Taiwan art historian: My brother, my Scorpio hero [Part 1]

It never crossed my mind that my dage (大哥, elder brother) was a Scorpio.

Perhaps it was because my family tended to remember birthdays using the lunar calendar. I had always vaguely remembered that his birthday fell on the fourth day of the tenth month in 1943, so I assumed that he was a Libra. After he passed away, I converted the dates to the Gregorian calendar and found that it corresponded to 1 November — a typical Scorpio.

Suddenly, I felt happy. I had a dashing older brother who was a Scorpio.

Dage was very handsome — not just your average good-looking male, but the kind that turned heads.

In the 1950s, we stayed at Dalongdong (大龙峒), an old enclave of the Tong’an (同安) people in the northern suburbs of Taipei. When I was four or five years old and dage was nine or ten years old, he would take me swimming at the nearby confluence of the Tamsui and Keelung rivers. 

He held my hand and slowly led me to the deep end. I felt waves of water splashing against me, reaching up to my chin. I instinctively tiptoed and began to float. I was terrified when my feet couldn’t touch the bottom, and chided myself for being so short, thinking how wonderful it would be if I were tall like dage.  

I guess that was my earliest admiration for dage!

Because we were at the confluence of two rivers, the waters were muddy and choppy, with dead cats and dogs floating about. I accidentally choked on a mouthful of dirty water and tightly grabbed onto dage’s arm. He led me to the shallow end where my feet could firmly touch the ground. He dived into the muddy waves, freely backstroking and snorkelling like a fish. That’s the dage I envied and adored as a child!   

“My feet can’t touch the bottom, I don’t feel safe,” I said.

“You’re learning to swim, of course your feet won’t touch the ground.”

I should have realised then that he was a water sign whereas I am an earth sign.

I was still very skinny when I was about to graduate from elementary school. Dage was four years older than me and had grown to be a handsome young man. He frequently lifted dumbbells in the courtyard shirtless. In the late 1950s, people didn’t know much about working out. Dage made his own dumbbells out of stone, placed a bench in the courtyard and laid face up on the bench, lifting a dumbbell in each hand. He built strong chest muscles and firm and beautiful shoulders and arms.   

In particular, he had flat, strong and toned abs of steel. He was always doing sit-ups and push-ups, and his body was also very different from those training with modern weight machines.  

The courtyard fence was woven together with split bamboo strips and had many gaps. Passersby outside would stop and peer through, while familiar neighbours would shout praises, like the crowd at a martial arts hall applauding the young men practising.  

Dalongdong is a traditional and conservative community. Apart from the idols in the temples, the drawings of Diaochan (貂蝉, one of the four beauties of ancient China) and Lü Bu (吕布, a Chinese warlord) in murals, and the huadan (花旦) and xiaosheng (小生) roles in Chinese opera at open-air stages that are more exuberant and elaborate, most residents were rather bland in real life — their clothes were drab and faces were unenthusiastic.   

When dage became an adolescent, the community rejoiced. It was as if his body naturally glowed, and he walked around with an air of authority. Many people looked at him, and I felt honoured to walk beside him.

I always felt as if puberty did not hit me hard enough. I remained scared of the river waves and dared not train my chest and abs shirtless like dage. My body was a little coiled in, like I was always hiding in my clothes, which were often hand-me-downs from dage when he outgrew them. But even so, they were still too big on me. I often had to roll up the sleeves and pant cuffs a couple of times.   

A body looks coiled in when wearing oversized clothes. While the Greek often portrayed the human body naked, Easterners often hid the body under layers of baggy robes. 

A strong, cheerful and handsome dage always existed in my mind as I was growing up. Sometimes I would admire him on the side, and other times I would remind myself that I will never become like him. The tiny body in his oversized clothes and pants began to become obsessed with writing poems and painting, developing a completely different self from dage.   

I didn’t know that he was a Scorpio and also didn’t have a deep understanding of Scorpios. I wonder if it is also possible that he never knew what his little Capricorn brother was up to as well.

