Each of us has his hero, mine is my grandfather.
One day when I was then 5 years old, I was in a drawing class located in
a small shopping center.
Suddenly, in the middle of the lesson, the electricity was cut off, the mall went black.
In Hong Kong, it never gets dark, even at night.
All the children were crying.
I saw all the children leave one by one with their parents but I had to stay in the room.
I knew my parents couldn't pick me up because they were working, my father in his office and my mother in school.
A little later, a tall, skinny man, holding a flashlight and a long umbrella called me.
I immediately recognized he was my grandfather.
We left in the dark and returned to his house, under the protection of his large umbrella.
My grandfather was a Tai Chi master.
He was also a scholar who could memorized three hundred poems from the Tang Dynasty.
He was fluent in English and Japanese.
During Japan's occupation in Hong Kong, as a civil servant, he did Japanese translations.
And as he was good at Chinese calligraphy, he composed poems on my first drawings.
Before my training in glass arts, before COVID, I returned to Hong Kong at least once a year.
On every trip, I hastened to visit my grandfather first.
He spent his last years in the hospital, it was very sad for me.
I last saw him 4 months before he died in 2015, he was then 102!
The funeral is a ritual, everyone follows it.
However, when my grandfather died, my parents told me, "Stay at work, it's more important."
As far as they were concerned, I had already said goodbye to my grandfather during my last visit.
So I didn't go to his funeral.
Today, I still feel regret. It seems
I lack something.
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