A Child's Death, A Family's Grief: Three Poetic Couplets for Jimmy Bo-Gar Chin

This story is a follow-up to a previous post about my translation of a Chin family gravestone at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California.

The grave is shared by my mother’s baby brother, Jimmy Bo‑Gar Chin; newborn twin brothers who died in 1924 within weeks of birth; and three adult siblings who died in old age. The emotional core of the family’s mourning, however, is focused on Jimmy’s sudden death in 1954, and that grief survives most clearly in three handwritten inscriptions on two photographs.

On January 10, 1954, Jimmy was hit by a car and died in front of the family home at 326 7th Street in Oakland Chinatown. He was five years and seven months old. His death was a crushing blow to the entire family especially his mother, Tso Mee Shew.

Tucked into my mother's collection of early family photographs are two images that together tell the story of that grief. One shows Jimmy as a young child with his mother on Christmas morning. The other is a photograph with his siblings two days later. Written on the margins of each photo are poetic couplets — pressed heavily into the paper in blue ballpoint ink by Jimmy's father Chin Pak Yick. Taken together with the couplet carved on the gravestone, they form a remarkable triad of grief: public sorrow, private anger, and, finally, reflective acceptance.

The photo below shows Jimmy with his mother on Christmas Day 1953, 16 days before his tragic death.

Jimmy with his mother, Tso Mee Shew
December 25, 1953, Oakland, CA

First Couplet: Jimmy’s name on a photo with his mother

It is Christmas morning. Jimmy sits in his pajamas next to his mother. His legs are stretched out as he happily holds a new book about "Bouncie Bear". A poetic couplet is written in the space between mother and son. The same words appear on the gravestone and cleverly incorporate Jimmy’s name Bo‑Gar (寶家) as the first character of each line:

寶骨悲留千古地
家身慘掛萬年墳

One natural translation is:

• Precious bones tragically remain in the ancient earth for a thousand years

• The family’s sorrow hangs over the grave for ten thousand years

This is the formal, monumental grief: the language of stone, but first drafted in ink on this portrait of mother and son.

Second Couplet: angry accusations

Along the left margin of that same photo is a second, more raw inscription. Here the writer turns from dignified mourning to blame:

西妖不仁害我子
天公何忍奪吾兒

In English:

• The Western devils are heartless, killing my child

• O Heaven, how can you bear to snatch away my son

This couplet names both earthly and cosmic culprits: the “Western devils” and a Heaven that allowed a small boy to die in front of his own home. “Western devils”† reflects how Chinese immigrant parents in 1950s California might have experienced the white-dominated society around them—as dangerous, indifferent, even hostile to them. Addressing “Heaven” directly, it protests not only earthly injustice but also the cosmic unfairness of losing a son so young.

†[Common Chinese expressions often depict outsiders as devils or old ghosts, eg. gwei loh.]

Front: Jimmy, Fred, Dennis; Back: Allen, Rose, Mabel
December 27, 1953, Oakland, CA

Third Couplet: philosophical reflection

In this photograph, Jimmy stands outdoors with his five older siblings in front of a brick wall. It is December 27, 1953. The picture is likely the last one of Jimmy before his death two weeks later. In the left margin appears a third couplet. The ink has faded almost completely in the first line, but the words can be made out from the deep indentions in the photographic paper:

往事如雲雲過眼
前塵若夢夢似烟

A concise translation:

• Days long past drift by like clouds passing before the eyes

• Dust of the past is a dream that turns to smoke

Here the voice has shifted from protest to reflection. Jimmy’s death is no longer spoken of directly, but overshadows the mood. Although the date when this couplet was written is unknown, one might imagine that it was some time after the earlier inscriptions. The fury at "Western devils" is gone. Heaven is no longer confronted. What remains is the Buddhist-tinged recognition that everything — joy, sorrow, the lost boy himself — has become cloud and dream and smoke.