Eternal Solace: Eve J. Chung on Tradition, Family and Mourning in Taiwan

In the spring of 2023, I told my mom that I was going to go visit Taiwan, for the first time in ten years. Both of my parents immigrated to the US from Taipei, and we used to go back frequently when I was younger.

“I will pick you up at the airport,” Mom declared.

“That makes no sense,” I replied. “You don’t live in Taiwan.”

Both of my parents were in mainland China, so Mom “picking me up” meant that she too would have to fly there.

“No no,” She insisted. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t even read Chinese. You will be confused.”

As Mom said this, her face was too close to the camera for our video call, and her hair was a lavender hue. A few weeks ago, she had started using a purple treatment that was supposed to remove brassiness from her gray hair, but she had left it on too long. At the age of 63, Mom was like a beta fish—brilliantly colored, and willing to fight with anyone about anything.

“I’m 37, Mom. I’ll be fine. All the signs are in English. And for the record, I can read some Chinese.”

“No, no,” She repeated. “You can’t. I will pick you up.”

“No Mom, you’re tired. You need to rest.”

“I’m not tired! You’re tired! I will pick you up. Stop arguing with me, that’s what makes me tired! Not that I am tired, okay?”

I had forgotten that Mom, like my two-year-old, now considered “tired” an insult, and would not tolerate slander.

It was hard to pinpoint when I turned into my mom, and she turned into my grandma, who I called Puo Puo, but our conversations had morphed into the ones that they used to have. Mom and Puo Puo had opposite personalities, and bickered incessantly when I was a girl. However, they were both devoted to their families, and quickly united against any threat to their loved ones, whether real or perceived. In this regard, the two of them were always worried about my great-grandmother, Puo Puo’s mom, who I called Ah Zhou.

Back then, I didn’t understand why Ah Zhou was the subject of so much stress; Ah Zhou only spoke Shandongese, not Mandarin, so I couldn’t communicate with her directly. I saw Ah Zhou through a censored filter, cushioned by milk tea and rice crackers, sliced pears and mountain apples.

All I knew was Mom and Puo Puo were always giving Ah Zhou money, but Ah Zhou was still poor.

I didn’t care enough to ask what where the money went. While the three of them squabbled about Ah Zhou’s spending habits, I ate snacks and watched cartoons.

Throughout my childhood, Mom and I would travel over 20 hours from Boston to Taipei, adjusting to a 12-hour time difference, just to spend two weeks with Puo Puo and see Ah Zhou. When I was planning my 2023 trip, Mom was buzzing with anxiety. Part of her neurosis was probably genetic, while the other part was due to her upbringing—she was raised by survivors of China’s Communist Revolution, and grew up during Taiwan’s martial law era. Mom needed to feel prepared, but this time in Taipei, both of us were going to be a bit lost.

Ah Zhou had died in 2003, and Puo Puo had died in 2013, so this would be our first visit without either of them. I had been putting off this trip for so long precisely because I couldn’t imagine being in Taiwan without Puo Puo, who used to pick us up at the airport. We always went straight to her apartment, except for my last visit in 2013, when we went straight to the hospital.

When Mom called to tell me that she had booked us an Airbnb, she asked, “Do you want to visit Puo Puo?”

She often talked about Puo Puo in present tense, with imagined emotions, like she was still alive, so I did too.

“Obviously I want to visit Puo Puo,” I said. “How could I go to Taipei and not visit Puo Puo?”

“I thought so. You have big news to share. She’s going to be very happy.”

For Mom and me, visiting our grandmothers was going to be more complicated this time—not just because they were deceased, but because access to graves in Taiwan isn’t straight forward. Chinese and Taiwanese people tend to have ancestral tombs, which hold the remains of several generations. Unlike cemeteries, these are usually closed to the public, and one can only visit if accompanied by a family member with a pass or key. For people who adhere to Confucian tradition however, there is a gendered aspect to this that creates difficulties for women like Mom.

According to Confucian belief, Mom, Puo Puo, Ah Zhou and I are not in the same family. We are in four different families, because the patrilineal system is very rigid. Under Chinese religion, only men can pray for and send offerings to their predecessors in the spirit realm. During Lunar New Year for example, women prepare the feast, but men light the incense that invite our ghosts to partake. Without a male heir, an entire ancestral line will starve in the spirit realm. Confucius said that of all unfilial acts, failure to bear a son was the most unforgivable. Under his teachings, daughters were wives for other people’s sons, and therefore had to depend on their brothers to care for their parents.

This meant that Mom and I could not even pray for Puo Puo or Ah Zhou at their graves. If I followed traditional practice, I would be able to perform mourning rites for my in-laws, but not for my own parents.

I rejected these antiquated beliefs, but Mom, despite being a scientist, remained bound by them. As a result, she struggled with her grief in a way that might not have made sense to someone outside of our culture. While I prayed to whoever I wished, Mom did not feel free to do so. She instead told me that she is obligated to make sure that her brothers and their sons live well, so that Puo Puo will be able to receive offerings in the spirit world. Death separates all of us from our loved ones, but there was a certain sharpness to it for Mom, since she believed in an afterlife, but also believed that she was cut off from her parents there.

