Shengliver’s Note: The world is not all flowers and sunshine. Not all grandparents are synonyms of snugness and love.

My paternal grandad had lost his sanity before I was born. The cause was unknown. Therefore, he could not recognise me at all.

The older I grew, the sadder I became, especially when I saw a warm scene where a grandad and a grandchild were walking hand in hand and laughing together.

In my childhood when I went to visit Grandad and Gran with Mother, Grandad always tried to drive us away. On one visit, he yelled at my mother and me, “Where the **** are you from, Bitch? Go away!” I was scared to tears. If Father took me on such a visit, however, he would not curse me. Instead, he would fire a barrage of questions at me, “Who are you? Why are you here? What do you want? …” I was so petrified that I sheltered myself behind Father.

All those unpleasant experiences made me dread the visits, but I did not hate Grandad. All the memories of him were scenes of fear and confusion. Grandad was clad in thick clothes day in day out, even if it was right in the heat of summer.

One day when I was eight, Grandad left home and never came back. A search was launched. All my family, Father and Mother, uncles and aunts, joined the search party. They went out to comb the neighbourhoods day and night. Dad even went to Mt Wudang on foot, hoping to find him at the tourist attraction. The efforts came to no fruition in the end. The search party had to call it quits.

Today I have almost forgotten what my grandad looked like, but those memories keep flooding back. Sometimes I believe that if Grandad had died before I was born, it might have done us both good.