He grew to adolescence in a conservative community; his good looks once an eager delight for emotionally repressed girls in the neighbourhood. And I only found out about it by chance during a typhoon.  

In the era without flush toilets, our toilet back then was located in the far northwest corner of our house, a separate lavatory near the back alley.  

It was a traditional pit toilet with a big hole dug into the ground; look down and you would see maggots squirming in the stinky faeces. It looked very much like hell and reeked. 

A sewage truck came regularly to collect the faeces — the stench was made worse by the stirring, emanating everywhere. People covered their noses and fled the area, but it was difficult not to gag.

The pit toilet was emptied and the sewage truck left, but they forgot to put the cover back on. Then, a typhoon suddenly hit and the wind crept in from below. The wind was particularly strong at the opening of the hole and blew up a storm in the toilet, like a gust of wind stirring up fallen leaves, and blew off many photographs that were placed on the beam above.      

I couldn’t remember who found the photos, but they ended up in my parents’ hands. They were spread across the dining table under the light. The air was tense. 

They were all photos of short-haired school girls. They looked fresh and pretty, with a slight smile on their face. 

In that era, ordinary people didn’t really take photographs. They mostly went to photography studios to take ID photos measuring one or two inches big. The style of these photos was rigid: “Tilt your face slightly to the right and smile just a bit.” Black-and-white ID photos were dull and all looked the same.   

The ID photos were placed in a row on the table, feeling somewhat like trial exhibits at an interrogation.  

Pulling a long face, Father asked, “Where did these come from?”

Dage was upright and honest, he replied truthfully, “I was just walking on the streets and they gave me their photos.”

“Why did you take them?” Father remained solemn.

“They stuffed it into my pocket and ran away.”

Father flipped the photos over and they all had a message on the back: “For younger brother Gene as a keepsake. From big sister Yueh-chuan.”; “For my friend Gene Chiang. From Chu.” 

I only managed to get a glimpse of one or two photos before Mother chased us bystanders away with a “go do your homework”.

In those days, teenage love was very secretive. Dage was around 15, and I guess Yueh-chuan and Chu should be around 15 or 16 too. They could be schoolmates or even dage’s seniors, or maybe they just took the bus to school together.

In an era when boys only hung out with boys and girls only with girls, I guess stuffing a photograph into the pocket of the opposite sex is even more daring than asking for a one-night stand on the internet today.

How would lust and sexual desires shine among the stars in the night sky? In ancient Greek mythology, Zeus had an insatiable sexual appetite. To satisfy his desires, he turned into a bull, a swan, an eagle and even a ray of sunshine. He was omnipresent and targeted both men and women, and even animals and plants. 

I was already reading “Greek mythology” at the time, but I couldn’t fully understand. Dage didn’t know about it. His trained body, as beautiful as that of a Greek god and like a perfectly sculpted marble statue, was already brewing a storm in the community.    

The book A New Account of the Tales of the World (《世说新语》) records the story of Wei Jie, a handsome man from the Southern Dynasties who always attracted a crowd of women dying to get a glimpse of his good looks. The world was in chaos and Wei fled south. But the people didn’t stop coming and even formed a human wall of bystanders. It was said that Wei died from being gawked at too much.   

To not die in the chaos of war but from people’s stares. A New Account of the Tales of the World is often filled with such absurdities.

Imagine someone so attractive that he literally died from people’s stares. If that gorgeous man Wei Jie existed today, he would be the envy of the multitude of internet celebrities pining for fame at all cost. 

Dage was also stared at and had photos given to him. I read the story of Wei Jie and felt thankful that dage was strong and could withstand the stares. But I also realised then that he must have been very troubled and perhaps even scared or terrified. 

And he had such a kind heart; he didn’t know what to do with the photographs that these teenage girls shoved at him and so hid them on the beam in the toilet. Until a typhoon came and exposed him.

I suggested to him like a smarty-pants, “Remember to put the photos under a stone next time.”

