In My Childhood, my mother ran a men's clothing store, and there was a cardboard in the wrapper of a shirt or suit, smooth on one side and rough on the other.
My grandpa was always drawing boats when he was alive, and there was always an endless supply of cardboard in the house, as if there were endlessly drawn, but they all looked the same. The first stroke of the painting must be the arc of the bow of the boat, the high bow, which can withstand the wind and waves. There is an enclosure built of wood on the fishing boat, so small that it can hardly be called a room at sea.
I returned to my hometown for the first time in my adult life, and it was also the first time I saw the fishing boats that my grandfather was always drawing: a wooden boat wrapped in foam, with the bow sticking up high, that could really withstand the wind and waves. The men by the sea are very much like him, with tanned skin and strong bodies. They knew the time of the tide every day, and with the help of ‘Tu Beng’, they walk through the mudflats and spend the time of high tide in the boat room at sea, bring back a full harvest. The sea has fed generations.
These pictures are a copy of Grandma's oral history about our hometown, broken like oyster shells left on the shore. The family members who went to sea since they were teenagers are now far away from here. But, they have the smell of seawater that time cannot erase, just like the oyster shells left on the shore.
