By Liu Xi

A Drink with my Father

By Liu Xi

At 18 years old, I felt my first pangs of love. My letter opener tore open his letters of sweet affection and he received my perfume-scented confessions of love that winter vacation. One day I received his envelope of amour, and as I was glancing through it, suddenly I received a phone call. I dropped the letter at the side of the desk and scurried out.

It was 11 o’clock when I finally returned, precisely when my father was having a midnight s n a c k. U p o n seeing me, my father dropped his chopsticks gently and beckoned me in a soothing tone, “Little Xi, will you come here? Come and have a few drinks with me please? ”In all honesty, my usually stony father was seldom so affectionate. I was flattered by his favor, and quickly moved a small stool to sit beside him.

He rinsed out two empty cups sitting on and poured us two glasses of bai jiu, a traditionalspirit of China, pushed it right under my nose and motioned for me to drink. I was evasive, “Dad, I can’t drink.” But Father retorted sharply, “Just the other night I saw you come back home three sheets to the wind. Who says you can’t drink?” I was stunned. That night was my classmate’s birthday, I got home at almost midnight, totally inebriated. It was Mother who opened the door for me. I was scared out of my wits that Father would be angry, so I tried to suck back all my breath into my lungs so as not to let Father catch the heavy scent of alcohol downwind. I went straight to my bedroom and lay down on my bed with the whole room spinning around me. My Father always sleeps like a log; I haven’t got the faintest clue how he knew about it.

I had no choice but to come clean,“Well, I did have something to drink that day, it was Xiaomei’s birthday. You know Xiaomei, right?” He looked at me and nodded knowingly.

“I don’t want you to drink, but let’s make an exception today, just this once,” Father said cheerfully.“You know what? Today, I found out that you’re all grown up. You’ve blossomed into a beautiful young woman.”

I was a bit smug, “I am almost 19 years old, Dad. Yesterday, you thought I was still that little pig-tailed girl you raised?”

“Well listen, just have a few drinks with me. C’mon, let your hair down, I’ve never been in such good spirits, so we can feel free to live it up today.”

He told Mother to cook us some stirfry. Mother didn’t protest, so I perked up a bit. If we were going to drink we might as well make a night of it, not to mention the fact that I can really hold my liquor.

After putting back a few, Father was especially gregarious and chatty. It was anecdote upon anecdote of the silly and strange things that happened in my childhood. For example, every time I would do something wrong, he would rebuke me severely. So, when he wasn’t looking, I would stick a turtle picture on his back, or drop a worm into his shoes. On another occasion, I rose to fame in my local area when I tested first-place in my whole township. Or when I got into the best high school in town, or when I passed the entrance exam 30 points above the minimum entrance score. Also, when my debut novel first went to press, he was so happy that he went a whole night without sleep.

Father said, when I was in the third grade, he received a handwritten letter I’d scrawled out in a chaotic mixture of Chinese characters and Hanyu Pinyin. There was a whole cornucopia of characters that I didn’t know at that time, so I substituted Pinyin instead. Nevertheless, the letter affected him so profoundly that it convinced him to give up smoking. It impressed him so deeply that it has always stuck on the annals of his memory. I never knewhow proud I had made my father, and never knew how much influence I’d had on him.

There were so many things he spoke of that night that I didn’t even remember, but that he’d always held close to his heart. I listened as he spoke and found myself all the more surprised and moved with each jovial recounting.

I don’t remember exactly how much we drank that night, I only know that Father always advised me that it was okay to indulge and imbibe between the four walls of the family home. We knocked back more than a few that night and when I awoke it was morning and my boyfriend’s letter was nowhere to be found.

I was beside myself and completely hung-over. I had a splitting headache, and kept moaning and wailing in agony. Meanwhile, my mother kept scolding my dad, going on and on about how a responsible parent could get his own daughter as red-faced as the town drunk.

Back on the road to my university, I reached into my coat pocket, feeling something. I pulled it out to discover it was boyfriend’s letter with a piece of paper attached to it from my father that read, “To my baby daughter, please forgive my burning curiosity, I found this letter and had to sneak a peak. I found out that you’re all grown up, and have taken the freedom of adulthood to pursue matters of the heart. However, I just want to say that I’m worried about your safety. I hope that you always know where to draw the line. I’m telling you, from experience, the maximum amount of alcohol you can drink is 350ml of 56 proof bai jiu, plus three more bottles of beer. More than that, and you’ll get too drunk. As long as you don’t go over the line, you will be safe. Dear daughter, I hope that you will always take care of your health.”

At that moment, I finally understood why my father invited me to drink with him.

(FromModern Women, June 2016. Translation: Chase Coulson)