When I was in sixth grade, I read Greek mythology and began dreaming about a world completely different from Dalongdong. I didn’t know much about lust and desires then. 

Each time I looked at Taipei’s starlit sky that had yet to be concealed by light pollution, I could vaguely envision the drunken Dionysus, born amid lightning and thunder, with his father (Zeus) revealing his true form and striking the embryo, while his mortal mother’s body was incinerated into pieces. To save his child, the father slit his thigh and stitched the foetal Dionysus into it, nourishing the unformed embryo with his own flesh and blood.

As I continued reading, I felt as if I foresaw dage and I meeting among the stars in a fleeting glimpse of eternity, with life and death passing us by. We are so near to each other, but yet so far. 

Dage was very much like the statue of Hermes in the book on Greek mythology. He was a messenger god and was ordered by Zeus to bring the surviving baby Dionysus to the forest to be cared for by the Nysa nymphs.

Born of fire and nursed by rain, Dionysus embodied the fire of his father, the god of thunder, as well as the fragility of his mortal mother. So he became the intoxicated god of wine.

He was aware of his arrogance and also his vulnerability. Perhaps it was because he was entrusted to the gorgeous Hermes since he was a baby that he could live a life of unbridled decadence. 

I secretly asked Mother, “Why did Yueh-chuan write ‘younger brother Gene’ on the back of her photo? Is she older?”

“Do your homework!” Mother flatly cut me off. 

After the photo and typhoon incident, dage graduated from middle school and gradually grew to be as tall and beautiful as Hermes.

With a son as beautiful as a god, would Father have felt uneasy as well?

Father and dage started talking about the future and landed on sending dage to Air Force Preparatory School in Donggang, Pingtung, at the southern end of the island.

In the military school system, preparatory school is generally meant for high schoolers to prepare for entering military school. 

When he was young, Father left home on his own and travelled across two provinces to enrol in the Whampoa Military Academy’s branch in Nanning, Guangxi. He was perhaps also around 15 years old at the time.  

Father had confidence in dage and must have also believed that this son of his had the ability to fly solo and leave the entanglements of love and relationships behind, carving out a healthy path for himself.  

Mother couldn’t bear to be separated from her son. After the chaos of the war, she especially cherished the fact that her family was not separated. Mother cried for days when dage left for Pingtung.

I find it a pity that the bamboo fence was removed and replaced with a gapless brick wall. I wonder if the bystanders and admirers who used to peer in from outside the fence still came? The bench in the courtyard and the stone dumbbells beneath it were still there. Because we were building a brick wall, several Chinese hibiscus shrubs were chopped down, but they continued to bloom. Father ordered me to dispose of them at the river as soon as possible.

Dage returned home during the holidays and brought back a salted duck from Pingtung to make Mother happy. Mother caressed dage’s head and asked countless questions amid cries and laughter. 

Dage had already become very muscular at that point. The training and disciplined lifestyle at military school have built him into a mature man. He had broad shoulders, a calm and steady demeanour, and also spoke to Father like they were brothers. 

He would share with me about the faraway Donggang and how lawless the 16-year-old military school students were. He would sneak out in the middle of the night to catch fish in the bay, and one time a sharp oyster shell cut his abdomen, leaving some scars. 

Dage recounted, “The sounds of the bay were really nice at night, with the moonlight reflecting off the surface of the water.” He touched the scars on his toned abs but said nothing about his injuries and pain, only the mythical night.

He said that the military school students were really mischievous — draped in a white bedsheet, they stood in the toilet all night, waiting for a chance to scare the officers who returned at night. But these boys lacked stamina and eventually fainted from standing too long.   

Perhaps myths do not exist only in Greece — they accompany the young, rebellious and absurd lives to the ends of the earth.

When he graduated from preparatory school and returned home for the winter holidays, dage made a request of Father: he wanted to throw a “ball” at home for his friends. 

Nowadays, very few people can understand the mythical significance of a ball in the 1960s.

