This article is written originally in Chinese. For the English version, please scroll down or jump to the next heading.
哈哈大笑二三事
最近两次哈哈大笑，都是在去看我妈的时候。
老太太今年九十五岁，身体尚可，但有健忘症。我常常跟她一起背我爸写的一首《渔歌》，其中最后一段是这样的：“云淡烟微，夜幕低垂，犹恋提竿左右挥。长林鸟，也知归。两袖清凉风送我，多情明月照人归。”她后两句通常背得还不错，前面则需我读一句，她跟读一句。九月份某天，秋高气爽，我们坐在养老院楼下的花园里晒太阳、打牌背诗。我故意停下来，让她自己想。结果老太太憋出一句“长林鸟，左右飞”。我愣了一秒，旋即大笑。老妈也跟上，两个人好一会子都停不下来，一想到长林鸟们左右乱飞的画面，就忍不住哈哈大笑。
那之前不久，有天午饭后，挤她床上和她一起睡个午觉。躺着躺着，妈妈在那头突然咯咯笑出了声，爬将起来。我问怎么了？她说想起老爹爹人高马大，扛一杆长粪瓢，走在大学马路上招摇的样子。那是1980年左右的事了。我们住在爸爸工作的大学校园里。老爹爹，也就是爸爸的父亲，那时从农村老家来，和我们同住。他当时八十出头，身材依然魁梧，个头足有一米八，面色红润，中气十足，有空就想往外跑。他是书生，但年轻时也练过武，四九年之前在乡里教私塾，家里略有薄产，“文革”中被划成“地主”，在老家被限制出行，受过批斗。他一生不怎么做家务，爱赌点小钱，但为人行侠仗义，曾倾其所有，甚至找人借钱去接济朋友。我奶奶更是宅心仁厚，对人从不设防。村里的流浪汉们冬天常去她家，围坐在一个大火桶边，边烤火边聊天。她六零年代初去世，没有受过“文革”之苦（当然，也没有享受过八零年代改革开放，我们家里经济条件好转以后孩子们的供奉，这一直是我爸爸心头的痛）。但因为这些，村里人，包括他们曾雇过的长工，都不愿出力批斗老爹爹，反倒是他自家兄弟里有一支，给了他些苦头吃（这同一家人，因我奶奶不设防，曾去她家里偷米偷柴，被我妈撞见过不止一次）。幸有另一支的后辈悉心照料，度过那段疯狂岁月，也让远在外地的儿女们稍稍安心。此乃前话。老爹爹来我家里住的时候，我还是个不懂事的小屁孩，在上小学，对他只有敬畏，没有跟外婆那样的亲近。外婆一直跟我们同住，我上幼儿园之前，都是她在帮着带我。老先生自带长辈威严，有一把花白山羊胡子，一口乡音，声音洪亮，吃饭时却老有清鼻涕滴在胡子上，所以我总不想跟他一桌吃饭，常常被我爸强逼着才不致溜号。我小时候经常感冒发烧，请假在家。有次能下床活动了，却被老爹爹追得几间屋乱窜。原来他要看报纸，找不着老花眼镜，非说是我调皮藏起来的，不还给他就要抓住我揍一顿，幸亏后来外婆帮他找到了。（忽然想到—不会是外婆藏的吧？哎呀，这也太调皮了！）
话说直到八零年代中期前，我印象中，大学里大部分人家都会利用校园内外空置的土地，种点蔬菜，补贴家用。我家也不例外，锄头、铁锹、粪瓢之类的农具，阳台上都有。老爹爹偶尔兴起，会去帮忙种菜。其实他并不擅农活，但兴致很高，而且廉颇虽老，尚能饭能耕，大儿子还在省城大学里工作，大孙子、大孙女们都上了大学、研究生，他老人家很是傲骄。于是就出现了妈妈在我们家门前小马路上撞见的那一幕：只见老爹爹逶迤而来，身形魁梧，几乎占据了整个路面；足有一米八的大高个，肩头扛一把丈二长的粪瓢，且粪勺高高扬起在身后的半空中，随他的步伐一晃一晃的，不记得是不是在滴水……一女子急着赶路，不得已，左腾右闪地绕过他；大概觉得校园里走来这么一个老汉实在稀奇，赶超以后还频频回头观望；我们家的老爹爹像扛着一杆胜利的大旗，面色和善，不疾不徐地继续前行……妈妈当时回家后就给大家形容过；其后几十年里，家人一起聊天时，它有时仍被当作轶事谈笑。她现在成了有健忘症的老太太，好几年没再听她提起过，那天居然脑海里闪现这搞笑的一幕，令人惊喜。我们一起回忆，补充各种细节，两个人笑成一团。
今天是加拿大的感恩节，老大在新加坡出差，仍住家中的老二和我一起去看奶奶，也就是我妈。我有时跟着孩子们一起称她为“奶奶”，就像我妈跟着我们喊“爹爹”。在前面加个“老”字，是因为我爸后来也成了孙辈们口中的爹爹，需要加以区分。老大在家的时候，我们去看奶奶，一般会带她出去搓一顿，因为他能开车。老二不开车，但用手机从我们常去的其中一家餐馆点来外卖。他最近在校园里找到一份做厨师的零工，开始赚钱，遂大方请奶奶吃饭，算是略表孝心。饭后我们照例在花园里打牌、背诗。这回老太太没有乱点鸳鸯谱，并且我们一起读了几遍之后，她不但把《渔歌》的最后两句背得很顺溜，还能自己完整说出第一段的前两句“长夜沉沉，远处鸡鸣”。虽然只是暂时的，但也有进步，值得表扬。其实我每次都会给她鼓掌叫好的，是她背的第二段，几乎能背得大差不差。我猜也许这段写得最平实易懂，抑或更朗朗上口：“山也悠悠，水也悠悠，山环水抱人依旧。日初升，云红透。时为骄笼送囚鱼，阵阵荷花香满袖。”
