Today I heard the news that my dear friend and co-worker Elder Liau Tet-thiam passed away. He died peacefully on April 30, 2014 at the age of 95. We knew each other for 30 years.
Paul, Rev Chen and Elder Liau reviewing Proverbs in 1994.
When I first met Elder Liau in 1984, he had just retired as an elementary school teacher where he had served God for over forty years. He and I had been invited to join the team of ministers and elders who were beginning to translate the Bible into Hakka, the language of his ancestors. Over the decades we worked on the Bible, he was always teaching me new words or sayings. Sometimes the team would be struggling over how to translate a verse into clear concise Hakka, and he would come up with a brilliant solution. When younger members of the team were unsure of how to pronounce older Hakka words, we would turn to him for the correct way.
Elder Liau (front-centre) and the Hakka team celebrate the new Bible, April 2012.
I remember the last day of my 5-week visit in Nov-Dec 2007 when we were finishing our review work on the Book of Job. Elder Liau said to me, “I feel like a young man when we work together.” He was 87 then. During our parting prayers, we recalled Isaiah 40:31. He shed a few tears, as did I, never knowing if this would be our last farewell. He walked away from the Sunday school room where we worked, pulling a small suitcase behind him with his Japanese & Mandarin Bibles and Hakka dictionaries. (Until he was 85, he carried all his books in a knapsack on his back!) By God’s grace my dear friend lived to celebrate the day when the whole Hakka Bible was published in April 2012.
I once asked Elder Liau how he became a Christian. His story went back to his paternal grandfather, a great uncle and an uncle. One day the three men were visiting the nearby town of Liung-tham (Dragon Lake) to attend a large Hakka festival. As usual, large pigs had been slaughtered, and sacrifices were being offered to various Buddhist and Taoist gods and goddesses as well as to Hakka ancestors. There was a big rain-storm during the festivities and the three men looked for some place dry. They saw a simple building nearby with an open door and wooden benches inside, so they sat down there. A kind man named Dzung A-moi offered them tea and chatted with them about the “God of Heaven and Earth”. In God’s providence, the men had walked into the small Presbyterian preaching hall in Liung-tham. Over the next few months they got to know Mr Dzung (a disciple of Dr George Leslie Mackay) who shared the Gospel with them. Later, a few Christians set up a “Kong-ngi So” (A Place for Talking about Righteousness) in their home village of Koan-si. In time, these three relatives, his own father and 3-year old Liau Tet-thiam were baptized as Christians. Elder Liau remembered as a young boy walking miles from their farmhouse to worship God at Koan-si Presbyterian Church. Along the way neighbours would yell at them and call them “fan-e gui” (foreign devils). He and his family were not immune from suffering. In the late 1800s, his grandfather’s own father and two older brothers were beheaded by aboriginal Tayal hunters who lived in the mountains nearby. In the 1920s-1940s, by the grace of God, most of the Tayal people became Christians. During the 1980s-1990s, Elder Liau served in Koan-si PC with his beloved minister Rev Chen Ke-li, a vibrant Tayal leader who had learned Hakka in order to share the love of God with Hakka people. Together they praised God who had reconciled their Tayal and Hakka families through their shared faith in Jesus Christ.
Elder Liau reviewing a draft translation of the Hakka Bible. “I feel like a young man when we work together.”
Elder Liau told me that his first Bible was written in Romanized Taiwanese. He won it as a young boy in a Bible memory contest at Church. He thanked God for that precious Bible, but was always a bit sad that it was not written in his own mother tongue, the language of his Hakka ancestors. His second Bible was written in Japanese which he learned to speak before 1945 when Taiwan was still part of the Japanese Empire. Around 1950, he bought a Mandarin Bible from people at the China Sunday School store who had fled to Taiwan from China. As the years passed by, Elder Liau taught several generations of Sunday school students in his small village church in Koan-si. He showed them how to read the Bible and understand the stories of God’s love revealed in both the Old and New Testaments. My good friends the Su sisters (strong active Hakka Christians now in their 60s) were all his former students. They told me that Elder Liau could be quite strict when it came to doing your Sunday school homework or Bible memory work, yet he always had a heart of gold.
