Huang Yeye

At Pingmin Primary School, there is an older man in his late 70’s known only as Huang Yeye (Grandpa Huang). He is the school’s handyman, and can fix and make anything. He is always working, whether it be making brooms, plowing the fields, trimming bamboo, or shoveling dirt.

Huang Yeye is the type of person that just by looking at him, you know how wise and experienced he is. His face is overly wrinkled from sweating and working in the sun too much. His droopy eyes are a glossy brownish blue. His hands are big and long, accented by his wrinkly skin and long veins and bones. His fingers are long, tough, and strong, and you can imagine how much they have weathered through his whole life of using his hands everyday - pulling, tugging, scraping, lifting, prying, knotting, raking, shoveling, etc... His back is a bit bent humped over, probably from laboring in the fields every day. Huang Yeye doesn’t say much. But just looking at him and being around him, I feel a sense of comfort. He has a certain peace to him too. He doesn’t take much from this world and is content with simple comforts. He will never complain about anything or have any gripes. He can work all day in the fields or scrape bamboo for the rest of his life and he would still be the very same happy Huang Yeye.

On the occasions we do talk, it’s a little bit hard to communicate. Huang Yeye does not speak very standard Mandarin (as he lived is whole life in his village speaking his own dialect) and stutters when he speaks. I wish I could understand and communicate with him better because he is just so full of knowledge and experiences. Recently, he helped me make a fork using bamboo. With a quick carve here and a shave there with a bamboo blade, he transformed a block of bamboo into an elegant mold of a fork. To bend the head of the fork, he first rolled up some bamboo shavings together and lit it on fire. He then put the head over the fire and used his bare hands to rekindle the fire. After 20 seconds or so of roasting, he used a bench to push against the head, and as he pushed, it slowly took on a bent shape finally locking in place as soon as he dipped it in water. He then took a saw to create the four picks on the fork. It really looked like a fork and I hadn’t even started carving out the handle yet. It only took him a few minutes to create this. Every move and procedure was precise and efficient, all stemming from his vast knowledge and experiences.

Yesterday, he even made his own rope! That’s right, he took two long narrow strips of plastic sheet and after mounting a power drill on a chair, he took iron wire and made a hook to attach to the drill bit. He then took the plastic strips and tied them together on the hook. As I turned and held the drill on, Huang Yeye took the rope in his hands as he slowly walked away from me towards the end of the rope. After he got to the end and after the two strands of plastic were thoroughly intertwined and twisted, he tied both ends and slowly started wrapping the rope up so that he can manageably use it later to make his brooms, which are also 100% hand-made. For his brooms, he uses dried out shrubs that have long thin branches and fastens them together with the string. He then takes a wooden handle (that he already shaved and whittled) and fastens it to the shrubs. Huang Yeye has already made 80 of these brooms and they are all look identical and perfectly assembled as if it came out of a factory. He is also the one who made all the bamboo hats that we use whenever it’s raining or snowing. These hats (斗笠) are very laborious because it takes the right materials of bamboo and a lot of weaving. He has also passed this craft to two 6 graders and they currently are learning how to make them under Huang Yeye’s guidance.

It’s not just the knowledge and wisdom that makes me admire Huang Yeye, it’s the whole vibe that I get from him. He is just so at peace with his life, his environment, and the people around him. Huang Yeye is a gentle soul and a simple man. You don’t have to know Chinese to understand this, just stand next to him.