He forgot—or maybe never realized—that the world outside had changed. The law doesn’t care about “how things used to be” or “I’m the only man in my family holding it together.”
It’s ironic. All his life, my uncle wanted to protect his family, his sisters, his dignity, his stability. And in the end, it was his own “old ways” that pushed all of those things to the cliff’s edge. His pension may be gone. His grandson’s military academy dreams may be shattered. The family’s respectability may be lost. Everything he tried to shield was ultimately destroyed by his own hands.
He’s not a bad person. He’s just someone living in a bygone era, using outdated rules to deal with a problem that belongs to an entirely different age.
Sometimes I think that in the rural villages of that era, there were many people like my uncle. They used their shoulders to hold up large families, lived with dignity in their own way, and in doing so, locked their minds firmly in the experiences of that era. When the times shifted, they found themselves unable to keep up—and no longer knew how to adapt. Or refused to.
An ox that’s pulled a cart its whole life—you can’t suddenly tell it the gate’s open, the road’s changed, the rules are different. It won’t understand. It can’t learn. All it can do is keep charging forward with its old habits, smashing its head bloody.
My uncle is that ox. It’s not that he isn’t smart. It’s that the world moved too fast, and he didn’t look up in time.
Eight
What’s most heartbreaking about this whole thing is that it could have been avoided in so many ways.
My uncle had choices. He was retired, drawing a pension. Not rich, but more than enough to live a stable, comfortable life. He could have gotten rid of that beat-up old motorcycle and bought an electric scooter—slower, quieter, no license needed, and no one would ever check him for drunk driving. With an electric scooter, that night he could have drunk as much as he wanted, weaved his way home, maybe hit a curb and fallen over, gotten up, dusted himself off, and been fine.
Or, if he’d been just a little more “cunning,” he could have not run after the crash. He could have settled it on the spot, paid the other guy off—the other guy was an old man, a friend of a friend, maybe a few hundred yuan would have been enough. The drunk driving part would never have gone to the cops.
Or at the very least, after the meal, someone at the table could have given him a ride home. These were all retired rural schoolteachers—every one of them had a tricycle or electric scooter. It would have taken a minute. But not a single person offered. It wasn’t that they didn’t care. It’s that not one of them thought anything was wrong with “drinking and riding home.” They’d seen it a thousand times—hell, every one of them had probably done it themselves.
That dinner party was just a bunch of old retired teachers, gathering over drinks, and after it ended, each went home. No one stopped him. No one warned him. Because in their circle, drinking and driving wasn’t a big deal—it was normal. They’d grown up that way: drink, ride, fall, get up, and if you got hurt, tough luck. None of them had ever heard of anyone getting caught for it.
But that era is over.
My uncle had a progressive side and a backward side. In his youth, he was bold and enterprising, going from a rural substitute teacher to buying a home in Guangdong—that was progress. But deep down, he never caught up with modern society’s rule of law. He always felt that “this is how we’ve always done it, what’s the big deal?"—that was backwardness. The drunk driving incident was the culmination of that backwardness.
When I think about it, his entire “bàn mán” survival logic was a shield in the 1960s and 70s—but in today’s world, it’s a death warrant. The era of relying on guts, connections, and “running away” to fix everything is long over. But my uncle didn’t make the transition, and neither did his old buddies. So they stayed stuck in the inertia of the old days, until reality gave them a hard, hard knock.
This should serve as a clear lesson for everyone.
For my male cousin, his father’s one moment of foolishness might have ruined his son’s chance at a military academy. Is there any sharper pain for a father? For my female cousin, she’ll surely be more vigilant about advising the older folks in the family, not letting them keep “doing things the old way.” For me—someone who studied law for years—this whole affair reminds me that the dignity of the law isn’t in how harsh it is, but in how inevitably it comes for you, no matter how far or how long you run.
For my uncle, the price has already been paid. His pension will shrink drastically. His grandson’s future is clouded. A lifetime’s dignity, shattered by a single verdict. I don’t know whether he regrets it now, but I hope he does. Because only regret can teach a person that some rules are not meant to be skirted, but to be kept.