When I just graduated from middle school, I went to the entrance of the Military Assistance Advisory Group at Zhongshan North Road on the weekends with my classmates to watch these fancy dress balls.

Tall and handsome American soldiers in military uniform, as well as flamboyant blondes and redheads in ballgowns, stepped out of the cars in pairs. They walked into the advisory group’s club that we couldn’t enter, dancing to the melodic music in the mythical space. 

We were indeed watching a myth because the general public was not allowed to dance. Even up until high school, holding a ball could get you arrested by the police and the juvenile department, and given a demerit point from the school. 

Sitting face to face with Father at the dining table, dage discussed the ball with him. They were very much like brothers at this point. 

“Our house is so small; how many people are coming?”

“Around 30. We can free up the living room. We will be in charge of moving the furniture into the bedrooms.”

We stayed in a typical civil servant housing, and the living room was around ten ping (坪, one ping is equivalent to 3.306 square metres). The two other bedrooms were about 10 ping in total as well. 

In Dalongdong, apart from temple activities to celebrate Baosheng Dadi’s birthday, I guess dage’s “graduation prom” was the next big thing. 

As a law-abiding resident, Father informed the police station well ahead of time. The police officers were familiar with us and looked the other way, allowing dage to throw his graduation prom.  

The furniture was stacked up in the bedrooms and the living room was freed up as the dance floor. The lightbulbs were all wrapped in coloured cellophane paper and they even flashed. Talcum powder was sprinkled on the grindstone floor, and a professional DJ played dance music.   

The best thing was that our front yard was massive and benches and chairs were placed under the big willow tree. The guys wore their military uniforms while the girls were in ballgowns, their hair teased and voluminous, a style that had just become popular at the time. 

The dance tunes were mostly of the jitterbug genre, which meant that the girls had to spin. They gently held down their dresses with their hands when they flew up, looking alluring yet reserved. 

The original plan was for Mother to bring us to our aunt’s house, but none of us, even Mother, wanted to go. So we hid in the bedroom and sat on top of the sofa among our stacked furniture, occasionally peeking at the magical and mysterious dance floor with flashing lights. 

That was a mythical night. People planted themselves on our brick wall. Youngsters were curious and even our middle-aged and elderly neighbours were intrigued, all wanting to catch a glimpse of the ball.

The last old lady who bound her foot at the 44 Kan Site came over as well. She flashed a wrinkly smile, covered her toothless mouth and muttered an incoherent string of words. 

Rays of moonlight shone through the drooping branches of the willow tree. The dance was over and droplets of sweat had formed on their foreheads. They sipped at the sour plum juice that Mother made; the attractive men and pretty women speaking softly, as if chatting and flirting with one another in a dream. 

I guess Scorpio is a sign that has the ability to bring joy to people. Dage was very popular and stayed friends with his batchmates up until they were 70 or 80 years old. 

Youth is fleeting, and then it slowly withers away. Every now and then, I heard him say “so-and-so” has passed away. Sometimes, so-and-so was someone who got killed in a plane crash — it could be someone who collected intelligence for the US military and became a Black Bat, flying over the China-India border high up in the sky, infiltrating the mainland, spying and gathering intelligence. And then their planes crashed or they got caught. 

Dage calmly recounted these stories. They enjoyed a brilliant time in their youth and their bodies bore the scars from oyster shells in Donggang, like a warrior’s tattoo. Yet, even amid a nation’s sadness or a great power’s struggle, a tiny “bait” could perhaps be heroic, not forgetting to show off its skill when flying over Mount Everest, flipping over in mid-air and looking down on the world.    

After so-and-so passed away one after another, dage became really lonely and sad. They are actually not recorded in history, certainly not at its core but at the margins of the margins. 

Dage mourned his lost youth, along with all his passions and aspirations. Yet could it be that he found himself torn between laughter and tears, not knowing whether to laugh or cry?

This article was first published in Chinese on United Daily News as “天蠍大哥（上）”.

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