说到打牌，我因视障看不了，但用从CNIB盲人商店买来的扑克可以解决问题。这种扑克大小跟普通扑克一样，每张都有标志数字及花色的盲点。我们打“争上游”，谁先把手里的牌出完，谁就赢。它难度适中，需要知道数字大小顺序、单双牌型等，运气固然重要，有时也需考虑策略。打牌时我并不太刻意让着她，老太太有一小半的时间也会赢，就有货真价实的高兴。她总问我，在家是不是常和孩子们打牌？我总如实回答：他们可不乐意跟我打；我摸盲点、理牌这么慢，也只有你才有这个耐心、愿意陪我打。老太太听了总是呵呵地笑，很高兴自己有用武之地。
是啊，所以我每次去看她，一个固定项目是给她按摩，最后收官的一招，永远是从上往下双手刷背，不多不少二十九下。原谅我的这点数字迷信，我想做儿久一点、再久一点……
回家以后，断断续续写完此文，想着父母、祖父母、孩子们，以及照顾过他们的亲人们，内心充满感恩。没有他们，就没有我、没有我现在安宁的生活。非常高兴以这样一篇小文结束今年的感恩节。
我也借此拉开一年一度为多伦多盲人社区筹款的帷幕。爸爸妈妈曾经非常担心我的生活。但我在这里过得真的是安稳、充实的。除了政府有残疾补助，可供温饱，这里还有很多盲人组织和义工，为我们提供从出行、同辈互助到文化、体娱活动的帮助；我在享受这些社会支持的同时，也通过东西联学社的志愿者工作，为社区的多元文化交流尽一己之力。
从2015年起，我每年会在朋友们中间募捐一次，今年是第十一次，为我受益其中的盲人组织筹款。朋友们的涓涓细流，帮助这些非盈利组织或项目生存下去，为更多盲人提供服务，辅助他们更好地参与社会、享受生活。东西联学社自2021年成为联邦注册的非盈利组织以后，也越来越需要社区的资金支持，以便持续不断地提供优质的跨文化学习和交流项目。
请朋友们慷慨解囊，五块钱不算少，一百块不嫌多；能提供退税收据的组织，通常会要求捐款达到二十块加币才会出具此类收据。无论是支持盲人社区还是东西联学社，我都同样感激。请私信或电邮至robulinca@gmail.com，告知您想捐款的金额等信息，我会提供相应组织的直接汇款方式。今年我准备帮助的盲人组织名单见附录。
鞠躬感谢先！祝天天开心快乐！
汪洋
2026年10月12号
A Few Recent Laughs
By Yang Wang
October 12, 2026
The last two times I laughed out loud were both during visits to my mom.
She is ninety-five this year, in relatively good health for her age, but with dementia. I often recite with her a poem written by my late father, “Fisherman’s Song.” The final stanza goes something like this:
“Clouds grow pale; mist rises, and the curtain of night falls to the horizon
Still, I long to lift my rod and cast my line from left to right
Even the birds in the deep woods know it is time to return
A cool breeze fills my sleeves and sends me home
The bright moon gently lights the road”
Mom can usually recite the second half of the poem fairly well. For the first half, however, I have to read it to her line by line and let her repeat each line after me.
