My father’s skin was quite dark, but it still couldn’t hide the scars on the bridge of his nose and on his brow. He had big eyes with long lashes, but the whites of his eyes were yellow. Acquaintances said he had problem with his liver. They were right.
My father’s liver was gradually eroded during his life-long battle with alcohol.
I don’t know when and where my father took his first sip of alcohol or what drink it was. My mother told me the drinking started from the late 1970s, when he was left in Shanghai by his parents, who came to Hong Kong for a better life.
Without the guidance of his parents, my teenage father dropped out of school in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. He just drifted in society.
He was rich and rather trendy then, thanks to the money and clothes sent by his parents from Hong Kong. Wearing his long hair, with a pair of large sunglasses and well-tailored floral-pattern shirts, he strutted proudly on the streets. Sometimes, he carried a transistor radio - like a child showing off a new toy.
At night, he and his friends flocked to restaurants, eating, drinking, talking and flirting with girls - having fun and sometimes a drunken fight. My mother said my father’s favourite drink was Baijiu - the Chinese distilled liquor which generally contains over 50 per cent ethanol. He could drink half of a bottle at a time. His drinking abilities were envied by his friends.
I don’t know much about my father’s relationship with alcohol before I was born, but I do know about it afterwards. When I was 10 years old, my mother divorced my father because of his poverty and violence after he had been drinking. My father tried hard to take care of me and my sister, although he did not have a job. During the day, he was sober and cooked for us. But when the sun went down, my father would become trapped in a world of darkness.
