Gemini Chaos

My father, Victor Hsing-Chien Chao, passed away Wednesday morning (Taiwan time) in his birthplace, Taipei. He was 72, and my aunt (his twin sister) was with him.

I don’t talk a lot about my dad. I was born on Father’s Day—an event that both he and I used to think meant we had a unique symbolic bond—and shared an intensely fun but also intensely tumultuous decade or so together as a family before we fell out of touch for many years following.

He was always a creative and ambitious person with grandiose dreams. To earn money to buy trendy clothes and a sound system as a teen he worked at a local shoe store; other jobs I’ve heard of included driving for a car service. As he got older, he dabbled in the garment business, real estate, restaurants, food delivery (he was ahead of his time), and things my young mind didn’t understand that may or may not have been above board. He immigrated to New York as a preteen and spent most of his youth and young adulthood here, though his endeavors did at one point take us to the West Coast. Eventually he went on his own to Asia, which became a sort of playground for his dreams to build thriving businesses and to be the coolest, most badass guy around. He spent most of the last few decades in Cambodia.

My dad’s businesses were wide ranging and, not having been in close touch, I couldn’t keep track of them all. His pride and joy was definitely the Manhattan Club, a night club with DJs and live music in Phnom Penh, which I believe he had a heavy hand in designing from start to finish, including the neon logo that featured the Manhattan Skyline.

He also opened a controversial automatic weapon shooting range that was eventually shut down by the government, and played a part in a local casino. He once tried to explain to me an investment he made into an “ugly corn” business—an effort to tap into a market for deeply discounted corn too ugly to sell in grocery stores but edible enough for livestock. And as far back as I can remember, being around my dad meant being around an endless parade of his business associates from all over the world. During the times he was home, our phone was always ringing.

Perhaps drawing from my grandmother’s side, he had an affinity for the arts—he at one point wanted to be an architect and was always into fashion and music, both of which got him in trouble with my grandfather. I have long kept his sketchbooks, which are filled with drawings of elaborate mansions with perfect lines and doodles of guitarists wearing bell bottoms and aviators. He taught himself various instruments, and when he opened the Manhattan Club at first he would come back to New York on whirlwind trips to buy music for it.

I remember how very frugal my mom and grandfather were (we all lived together in my dad’s absence), when suddenly he would visit for a week and take me to the store to buy stacks of dozens of CDs, of which he’d let me pick one or two. It was confusing but exciting. He assured me it was for work. He would also go to great lengths to explain to me how top-notch the sound systems in his club were, down to the parts of the speakers. I know that when my grandfather eventually made it out to visit the Manhattan Club, it was a very proud moment for my dad, and I believe for my grandfather, too. Of course—business isn’t just about building great things and making money, as my grandfather made sure to teach me; it’s about spending less than you make. That was an ongoing tension between the two, but they loved each other even if they didn’t see eye to eye.

My dad was charming and loved to tell stories—if I introduced him to anyone it was inevitable that they would think he was the coolest person they’d ever met—and yet he was a total mystery. He was always deeply caught up in whatever his latest hustle was, working the phones, going out. If he decided one day he wanted family time, you killed the vibe at your own peril. Every story he told about himself was probably at least 30% fictitious, and a perfectly woven tale with a beginning, middle, end, plenty of drama, and sometimes violence. A lot of them involved rescuing animals, which may have very well been true because all three of the pets I grew up with were animals he rescued off the street. The stories my grandparents, mom, uncles and aunts told about his wild days growing up in New York, and getting himself in trouble (including with the law), were no less dramatic.

As a kid who spent much of her childhood saying teary goodbyes to a man she loved and in some ways worshipped, it was really hard to come to terms with it when he stopped coming around and calling. But as an adult I understood better—there are different paths people choose to take and he followed the one he felt compelled to follow even though it led him away from us. We all mourned the picturesque childhood my brother and I could have had, and the father figure we perhaps should have had. But my dad was never going to be that guy. He was different. And while I feel sorry for everything my mother had to sacrifice and do to raise his children, I truly do not feel any anger toward him for it. I’ve always felt that our lives played out pretty well in our favor.

I could dwell on the list of things I didn’t get from my dad. But what he gave to me was a broadened sense of possibilities. He showed me things ‘normal’ kids never got exposed to. He took risks, and didn’t accept limitations. I think it’s from him that I got my sense of “why not,” which balanced the more cautious and responsibility-focused upbringing I received from my mom and grandparents and combined to make me who I am today. In my brother, whom he didn’t do as much for, I can see a bit of resemblance in Kevin’s passion for music and art, and in the kind of inner-drive and tenacity he has to learn and create things. And for all of us, perhaps unknowingly at first but I think intentionally and with love at the end, he kept chaos out if our lives by keeping his distance.

I’ll probably spend the rest of my life unpacking things I learned from my relationship and lack of relationship with my father. But I do hope he didn’t leave this earth thinking that his family didn’t care about him or that we wanted him to suffer for his choices. None of us have to be defined by the divergence in our paths—we are defined by the totality of what we did before and after it. And what he did, was live a full, colorful, extraordinary life in which he saw things most of us could never imagine, rejected authority, defied expectations, and never stopped fighting for his dreams. And thanks to my mom, grandparents, and a village of people who cared about us AND cared about him, we’re all actually very ok. More than ok.

As a credit to him, and a lesson to ponder as we all age, he did tell me over and over in recent months that he regretted our lack of a relationship and his role in that. But he never pushed too hard and he actively avoided reentering our lives as a burden. In the last stages of his life, I can imagine this took immense effort and was painful for him, and I recognize this one selfless act as the way that he showed us real love in the end. I hope in his last moments he felt peace and relief knowing that, and that he didn’t regret the path he chose.