Ling Cong Xin, better known as Sunny Ling to his Canadian friends, died on Sunday exactly two months short of his 94th birthday. Sunny and his late wife came to Canada in 1987 to live with their daughter and her family in Lougheed. For several years, I had the privilege of being his ESL tutor.
When I met Sunny, his knowledge of the English language was already, in some ways, as good or better than mine. He had an extensive vocabulary and his understanding of the mechanics of the language was superb. Pronunciation was his biggest handicap and a real source of frustration for him. Sunny was, however, a lifelong learner who never gave up trying to improve his ability to communicate with those around him.
In addition to improving his English, Sunny had another dream. In China, he had been trained as a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine as well as an acupuncturist and it was his desire to become a certified acupuncturist in Alberta. He took the three part exam in 1993, passing the practical and oral tests but falling just short of a passing grade on the written portion which was a timed test administered only in English. In 1996, he decided to rewrite the test and we spent many of our tutoring sessions working on the required vocabulary. Again, he fell short. It was soon after that that the registry, recognizing that Sunny would have passed had he used a translator or had more time to write the test, decided to make an exemption in his case and invited him to come to Edmonton to personally accept his certificate. Though he never accomplished his dream of opening an acupuncture clinic in Lougheed, it was indeed a proud moment for Sunny. He was 84 years old at the time.
When Sunny received his certification as an acupuncturist, he was interviewed by our local newspaper and a feature article appeared. I had been trying for some time to convince him that he ought to record his memories and experiences but he had always been reluctant to do so. As we read through the newspaper article together he expressed frustration over the fact that he felt that the reporter had not understood everything he had told her. I once again told him that he ought to tell his own story. The following week, he asked if I would help and so began one of the most exciting projects that I have ever had the privilege to be involved in. As we worked together week after week, it was like sitting across the table from a living history book!
The son of Chinese parents, Sunny was born in Indonesia on January 16, 1916. He remembered carefree childhood days going to the crowded market with his mother each morning, climbing trees and playing with his friends. In 1924, his parents decided to return to China where his father would join his uncle and build a family business in Canton (present day Guangzhou). The trip across the South China Sea was a rough and terrifying one for young Cong Xin but he quickly adapted to life in China where he and his parents were surrounded by relatives from both their families.
It was here that Sunny began his formal education first attending a small private school near the family home and later, a prestigious boarding school for teenage boys. Though Sunny’s father had only had about two years of formal education, he was a self taught man who recognized that his homeland was changing and he carefully chose a school that he hoped would help prepare his son for life in the new China.
In the years that followed, Sunny lived through some of the most tumultuous decades in China’s history. He spent his first year of university in Shanghai. During that time, the presence of Japanese military personnel became more and more noticeable and when the school year ended male students were asked by the government to spend their summer vacation taking military training. After two months at a military camp outside Shanghai, Sunny returned to Canton to continue his studies there. At first life was peaceful but soon the Japanese swept through China and in the fall of 1938, Canton was captured. Most of the students and teaching staff of the university and medical school that Sunny was attending packed up and moved inland together. Travel was difficult. In order to slow down the movement of the Japanese, the government had asked people living near roads and railways to destroy them. The only option was to travel on foot. Over one thousand people set out walking all the way to Hong Kong. This is normally a trip of approximately 75 miles but a much longer, less direct route was taken in order to avoid the Japanese forces. From Hong Kong they traveled by boat and train and eventually donkey until they reached the relative safety of a small town in the countryside near Kunming. Here those who survived the trip lived and studied wherever they could find space in residential homes and temples. Sunny remembered staying in a Buddhist temple where the wind whistled through the walls. Regular classes were not held but the professors continued to guide the students as they completed assignments and wrote essays using reference books that they had carried from Canton. Much of what they learned had little to do with academics, however, and much to do with survival. The young men learned to hunt and they ate whatever they could get their hands on including snakes and wild pigs.
During this time Sunny completely lost contact with his family who had escaped to Hong Kong. Several years passed before they were reunited and it was only then that he learned that his father had contracted a serious disease and died less than a year after they parted.
