In 骨瓷 // Bone China, Singaporean writer Ruru Hoong evokes what is both fragile and unbreakable in the rituals that carry loss, memory, and language across generations. Originally published in Spittoon Monthly this personal narrative moves fluidly across borders, tracing a granddaughter’s grief for her Gong-gong through the infusions of maté, oolong, jasmine, and white peony. With ‘wander words’ from Mandarin gently drifting through its English prose, 骨瓷 // Bone China invites us into something deeper than translation: a space where the visceral resonance of unfamiliar words, and the traditions they carry, can be felt.
– Raaza Jamshed for Guernica Global Spotlights
一. Maté
“华侨在思想上是无家可归的，头脑简单的⼈活在⼀个并不简单的世界⾥，
没有背景，没有传统，所以也没有跳舞。”《谈跳舞》， 张爱玲
I am not typically a superstitious person. But when the cebador pours boiling water into the cup of tea, scalding the ground leaves to a pungent, bitter hiss, I flinch, biting back a reproach. He does not notice my distress; instead, he takes a long swig through the bombilla before handing me the cup.
Gracias, I say, but I don’t mean it. The Spanish feels foreign and tart on my tongue. It is neither auspicious nor professional to oversteep the tea, but what gives me the right to be an arbiter of Argentinian tradition?
Reluctant but not wanting to cause a scene, I take a small sip of the mate for show, its acidic astringence shooting straight up my nose.
Het is goed? He winks at me and pats his hands dry on his pants, leaving dark, palm-shaped imprints. The wail of a bandoneon signals the start of the next tanda. The room is abuzz with tension, cabaceos being thrown across the room, eyebrows raised, looking to harpoon a partner; figures making their way clockwise around the wooden hall.
I arch my neck in his direction, willing him to respond with a nod of his head. He does not. Instead, he finds himself a partner across the room, and crosses it in great strides.
Great, I mutter to myself, the bitterness of the scalded tea still lingering on my tongue. Another tanda to be sat out.
I am so resigned to this fact that I do not see the middle-aged man sidling up to me.
“这么漂亮的女孩，怎么没伙伴儿？” His precise lilt, though accented and tainted by his rancid breath, impresses me. Then disgust fills me for being so easily won over.
“I don’t speak Chinese,” I say, even though I do.
“America?”
“Singapore.”
“Dance?”
There is no etiquette to this one-word exchange; it is a ping-pong match wrought on a dance floor. There is no way to decline a verbal ask, so I accept defeat and set down my long-forgone tea, offering him an extended hand.
I am furious with myself the whole time I am being lifted and manhandled across the floor. This is not dancing. But what can I expect from an inauspicious night, flagrant in its ignorance of etiquette and tradition? He whips my leg up into a boleo, almost hurling my heels into another couple, and I feel myself go rigid in response. He grips me tighter. As a deep-rooted uneasiness churns my stomach, I fight to keep its contents from spilling over his pudgy fingers.
I manage to keep it all in for the duration of the tanda, but it is not a good night. I am hollowed out, empty except for my twisting stomach.
So I am not altogether surprised when I emerge from the dance hall to four missed calls from my mother, and a foreboding message telling me to come home.
回家吧，
公公去世了
二．乌龙 // Oolong
They say that Oolong tea can reduce the risk of heart disease, so the summer before I leave for college I endeavour to sit next to Gong-gong at every meal, refilling his cup far more often than necessary under the guise of filial piety.
But it is no use: with every pour of the steaming tea, he ladles himself another bowl of his favourite laksa. I can see the coconut milk coagulating into fat in those narrowed arteries, white viscous blobs clinging to their walls. No amount of hot tea can wash it down. He turns his shy, cataract-clouded eyes on me and wears a sheepish I’m ever so sorry but I can’t help it smile. All I can do is block his laksa-filled bowl from my parents’ vision before they can snatch it away.
I realise that makes me complicit in his slow march towards death, but all I want is for him to be able to enjoy his remaining days. With the greedy, sheepish delight of a small child, he serves me tea in return, his blue-veined hands trembling with the effort.
Dinners are taken in silence. Though Gong-gong and I have a common language, we have no common conversation. Tea is the only currency of our communication. I pour him another warm cup, watching as his fingers tap the stained tablecloth in thanks:
我
爱
你
The tea evaporates into the chilly air-conditioned air.
It takes 28 hours for me to traverse a quarter the number of time zones, from Amsterdam to London to Singapore to Kuala Lumpur. By the time the wheels of the plane grate upon Malaysian tarmac, the atmospheric chill has settled in my bones, and the warmth has left my grandfather’s body.