In Taiwan, Puo Puo’s remains are in the Lee family tomb, and Ah Zhou’s site is controlled by the *Ang family. Mom is a Chung, so she could visit her in-laws’ remains whenever she wanted to, but she had to coordinate with two different sets of relatives to visit her mom and grandma.

There was yet another layer of difficulty here. Puo Puo had four siblings, but Mom was mad at three of them, including the man who is in charge of the Ang family tombs.

Mom is like a beta fish now, but this is because she spent much of her youth subdued. Her feuds with our relatives usually resulted from one or several offenses against either Puo Puo or Ah Zhou. Some of these were minor, like Puo Puo’s second sister calling her “bossy.” Some were very old, like Puo Puo’s third sister slapping her in the face twenty years ago. Some were by affiliation, like Ah Zhou’s son siding with his wife instead of Ah Zhou. And some were inherited, like Puo Puo’s grudge against her cousin.

Mom has been rabidly protective of Puo Puo, largely because she felt like she couldn’t do enough for her because she was a girl. Mom, Puo Puo and I were all the first-born children in our families, but for Confucian purposes that was irrelevant. As daughters, it just meant that we all had to listen to our mothers fret about bearing a son. For many women in our situation, there was both shame and guilt associated with failing to be a boy—especially if our mothers suffered as a result.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that Mom told me that she grew up watching Ah Zhou literally on her knees.

Like Confucius, Ah Zhou was from Shandong province, in China. Since Ah Zhou married an eldest son, she was supposed to produce an heir, but instead she had daughter after daughter, a total of four. Ah Zhou’s mother-in-law used to make her kneel in the kitchen as punishment for even minor transgressions, like spilling soup; there was a cultural phenomenon in which women who managed to have sons looked down on those who couldn’t. In the home, Ah Zhou was essentially a domestic servant, the first to rise at 4:00 am to cook, and the last to sleep. When the Communist Revolution reached its turning point in 1949, Ah Zhou’s husband and mother-in-law fled to Taiwan, and abandoned her and the girls in Shandong.

Ah Zhou, through immense determination, managed to travel over a thousand miles, with three daughters in tow, to track down her husband in Taipei. Though the family had treated her horribly, she thought that her daughters would have a better future if they reunited. Puo Puo and her sisters were able to have an excellent education in Taiwan, but Ah Zhou’s life remained exactly as it had been in Shandong—she continued to live under her mother-in-law’s thumb, enduring years of humiliation and ill-treatment.

Mom remembers witnessing Ah Zhou’s punishments, vividly.

Mom doesn’t like to talk about her regrets, but she has told me, more than once, that she wishes that she had stood up for Ah Zhou.

It was hard though, especially for a child.

Many Chinese women from earlier generations were taught to be obedient, and part of obedience was silence. Confucius said that women have three masters—their father, their husband, and then, their son. From youth, Ah Zhou, Puo Puo, Mom and I were taught, through lessons small and large, that we were worth less than our brothers. When Mom was a child, her grandfather only brought toys for her brothers when he visited. When Puo Puo gave birth to Mom, Ah Zhou cried because she was worried that Puo Puo would share her fate. In my own paternal grandparents’ house, there was only a photograph of my brother, the one who could pass on their surname; none their other 11 grandchildren mattered.

After decades of abuse, Ah Zhou eventually had a son, and only then, did she feel like she could say “no” to her mother-in-law—that she could finally stop kneeling.

As an adult, I think about Ah Zhou often, and Mom and Puo Puo’s struggle to help her, including by buying Ah Zhou her own apartment. Every woman in my family wants to support her mother, and Mom lived frugally so she could give money to Puo Puo. Puo Puo however, passed it all to Ah Zhou. Ah Zhou meanwhile, was a bottomless hole because she in turn sent every spare cent to her own mother, who was in Shandong. It wasn’t until Ah Zhou’s was elderly that we learned that Ah Zhou had been keeping a bit of money for herself. When she was dying, she told us what she had been saving for:

Her own grave.

Despite being a person who never deviated from tradition in life, Ah Zhou bought her own plot of land because she did not want to join the Ang family tomb. Specifically, she said that she didn’t want to be near her abusive mother-in-law, because sharing a space would mean spending eternity on her knees. For Ah Zhou, the afterlife offered a certain freedom that she never had while she was alive—and never thought she could obtain otherwise.

In the end, Puo Puo made sure that Ah Zhou got what she asked for. Ah Zhou and her husband are in their own grave, separate from the family tomb. However, it is unclear that Ah Zhou’s solace will be preserved. For over a decade, Ah Zhou’s only son has wanted to move her remains back to the family tomb. It is a matter of convenience, because it is difficult to clean and maintain two different locations.