In the end, each generation has its own mission. My uncle’s generation’s mission was to survive, to hold the family together, to give their children a better life than they had. He did it, and not badly. But the mission is accomplished, and the road isn’t over. The rest of the way, he has to walk it differently—lawfully, cautiously, without wishful thinking.
I hope this time, he truly wakes up.
Nine
Finally, I want to say a few more words about the relationship between me and my uncle. Maybe that will explain why, when I write this, my feelings are so complicated.
On my father’s side—my grandparents, my father, and his four siblings—they were all on the “quiet” side. My grandfather, even though he’d been village party secretary for thirty years, was always steady and reserved, not flashy or confrontational. That temperament passed down to my father and influenced our generation too. So within our extended family, my uncle’s “ox temper” and “bàn mán” ways always seemed a bit odd, even out of place.
As a child, I was actually a little afraid of my uncle. Every time I went to my grandmother’s house, I’d be on edge, worried about doing something wrong and getting scolded by him. He was loud, direct, and wore his feelings on his face—unlike my father, who bottled everything up. As a kid facing that kind of elder, the instinct was to keep a low profile.
But my uncle actually held my father in high regard. I remember my father once told me, before he passed away, that of the four brothers-in-law in the family, only my father really clicked with him. My father was stable, unflappable, rarely arguing over things, always giving more and taking less. My uncle, with his quick temper and his tendency to argue, knew in his heart that a person like my father was someone you could get along with for a long time.
Funny how that works—the things my uncle admired were exactly the opposite of his own character.
And between me and my uncle, there’s another layer—deeper, unspoken.
I found a blog post I’d written in 2013, What Accidents Bring Us . In those years, my father was repeatedly in critical condition, and my uncle’s calls came one after another. He wasn’t just passing messages from my mother. He was the one making the calls—the one handing me the bad news.
But he was also the one, during one drunken moment after my father died, who came up to me unsteadily and asked: “The tree desires stillness, but the wind will not cease”—what comes next? I was struck dumb, cold sweat running down my back. He saw I couldn’t answer—and though he was dead drunk, as a middle-school Chinese teacher, he earnestly analyzed the whole line for me. He used to complain that no one understood his inner pain. But after that night, whenever he saw me, he never said that again.
In that moment, I understood. He had lost the brother-in-law he got along with best. And I had lost my father. That shared understanding between us needed no further explanation.
As for me—raised under my father’s influence, I leaned more toward the “quiet” side. After graduating and entering the workforce, to my uncle’s family, I was always the “extremely introverted” one. They’d often call me a “mute drum”—hit it and it makes a sound; otherwise, it sits there silent. And that was true: when I visited my uncle’s house, I’d spend most of the time not speaking, just listening.
It wasn’t just personality. My family wasn’t well off, and around them I always felt a kind of inferiority, like I was “looking up” to them. Even though I knew we were family, I couldn’t get past that barrier. Plus, my mother was the youngest, which made me the youngest of all the cousins on that side. So beyond listening to elders and older cousins, it didn’t feel like my place to say much. That was just the “nephew’s duty,” I suppose.
But my uncle probably never knew how deeply he actually shaped my character. Even though I never learned his “boldness,” and even though in his eyes I was always a “mute drum,” as a child I watched him stand up for his sisters in the village, confront unreasonable people—and I secretly admired him. The seed of “knowing when to be tough” was planted by him. I just didn’t learn much of it, or rather, I digested it differently—quiet, but with a bottom line; easygoing, but knowing what I couldn’t tolerate.
Now that my uncle is in this mess, my feelings are a tangle. On one hand, I ache for him—an old man who worked so hard his whole life, now facing such upheaval in his later years. On the other hand, I can’t help thinking: if only half his stubborn force could be transferred to me, or half my quiet calm to him, maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today.
But there are no “ifs.”
What my uncle taught me—some of it intentional, some unintentional. The intentional lesson: “A true man stands tall between heaven and earth.” The unintentional lesson: “Bones too hard break too easily.” Over the years, I’ve slowly come to understand: in life, you need both the strength to hold up a family and the clarity to stay within boundaries; both the courage to face trouble and the awe to respect the rules.
My uncle, through the rise and fall of his entire life, gave me the hardest lesson of all.