三．茉莉香片 // Jasmine
At his funeral, the tea is cold. Sickly sweet. The cloying scent of jasmine makes me swimmy in the head, lightheaded with exhaustion. I feel the tiredness in my eyes, and know they must be red-rimmed. I want to cry, but tears do not come.
“Eat first,” my mum instructs, “Pay respects later.”
I pick up a greasy popiah with my chopsticks, its once-crispy exterior soaked through with oil, and bite down on it. The soggy radish, all at once savoury and flowery-fragrant from the remnants of the tea, settles uncomfortably at the bottom of my stomach.
“Wah, the eldest grandchild is back from Europe!” I hear a booming voice from the back of the room. Is it my second auntie, or my third? I’m not sure. I sit down and take another bite of the popiah, willing it to stay down in my stomach.
Gong-gong was the one who taught me how to hold my chopsticks properly.
He would sit me down at the table with a slender pair of metal chopsticks and hand me a bag of sunflower seeds, instructing me to pick each elusive kernel out and place it into the center of his palm. If any disobedient seed bounced its way to the floor, he bent down to pick it up without reproach or impatience. Cracking open each one on his blackened teeth, he would hand me a fully formed seed as reward.
He always gave me more than he gave himself.
Chopsticks are surprisingly versatile; they are still my cutlery of choice even after years abroad in countries that favour the sharp prongs of a fork and the rounded recesses of a spoon. They can kiap chunks of meat between its two appendages, guide noodles through thin slits, spear fishballs with ease.
But standing in front of the tray of his cindered remains I feel nervous. This is his 股骨, the young funeral director announces to the room. His femur. Not knowing the phrase for femur, I hear 骨骨 instead. Bone-bone.
No shit, I think to myself, he is all bones and no skin.
When it reaches my turn, I am handed the chopsticks and all at once the room feels quite swollen with expectation. You want this instead? The funeral director asks in English, misinterpreting my hesitation. He holds out a pair of tongs with a face full of cheery sympathy. Sorry, this one cannot use fork to pick up, ah!
He earns a few laughs at my expense.
I thought you weren’t supposed to laugh at funerals.
Blushing, I grip the chopsticks tighter, its metal edges leaving dark imprints in my skin. But how can I tell him that my teeth are clattering bone-on-bone, that my fingers are stiff not from lack of practise but from fear, fear that those sticks would cross the wrong way and disappoint Gong-gong, fear that my hands would falter and let his bones slide, let them smash into smithereens on the floor?
For his aged bones are not like the hardy youth of a sunflower seed.
And Gong-gong is no longer here to pick them up.
The humid air gags my throat as I pick up the largest bone from the mass of gritty pink residue. My chopsticks hover gingerly in the air, threatening, quivering.
I drop the bone into the urn without incident.
But something about the way it chips and disintegrates against the plastic walls makes the bile rise up from within me; I first feel a vague dampness in my oesophagus and tear away just when the walls of my stomach squelch and contract—I mutter my apologies as I make my bumpy escape to the bathroom:
I am delighted,
delighted as I unload the contents of my stomach into the gilded sink,
delighted that I can feel again with such intensity,
delighted by the relief that settles in the tips of my fingers.
四．白牡丹 // White Peony
The heady incense emits a white smoke, but my head remains clear for the duration of the drive from the crematorium to the columbarium. My dad carries the burning joss sticks for the entire drive, releasing frightening, guttural cries out his open window:
爸，跟着我们
爸，跟着我们！
I don’t believe in ancestral spirits, none of us do, but we follow the tradition anyways. In the clarity of my rejuvenated state of mind, I find it antiquated and awkward. But I mutter it a few times under my breath.
公公，跟着我， please?
We have tea, after, in the opulent lobby of the columbarium. I hold up the teacup, its bone china strangely cool against my lips. The tea is pure and light, a fine spring harvest from the mountains of Fujian. It is a homecoming for Gong-gong, for it is from Fujian that my great-grandfather began his journey to the Malaysian border, beginning our long collective sojourn across the globe, in search for a better life.
My flight back to London boards in the next hour, so I get up hurriedly to leave, bidding my rushed goodbyes and promises to return soon, which are made to be broken. I have gone as quickly as I have come. As my aspirations circle me further and further away from home, I am no longer sure what I am searching for, or what it is I am trying to prove.
My father has a theory for this: offering up a laugh aching of resignation, he tells me I am looking to emulate the nomadic nature of my Hakka ancestry.
It is in our blood, he says, in our bones. 在骨子底里。
I return to this moment every day as I steep my morning brew. I sit down, breathe in its light floral aroma. And offer my Gong-gong a cup of tea.
“骨瓷 // Bone China,” by Ruru Hoong and originally published in Spittoon Monthly which describes itself as featuring “innovative writing from or about Asia, with a focus on helping emerging writers cut through the modern noise and connect with readers.”