One beautiful day in September, we sat in the garden of her nursing home, enjoying the sunshine as we played cards and recited the poem. I paused to give her a chance to think for herself. Mom thought hard for a moment, then said, “Birds in the deep woods fly from left to right.”
I burst out laughing, and Mom joined me. The image of a flock of birds flying aimlessly through the woods was so funny that we simply couldn’t help laughing at every thought of it.
Not long before that, one day after lunch, I squeezed into bed beside her to take a nap. As we lay there, Mom suddenly began to giggle and sat up at the other end of the bed. I asked what it was. She said she had just remembered Lao Diedie, big and tall, carrying a long manure ladle and swaggering along the campus of the university where my father worked.
Lao Diedie,, meaning “Old Grandpa,” was my paternal grandfather. Around 1979 or 1980, he left our rural hometown to live with us on the university campus in the provincial capital. He was in his early eighties at the time, about 1.8 metres tall, sturdy and fit, with a ruddy face and a booming voice. Whenever he had free time, he liked to go out and chat with strangers.
He used to be a private village schoolteacher and owned about three acres of farmland before 1949. As a result, the government classified him as a “landlord” during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). He was confined to his village and subjected to struggle sessions. He did very little manual labour or housework and enjoyed a little gambling from time to time, but he was also a chivalrous man who practiced gong fu when he was young. Once, he gave away everything he had and even borrowed money to help a friend in trouble.
His wife, my paternal grandmother, was an exceptionally kind-hearted woman. In winter, their home would often fill with village vagrants who gathered to chat comfortably around a large bucket of burning firewood that she had prepared for them. She died in the early 1960s during the Great Famine. She was spared the suffering of the Cultural Revolution, but she never lived to enjoy the better life our family began to experience after China’s economic reforms in the 1980s. This remained a deep pain for my father.
Because of my grandparents’ kindness, the villagers, including the farmworkers they had hired, were reluctant to subject Grandpa to harsh treatment during the struggle sessions. In fact, the worst of his troubles came from one of his brothers and that brother’s children. The same family had taken advantage of my grandmother’s trust to steal grain and firewood from her storeroom. Fortunately, the children of another brother took good care of Grandpa during those turbulent years, much to the relief of his own children, who lived far away from their hometown.
I was a rather clueless elementary school kid when Grandpa came to live with us. I respected him, but was not as close to him as was to my maternal grandmother, who had always lived with us and babysit me. The old gentleman had a natural air of authority and spoke loudly in a strong hometown accent. I was reluctant to sit at the same table with him because he often had clear mucus dripping onto his grey goatee. So I always tried to sneak off to another room at mealtimes, but most of the time would be dragged back by my father.
As a child, I caught colds easily and often had to stay home from school. Once, when I was well enough to get out of bed, Grandpa chased me from room to room, threatening to spank me. He wanted to read the newspaper but couldn’t find his reading glasses, and insisted that I must have hidden them mischievously. Luckily, Grandma found them for him later. As I write this, a thought suddenly occurs to me: Could Grandma have been the one who hid them? Oh dear, what a mischievous thought!
In China, a university campus is literally like an ivory tower—a little city within a city, separated from the outside world by a wall. Inside, it has almost everything people need for daily life: classrooms, laboratories, office buildings, convenience stores, dining halls, a farmers’ market, a hospital, elementary and middle schools for staff members’ children, factories, hotels, botanical gardens, and apartments for students, and staff members and their families, etc. As I remember it, before the mid-1980s, many families used vacant public land around the campus to grow vegetables and supplement their household budget. Our family was no exception. We kept various gardening tools on the balcony of our apartment, including shovels and a manure ladle.
Grandpa occasionally offered to help in our vegetable plot. He wasn’t particularly good at gardening, but he was enthusiastic because he took great pride in being active and helpful. He was equally proud of his eldest son, who worked at a university in the provincial capital, and of his grown-up grandchildren, all admitted to undergraduate or graduate programs at universities after Cultural Revolution. That was the background to the scene Mom witnessed one day on the small road in front of our apartment building.
Grandpa was making his way along the road, his tall, broad figure almost filling it. A long manure ladle rested on his shoulder, its handle sticking high up in the air behind him, its bowl bobbing with his steps, perhaps even dripping a little. A woman had to dodge from side to side to get around him. After passing him, she looked back several times, probably amused and surprised to see such an elderly man walking across the campus like this. Grandpa, looking as though he were carrying a great banner of victory, continued on his way with a friendly smile in steady stride…
When Mom returned home that day, she told everyone about the scene. Over the decades, whenever our family gathered for a chat, the story would occasionally resurface, and we would laugh all over again. Now Mom has become an elderly woman herself, living with dementia. I hadn’t heard her mention this story for years, so it was a delightful surprise when it flashed back in her memory. We recalled the scene together, filling in the details as we went, and laughed for a long time.
Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. I went to visit Mom with my younger son, Didi. His older brother is away on a business trip in Singapore. The big boy can drive so when he is home, we usually take Mom out to a restaurant when we visit her. Didi doesn’t drive, but he used his phone to order Uber Eats from one of the restaurants we often go. He recently found a part-time job as a kitchen hand on the campus of the university he attends. So he generously agreed to treat Nainai (Grandma) to the lunch, following our family tradition of celebrating a child’s first pay cheque by treating the elderly.
After lunch, we followed our usual routine of playing cards and reciting poetry in the garden. This time, Mom didn’t mix up the lines. After we recited the poem together several times, she not only managed to recite the final two lines correctly but also remembered the first line of the opening stanza on her own. It was only a temporary progress, but was still worth celebrating.
Speaking of playing cards, since I can not see due to impaired vision, we use a deck bought from the CNIB Store. The cards are the same with normal cards in size, but has Braille markings embossed in the corners of each card. The game is moderately challenging: you need to know the numerical order, understand single-card and pair combinations, and so on. Luck certainly plays a part, but sometimes you also need to have some strategy to get rid of all your cards first and win. When we play, I don’t often deliberately play badly just to let Mom win. She wins now and then, so her joy is genuine. She repeatedly asks whether I often play cards with the boys at home. I always tell her—and it’s true—that she is the only one patient enough and willing to play with me, given how slowly I read the Braille markings and sort my cards. She always chuckles at that, pleased that she can help me.
And that must be why, every time I visit her , I give her a massage, and always finish by brushing with both hands down her back, from top to bottom, exactly twenty-nine strokes—no more, no less. In Chinese, the number twenty-nine sounds like “child for a long time.” Forgive this little superstition of mine. I simply want to remain my mom’s child a little longer, and longer…
After we got home, I wrote this piece little by little, thinking about my parents, grandparents, children, and all the relatives who have cared for them. My heart is full of gratitude. Without them, there would be no me and none of the peaceful life I enjoy today. I am very happy to bring this year’s Thanksgiving to a close with this essay.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to launch my annual fundraising campaign in support of Toronto’s blind community.
Mom and Dad used to worry a great deal about how I would manage my life as a blind person. But the truth is, I am living well here. In addition to the government’s disability support program, which helps cover my basic living expenses, there are many organizations for the blind and dedicated volunteers who assist us with transportation, peer support, and cultural and recreational activities. While enjoying the social support, I give back through my volunteer work at the East and West Learning Connections (EAWLC), doing my share for the community, and promote cross-cultural learning and communication.
This is my eleventh year of fundraising since 2015 for organizations serving the blind community that have helped me along the way. Every little stream of support from friends helps these nonprofit organizations sustain their services and reach more blind people, enabling them to participate in society and enjoy fuller lives.
Since EAWLC became a federally registered nonprofit organization in 2021, its need for financial support from the community has continued to grow. Such support enables us to provide quality programs that help new Canadians learn more about Canadian culture, people, and customs, while encouraging dialogue and understanding among people of different heritages.
Thanks for your generosity, whether it’s a $5 or $100 donation. Every dollar counts! If you need a tax receipt, please note that organizations generally require a minimal donation of $20 to issue one.
Whether you choose to support the blind community or EAWLC, I will be equally happy and grateful for your help! Please contact me at robulinca@gmail.com to let me know how much you would like to donate. I’ll then provide you with the appropriate organization’s direct payment details.
Thank you very much, and may laughs and happiness accompany you every day!
Appendix/附录
The blind organizations/programs I’m supporting this year
Able Canada,
Achilles International Canada Athletics
Balance for Blind Adults
Canada Women’s Blind Soccer Team
Canadian Council of the Blind, Toronto Visionaries and Mississauga VIPs
Change Through Sport (Blind Tennis Toronto)
CNIB (The Canadian National Institute for the Blind)
Durham Centre for Excellence
Ontario Blind Golf
Talk Description to Me
Trailblazers Tandem Cycling Club
- Please consider supporting our efforts to help people of different heritages break cultural barriers and get connected by volunteering, donating, or participating in our events. Together, we can make learning and connections happen!