In 1940, Sunny traveled by bus to the city of Chongqing which had become the wartime capital of China. There he wrote an examination and, along with approximately 120 other youths, was accepted into a training program designed to prepare them to help build up China which was by this time in political and financial ruin. Every Monday, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist Party or Koumintang, came to speak to the students. Sunny recalled him walking amongst the students offering words of encouragement. It still boggles my mind that week after week I sat in a coffee shop in a tiny Alberta town and listened to a man who had personally known a historical figure like Chiang Kai-shek whom I had only read about in textbooks!
After completing his training, Sunny worked for the government taxation bureau. Life in China continued to be difficult. By the time the war with Japan came to an end, the Communists, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, had gained control of large areas of northern China. Fighting soon broke out between the Communists and the Koumintang over control of the rest of the country and in 1949, the Communist forces defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces and took control of mainland China. Sunny fled to Hong Kong and worked for a time as a journalist writing newspaper articles about what was happening in China under the Communists. Later a series of these articles was compiled and published as a small book which was of particular interest to Chinese refugees who wanted to know exactly what was happening in their country.
Returning to China, he found that life had become even more difficult. People who expressed anti government opinions were imprisoned or killed. It was illegal for people to organize for any reason. Food and other necessities were rationed and all travel required government approval. For Sunny, a former official of the Nationalist government, finding a way to support himself and his mother was the biggest challenge. He tried many different jobs from raising chickens to teaching school, eventually learning the book binding trade. During these years, though he did not establish a formal practice, Sunny was often called upon to treat the illnesses of family, friends and coworkers.
During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, many of China’s intellectuals were imprisoned or forced to leave the cities and take menial jobs in the countryside. Sunny, who had by that time a wife and young daughter, was forced to leave Canton in 1967 and move into the countryside. I had hoped that we might continue writing his story up to the point when he made the decision to leave China and come to Canada but when we reached this point in it’s telling he began to claim that his memory was failing him. I believe that reliving the memories simply became more than he could bear. He also expressed a genuine fear that if some of the things he told me about were ever published, the Chinese government might even today make life difficult for relatives still living in that country.
Before the Communists took over, while Sunny was working for the Nationalist government, he had occasionally traveled into the countryside to get away from the city and enjoy the scenery. It was on one of these trips that he befriended a Buddhist monk who taught him the ancient Chinese martial art of tai chi. Tai chi combines gentle exercise with deep breathing and has many benefits including improved flexibility and reduced stress. Sunny continued to practice tai chi on a daily basis for the remainder of his life. At one point, he taught me the basic movements. Sad to say, I didn’t keep up the practice and have forgotten the moves but his example was one I haven’t forgotten and it helps me stick with the exercise routine that is part of my daily life.
Several years ago, when his body began to fail and he needed more care than his daughter, who operates a small town motel and restaurant, could provide, Sunny moved to a Chinese seniors home in Edmonton. I remember when I visited him shortly after the move, how frustrated he was by the fact that most of the residents there were content to spend their days playing cards and watching TV. Sunny wanted to keep on learning and was happy to report that he’d found a new ESL tutor! Learning calls for painstaking effort, he once told me, and even in his senior years, he was a man who was willing to put in that effort.
On Saturday morning, I’ll be traveling to Edmonton to attend his funeral. I have no idea what to expect. It may be a Buddhist service and it may be conducted entirely in Chinese but I want to be there to pay my respects to a man who became a very special friend.
time to try out a new recipe but the carrots lyonnaise that my aunt introduced us to recently turned out very well. Escargots in mushroom caps has also become one of our Christmas traditions. We enjoyed those on Christmas evening after the turkey had had time to settle. Boxing Day was my day to relax a bit. I used the breadmaker that my aunt gave me recently to make fresh buns to go with the delicious french onion soup that Melaina made for lunch. My sister, Linda, her husband and their two youngest teens arrived later that afternoon with a cooler full of their Christmas dinner leftovers. We combined them with ours and enjoyed another feast. In fact, it was such a success that we might try it again another year. Someone recently told me that feasting is just one letter away from fasting and that’s what I probably ought to be doing now!
Following Augustine 