My Relationship With My Host Pa

I like to think that my host parents are happily married. Sure, my Pa has his vices (who hasn’t heard him retching up a night of drinking in the wee hours of dawn?), but in the end, he provides for the family and is much more willing to help out around the house than other Khmer males. He leaves a lot of the big decision-making up to my Ma, quietly working and supporting her decisions.

My Pa used to work with Chinese people, because someone he likes to call “lao da” (big person, or “niak tohm” in Khmer—can be translated to mean important person as well) once came and worked in the cement factory not far from our house and my Pa had the pleasure of working directly beneath him. As thus, he likes to think that he is in touch with the Chinese language and culture and my Chinese heritage is something that gets talked about a lot.  This enigmatic “lao da” introduced Pa to many things, taught Pa Chinese (of which he has forgotten most of), and was always known for having an exhausting amount of money and unafraid to show it off. My Ma will occasionally talk about how she used to have a goiter and “lao da” brought some awesome mystery medicine from China and had her take it, and it disappeared. “Lao da” was also a big fan of dog meat, and would often buy it and send it home with my Pa, allowing my Ma the privilege of preparing it. While eating dog meat a few nights ago (during which the bones were fed to our puppy Kobe. I now greet Kobe with “Heeeyyy my little cannibal? How’s my little cannibal doing?”), Pa kept repeating that “lao da” loved dog meat and it’s really expensive here so usually only important people, or “niak tohm”, eat it. My Ma heard this, snorted, and said, “But unimportant people can eat it too, it’s all the same.” Meaning, of course, that my Pa was not, in fact, “niak tohm”, but “niak doich”, or “small person”. My Pa turned to me and said, “Your Ma, bu hao.”

That’s another favorite Chinese phrase used in our Khmer household: “bu hao”, which means “not good”, translated literally. It is also the direct Chinese translation of the Khmer “att la-oh”, which is often used to describe inappropriate, naughty or mischievous behavior. In fact, it’s become so popular within the family that everyone uses “bu hao.” Kids will be running around chasing each other screaming, “Wan bu hao! Wan bu hao!” (Wan is my younger brother.)

During dinnertime, though, “bu hao” is often used when my Ma is pointing out Pa’s vices, such as his propensity to get drunk. Pa will say he only drinks a little bit, and Ma will counter with the fact that last night he had five cans of beer in one sitting. Pa will click his teeth, make the Khmer noise of disbelief, and say, “Ma bu hao.” And then a pause. And then, “…it was actually six cans.” I look up and see Ma giggling and Pa with an ear to ear grin, concluding with “Pa hao”, or, “Pa good.”

Additionally, he refuses to call the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, and instead refers to it as “Jin Bian”, the Chinese name. Also, he refuses to say that he drives a car in Khmer, and chooses to call it “kai che” instead—also Chinese. This is on top of him constantly asking me what things (dog, watermelon, frog, etc) are called in Chinese.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say this, but with a few more Chinese phrases under his belt, living here will almost be like living at home with my real dad—almost.