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(外公) Wai-Gong is the title I call my grandfather on my mother’s side, ‘Wai’ in Chinese directly translates to ‘outer’ in Chinese and gong simply means grandpa.

Outer grandpa.

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WaiGong is a successful businessman with a respectable reputation in the small village we call home. After years of non-stop work, he scraped together enough money to take his family out of the village for a better life in the city.

With multiple businesses and a sociable reputation to maintain, it was crucial for waigong to have sons.

He needed sons to take over his business, bring power to the family line, and carry on the family bloodline. His first child was a son, then a daughter, a son, and then another daughter.

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During the pregnancy of his last child, he was told by a sage that it would be a son. So waigong, -who is used to coming home to a table full of freshly cooked dishes- visited the local market daily to buy nutritious foods for waipo ( grandmother ) and his son.

Days before the birthdate, the smell of incense hovered the house as the whole family prayed to the ancestors for a successful birth and healthy baby boy. But on the big day, waipuo struggled to give birth to the baby. Worried, my waigong rushed to the sage for help.

Thankfully, the sage blessed him with the help to feed waipo a piece of ginseng -a very expensive and luxurious root-. As told, he then biked miles away and spent all of his cash on him for a pinky-sized ginseng. This was truly special because waigon was a very stingy man who barely spent any money. With the root, he rushed home.

But right before he entered the house gate, the next-door neighbor rushed to congratulate him. “Congrats on the baby daughter your wife birthed! She is beautiful and healthy!”. Daughter, not son. The excitement and anticipation left his body clean. And without even stepping foot into the house entrance, waigong got on the bike and headed back to work, as if this was just any other working day.

The precious ginseng carefully wrapped in layers of paper never left his pocket.

Still worn out, waipo spent the day alone as she sent worried family and friends home. She waited for waigong’s rescue. But waigong left for the day and came home drunk late at night.

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Three years passed by and waigong gained more success. He decided that it would be crucial to get rid of a daughter and bring in another son.

Like a policy at Best Buy, he decided to opt for a trade-in.

With his economic success, he offered his daughter with some land and even some cash in exchange for a son. His friend quickly took him up on the offer. The deal was agreed upon and waigong set the exchange for later that day.

But waigong’s mother snooped around she saw their skinny son running around in the courtyard, covered in dark scar marks from beatings and a head of patchy hair. She watched him while aching for the daughter.

She went home and convinced waigong to let the daughter grow up with the family for a bit longer. Waigong took in his mother’s words and ‘just raise her for a longer’.

The deal was called off.

Waigon took in his daughter under the same phrase used on family cattle, “just for a bit longer”. This phrase became engraved into the daughter’s permanent nickname in the family. “养着”.

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One by one, each of waigong’s children left school at age 13 to enter the work field.

The brothers were handed massive factories that waigong carefully built up through the years. He handled each factory very carefully and was passionate to put in endless hours of stress and work into them, -but his boys weren’t-.

They struggled with waigong’s factories so waigong was constantly stressed and angry.

The daughters were left to find ways of their own. They scavenged through several jobs and eventually opened a tech company themselves; they spent all their 20’s working late nights.

Waigong began to appreciate his daughter’s same drive for work. In an odd way, seeing his daughters become workaholics brought them all closer.

While he still tightly held a gender preference, he began to open himself up to them.

Through all the capitalistic conversations they shared, the father-daughter relationship was swept through and was finally embraced by waigong. The business became a gateway for my mom and aunt into my waigong’s heart.

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Slowly, waigong began to deeply love daughters. All of the past damage was made up in his efforts to care for them in adulthood.

On his free days, he would express his love through his side hobby of cooking.

Once, he made four 10-pound batches of beef meatballs and hand-delivered them to his daughters. They found gesture hilarious and the meatballs mediocre at best, but of course, they showered him with appreciation and compliments. Waigong, hearing such compliments continued to spend his little time making larger batches.

He was often like this. As a man, waigong struggled to express his love, so he resorts to food and business as his form of love language.

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Speed forward to when his second daughter, my mom, is having her second daughter in Los Angeles.

It’s important to note that her brother is also having his second child, specifically, a second son.

The due dates for the two babies also happened to be less than a month apart. Waigong was more than pleased to have another grandson in the family. But he also felt a sense of responsibility towards my mom and my dad. He felt like the best way to ensure them a successful family is to have at least one son.

The plan was a trade. Waigong wanted to trade my baby boy cousin with my baby sister in the US before coming back to China so it would be secretive.

This plan sounds insane but no one was really surprised. And though it may seem morally messed up, he meant it with nothing but love and good intentions. In fact, everyone saw his offer to trade his grandson with our family’s daughter as a measure of how much he truly loved my mom and dad.

But my dad, born and raised in the same traditional town, refused to have anyone not in his bloodline be in our family. So he politely declined the offer, despite how much he too, wanted a son.

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Though both waigong and my own dad were both able to find so much love in their own daughters, the strong stance remains: a son is a family’s success.