While Puo Puo was alive, she fought him tooth and nail to keep Ah Zhou where she was, and where she had explicitly asked to be. After Puo Puo died, Mom picked up this battle, but with far less authority—no authority, actually. Puo Puo was a daughter who “married out” of the Ang family, while Mom was never in it to begin with. If Mom were allowed to, she would gladly move Ah Zhou to the Chung family grave, but to do so she would have to obtain permission from my father’s side—and they would likely consider the request inappropriate.

It is complicated, but to this day, women like my mom are still navigating the restrictions of tradition, and must find loopholes to do what they want. Mom remains close to her youngest brother, and by virtue of that relationship, we can visit Puo Puo’s grave.

I landed in Taiwan in July, on a blistering hot day, characteristic of the tropical climate. My uncle picked me up from the airport, and took me to the Airbnb, a modern room that was stale and somewhat forlorn compared with Puo Puo’s apartment which had been above an outdoor market. From there, we went on a 45-minute drive to the mountains, where there is a community of tombs, each a small stone or concrete shack with a platform for offerings. The Lee family tomb is up a narrow path, infested with mosquitoes and spiders, with crumbling stairs that require you to haul yourself up by grabbing onto tree branches. I admit, I understand why Ah Zhou’s son doesn’t want to do this for two different tombs—but I also know that there is no way in hell that the women in my family would force their mother to share a resting place with her abuser, even if that meant just moving her to a temple in the city.

Many of the tombs have decorations, like statues or carvings, and they usually indicate the family’s city or province of origin. Most of the families came from Fujian hundreds of years ago, but Puo Puo’s grave is one of the few that says, “Shandong.”

Beneath a plaque decorated with chrysanthemums, Mom and I lit incense for Puo Puo—an act which was not a big deal for me, but was significant for Mom because just a few decades ago, Ah Zhou was not allowed to do this for her own mother. Mom remains traditional in ways that frustrate me, but I do recognize that in her own way, she has pushed against boundaries and continues to change.

Mom and I swept the tomb, and after the incense smoldered into ash, I presented my own gift to Puo Puo. It was an advanced reader copy of my debut novel, Daughters of Shandong, which I had wrote based on her and Ah Zhou’s journey from Shandong to Taiwan.

We all grieve in different ways, and for me, completing this manuscript was what made me feel like I could go back to Taipei again. I began this novel in 2022 because I wanted to preserve a tie for my children, not necessarily to Puo Puo’s family, but to the history that defined us all.

On this trip to Taipei, Mom and I did not go to Ah Zhou’s grave, but we talked about her legacy. I do not idealize the afterlife, but that is largely because of the privilege I have in my present. Unlike Ah Zhou, I have spaces that are my own, where I am free, and I am safe.

When I examine the course of Ah Zhou’s life, I see such immense strength, formidable intelligence, and awe-inspiring determination. And yet, within her own home, Ah Zhou was a broken woman, so accustomed to being abused that she was later mistreated by her own daughter-in-law. It is without question that her hardship factored into my decision to approach our traditions differently.

Daughters of Shandong is the story, not of a woman who found solace in a grave, but of a woman who had bound feet as a child, yet still took three daughters on a wheelbarrow, walking from rural Shandong to Qingdao. Ah Zhou forged her travel documents, hid in a neighbor’s shed, and squatted on the streets just so she could beg and barter for food. In the city, she managed to get odd jobs folding matchboxes, before bribing a police officer to help her buy train tickets South. Despite having nothing but obligations, she managed to take her daughters back to the man that she thought could provide for them.

I wish so much that Ah Zhou had put her genius and perseverance into something other than reuniting with her tormentors. Sometimes, I wonder how Ah Zhou would have reacted if she reread her own story. Would she realize how utterly amazing it was? Or would she simply think it was a woman finding her husband and nothing more?

I will likely never visit Ah Zhou’s grave, but I hope that sharing her story can be an equivalent way to honor her. Daughters of Shandong is about women and girls who fought to survive, and a series of decisions that built on each other to push back against harmful beliefs. It is my aspiration that at least a few people who read my book can find encouragement, especially anyone who is still living on their knees, like Ah Zhou did. To those people, I hope that you realize that you are stronger than you think you are. I hope that you realize, while you are still alive, how powerful you can be.

Mom and I left the mountain tomb, smelling of smoke and insecticide. We slid down the rubble, back to my uncle’s car, steadily finding our footing. From there, we went to Puo Puo’s favorite dumpling house, Shandong Restaurant, and took my kids to Puo Puo’s old neighborhood market. I waited while Mom argued with a vendor, who tried to charge her “tourist” prices, and then ate street food at Mom’s favorite stand. I hope that my kids will love Mom as much as I love Puo Puo, and that they will find their own special meaning in our visits to Taipei. Though Mom and I fought often when I was growing up, we have always been united by Puo Puo. I was glad to see that despite Puo Puo’s passing, that hasn’t changed.

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Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung is available from Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.