A Colourful Life Is A Life Well Lived
Returning to Singapore, I was shocked to hear of Brother Zhifeng’s 志峰 passing. His dashing image still lingers vividly in my mind. His life can be described as colourful and vibrant. He had not lived in vain.
Thirty years ago, he often came to our house for discussions. He would always bring unexpected gifts each time he visited. The most memorable gift was a small black bear with a white spot on its chest. It was playful and adorable like a child. As we grew older, we would wrestle with it, but as the bear grew stronger, our parents got worried and eventually donated it to the zoo, leaving us heartbroken for quite some time.
Initially, we only knew Brother Zhifeng as an ordinary Indonesian Chinese man, but as we got to know him better, we learned of his immense wealth, his university education, his research in Chinese literature and his skill in writing classical poetry, which was truly admirable.
Our father was also interested in these pursuits, so Brother Zhifeng would spend hours with us, but we couldn’t understand the intricacies of poetry; we only knew how to enjoy the gifts he brought. Looking back now, I regret not paying more attention.
Once, he brought us pair of colourful carp and when our father was out, he would entertain us with stories from the classic “Liaozhai Zhiyi” (聊斋志异) like the story of 白秋练. His eloquence brought the stories to life, like the lively pair of carp her brought. It could have been the author Pu Songling himself telling us the stories. He sparked our love for “Liaozhai Zhiyi.”
At that time, Brother Zhifeng was in his twenties and still single. His friends said he was mentally unstable and therefore afraid of marrying. Brother Zhifeng’s theory was: “Women, once you’re stuck with them, seeing them every day, you’ll eventually get tired of them.”
He lived alone in a large mansion, spending a lot of money on its decoration, but he never allowed his friends to visit. His friends persisted in finding a mistress for his house. They started introducing young girls to him. But Brother Zhifeng would just smile and say, ‘Why bother keeping a cow for milk when you can just buy the milk?’ He cherished his solitude. Then one day, when Brother Zhifeng fell ill, his friends, grew concerned after noticing his absence from work. They summoned a doctor and barged into his house, only to find it decorated like a lascivious Egyptian pharaoh’s palace.
According to his butler, he would have a new girlfriend every night, sometimes more than one, and yet, strangely, none of the women left with a frown. They all seemed contented. As for why Brother Zhifeng never married, it wasn’t that he never thought about it; it was because of his conflicting beliefs. On one hand, he was libertine, but on the other, he was a devout Catholic who believed that once you’ve been married, you cannot marry again. It turned out that when Brother Zhifeng was seventeen, his father arranged a marriage for him with a woman several years older. She hailed from their ancestral village in Puning 普宁. As it turned out, this woman had a strong sexual appetite, which even the young and vigorous Zhifeng couldn’t satisfy. This left him feeling inadequate.
His father got him started on business and sent him on trips. Instead of being being cheerful upon returning home, he made excuses to go back to studying and ran away to Shantou. He then sneaked off to Indonesia to join his uncle. His uncle owned a rubber factory and many rubber plantations. The rubber tappers were female labourers who set out at dawn to tap the trees. Brother Zhifeng followed them but he couldn’t keep up with the work.
When the female workers started getting pregnant one after another and gossip spread, his uncle kicked him out of the plantation. Brother Zhifeng wandered around, doing odd jobs and managed to complete his education at the University of Bandung. He became fluent in Indonesian and Dutch, excelling in exams. He attended church regularly while still maintaining his love for Chinese literature and poetry. Brother Zhifeng was wary of the the trouble he might into with his female classmates. He was still a casanova but he adopted principles, one of which was always doing it safely. “Once you’re used to wearing clothes, they become a part of you, just like a raincoat.” he said.
However, his friends didn’t understand what he was talking about and found this devout Catholic quite peculiar. Among his classmates was the son of a high-ranking official. Brother Zhifeng leveraged this relationship in his business dealings and made a fortune within a few years. He continued his philandering until one day he suddenly stopped and wrote a couplet for himself: “White hair can’t be avoided, but wine and poetry remain enjoyable.’
Why had he suddenly kicked his addiction to sex? Everyone thought he had just overworked himself, but the real reason was that he received news that the wife he had abandoned in China had died.