CHAPTER 75

2025-08-10

If Lun had been diagnosed with autism during his immigration medical examination, my wife  and I would never have come to Canada to live. Firstly, our application would not have been approved, and secondly, we would not have risked bringing him to live in a foreign country. Knowing and not knowing, like a junction on a train track, led my family down a different path in life.

Let's start by tracing our roots.

Lun's full name is Sau Lun, Chan. He is the first male grandson of the eighteenth generation since the Chan family compiled their genealogy. I chose to follow the family tree and use the character "Sau", which means longevity. His zodiac sign is the tiger, and tigers hide deep in the mountains. My wife and I took the character "Lun" (means order or sequence), from Kunlun Mountain, in north west China and we are very satisfied with this name.

The genealogy was once interrupted at the eleventh and twelfth generations. Due to our family's decline, we lacked the money to hire local scholars to compose poems to rank the generations. By the thirteenth generation, my great-great-grandfather, Mr. Chan, had entered the government office and again asked a teacher to compose a brilliant five-character quatrain, a line that could be extended to the thirty-second generation.

This genealogy records the lineage of my ancestor, Mr. Ping Bo, Chan, who led his family from Fujian to Chaozhou in the sixth year of the Hongwu reign of the Ming Dynasty (1408 AD), up to my father's generation, spanning 617 years. The existing authentic copy was re-edited and transcribed by my second uncle, who has made a great contribution to the family. The beautiful handwriting serves as a legacy for the clan. It details the date of birth, names before and after schooling, academic achievements, occupations, marriage partners, and the dates of birth and death of each branch member.

When I immigrated to Canada, my eldest brother made a copy for each of my brothers, which I brought with me. If I continue, I will use both Chinese and English and include foreign names, otherwise my younger son will not be able to read it.

Lun didn't live in Hong Kong long, and he was relatively small from birth to his departure. He weighed six pounds and three ounces at birth. When I first held him, his pointed face suddenly opened his large, dark eyes, startling me. Another newborn boy in the same delivery room weighed over nine pounds, two sizes larger than Lunlun.

Although his stay in Hong Kong was short, he was fortunate to have all four of his grandparents share his time. He was initially cared for by his maternal grandparents for a few months. Later, when his grandmother suffered a stroke in her pinky finger and needed medical treatment, he was handed over to his paternal grandparents for care until he immigrated to Canada at the age of 22 months.

In the years that followed, both of his maternal grandparents tragically passed away in Hong Kong due to illness. In March 1992, Lun's grandparents and three uncles united with us under a very humane immigration policy. Three months later, my youngest son was born in Canada. His zodiac sign was the Monkey, also associated with mountains and forests. We chose "Nan Shan" (South Mountain) and named him, Sau Nam, Chan, meaning "longevity equals the Southern Mountains."

We dropped Lun's English name, Tyson. It was picked after his boxer-like body after months of feeding with Canadian whole milk. Shocked by the boxing champion's various bad behaviors (I've heard he's reformed), I dropped the name as soon as possible. Teachers and classmates all prefer to call him Lun, and that's how it's continued to this day.

My younger son also doesn't have an English  name. There's a reason for this, and we'll talk about that later.