Elder Liau telling Mary Beth about his ancestors
The final hurdle for a Hakka person to become a Christian is usually the issue of ancestor worship. Hakka people pride themselves in having the biggest ancestor tablets in all of Taiwan. This reflects their strong adherence to family traditions passed down over many generations. But based on the Bible, Christians say that we should worship God alone, the same God who created us and our ancestors. We don’t worship our ancestors; instead, we remember and honour them, and thank God for the lessons we can still learn from them. Elder Liau has always been sensitive to this issue. Over the years he and other Hakka Christians have tried to find good contextual ways to help family or neighbours who are not yet Christians resolve this question. One method Elder Liau has demonstrated by his own example is that, in place of setting up ancestor tablets in the living room, he has hung a large diagram of his family tree. Whenever people visited his home, he would point out his various ancestors and tell stories of how God had blessed them over the years, and in more recent years how God had led many to faith in Jesus Christ.
In addition to his contributions on the Hakka Bible translation team, Elder Liau collected hundreds of Hakka sayings passed down through the generations. In 2001, his collection was published as a 300-page book called, 客家師傅話 or Sayings of a Hakka Teacher. The book made him famous among teachers and students of Hakka language and culture throughout Taiwan. A few examples:
1) 十隻雞仔毋見了九隻 <siip-dzak gie-e m-gien-tet kiu-dzak> “Ten chickens, and nine go missing.” I.e. there’s only one chicken. In other words, “It’s obvious.”
2) 三歲細人仔貼對聯 <sam se se-ngin-e diap dui-lien> “A three-year old child hanging door posters.” In other words, “Someone who doesn’t know which end is up.” (At Chinese New Year, Hakka people hang two strips of red paper on either side of their front door frames with 7-word couplets written vertically from top to bottom.)
3) 六點鐘的長短針 <liuk-diam-dzung ge tsong-don dzem> “The long and short hands at 6 o’clock.” A figure of speech used to describe someone who is straight or upright in their actions.
4) 田螺上壁 <tien-lo song biak> “A snail climbing a wall.” A snail has no legs, but rather uses its mouth to crawl, so its mouth is useful for getting around. But to climb a wall? Hakka people use this expression to describe someone who really knows how to talk, but can’t get things done.
Elder Liau was also a translator, editor and contributor on two Hakka Hymnbook projects for the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan. The first book with 350 songs was published in 1999, while the second book with 660 hymns was launched in April 2014 at the PCT’s General Assembly. One of the hymns he composed gives thanks to God our Father for graciously providing us with daily food (2014 Hakka Hymnbook #658). Some churches have adopted it as a grace they sing when they share the <Oi tson> or “Love Feast” after Sunday morning worship.
Another hymn Elder Liau wrote (2014 Hakka Hymnbook #464) is exceptional in providing Christian families with a way to sing and remember the dead when families gather in the spring each year to “sweep” or “clean” the graves of their departed relatives and ancestors. This hymn provides Christians with a contextual alternative to the many superstitions which accompany traditional Hakka ancestor worship. It’s one way to share the Gospel with family and neighbours. Loosely translated, the lyrics go like this:
Today we gather to sweep the graves;
Singing, praising and thanking the Lord.
God created everything in the world;
And gave birth to all our ancestors.
Today we gather to sweep the graves;
Working together, cutting grass or clearing ground.
With honest hearts and true thoughts we remember them;
Which is better than offering animal sacrifices for life in the underworld.
Today we gather in front of the graves;
Everyone drinks water and recalls our origins.
‘Honour your father and mother’ is the Lord’s command;
Worshiping our Heavenly Father must come first.
Today we gather in front of the graves;
The whole family comes with respect from far and wide.
We act uprightly in order to glorify God;
To edify and bless all people, and build a joyful garden.
“Have a right relationship with God”
In 1995, Elder Liau gave me a scroll which he wrote with his own brush. It hangs on the wall in my study. In Hakka it reads: <Oi lau Song-ti yu chun-khok ke koan-he> “Have a right relationship with God.” It reminds me of the time when we translated Romans 3:22, “God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ” (GNT). So respond with joy to the grace of God, trust in Jesus Christ, and share this Good News with others.
Although Elder Liau Tet-thiam stood only 5 feet tall, he was a giant in Christian faith, hope and love among Taiwan’s Hakka people. I thank God for His faithful servant, my dear friend. May God continue to inspire many through Elder Liau’s life and witness, to share the Gospel with others for the honour and glory of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
