A Song to My Father

Story told by Su Rui

Text by the editorial team

Many people who have heard me perform the song “Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale” imagine that I am the poor little girl who’s the heroine of the song,but that’s a mistake.When I sing the song,I am truly brought to tears and in my heart I do think of my own father,so I am really singing the song to my father.

I came from a very affluent family,so you could say I was “a little princess” who was born under a lucky star.My father owned and operated the largest textile mill in Taiwan.The plant was so big that there was a basketball court,a fishing pond and a staff of chauffeurs inside it.My father really loved singing and our whole family would sing children’s songs together.

But then came a transitionary period in business,his factory went bankrupt and all our family assets were seized.

We had a big radio in our house at the time and I depended on it to help me practice singing.But then the cops came to remove it,and I just sat there crying and begging the man not to take it away.But it was no use.We couldn’t keep the radio.Then the house was sold,and we moved our family and all its nine members into a small rental house.It’s the only thing we could do.

You might say that our family and our lives went from the glory of Heaven to the pit of Hell.But my dad didn’t lose heart.He wasted no time in making plans to get us out of our predicament.He gave up smoking entirely within two weeks.Then shortly after that he gave up drinking for good.The most important thing to him was that we seven kids would grow up to be capable adults.And my dad never asked for a cent from any of us kids.

The textile industry that my dad was involved in back then was closely linked with the chemical industry.So later on,he rented a chemical lab and started doing research and development.One night when my dad was doing experiments he spilled sulfuric acid all over his legs by accident.But he didn’t give up.He never gave up! He just kept on making his inventions.

My father invented quite a few things,and he owns their patents in Taiwan.His very first invention was a scrub brush to use around the house called “the little redhead.”When my dad was a newborn,his hair wasn’t that black.His eyebrows turned red whenever he cried,and grandma and grandpa nicknamed him “Little Redhead,”so that’s the name he gave to the brush he invented.My brothers and sisters would help him out by setting up a roadside stall to sell his “Little Redhead” brushes.My father was the first inventor of the eyeliner that women and girls use today.He got it patented but didn’t have the money to continue developing it,so he gave the patent to someone else.My father is a great inventor in my eyes.

My dad loved learning and was an avid reader.He read every day.The bookshelves in our house were stuffed full with all his books,which included the Four Books and Five Classics of Confucian literature.

The song title,“Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale” talks about the life of poverty and suffering that anyone “buying empty wine bottles” would have to endure.People in an environment like that are pushed to the end of their rope.When we were in the studio recording the song,I hadn’t actually seen Papa,Can You Hear Me Sing,but I just pictured the nine of us all stuffed into that tiny little shack like sardines and that enabled me to literally feel every little emotional nuance that the song was trying to express.Back in the day,recording equipment wasn’t what it is today.There was no way to edit the song.I had to sing it the whole way through.There was just no splicing together a half-sung melody or half-finished lyrics.No,we did it all in one take.My emotions were surging,and my heart was beating a mile a minute as I sang the chorus,“No heaven without earth,no place for me to birth,no life without your care,no home for us to share.” Every word,every phrase moved me so much that I actually got choked up.

Before he passed away,my father went to one of my concerts.I’ve given a whole lot of them,but the most exciting by far was the one where he was in the audience.When I sang “Any Emtpy Wine Bottles For Sale,” I thought about his life and I couldn’t help it,the tears just came and kept coming.They were literally streaming down my face as I sang.My father is that kind of man that I admire most.He had been through all the storms of life,he had gone toe-to-toe with every possible disaster imaginable,and yet he still managed to pick himself up and keep going no matter what.He was seventy when I gave that concert.It wasn’t long after that we lost him.

Every time I sing that song I think of my father.It is forever the most important song in my entire singing career.

Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale

Any wine bottles for sale

Any wine bottles for sale

Any wine bottles for sale

Any wine bottles for sale

The same familiar tale

With me through the snows and hail

I just never try and think

but remember it in a blink

No heaven without earth

No place for me to birth

No life without your care

No home for us to share

If you were never there in my youth

If you never gave me life

If you never gave me a roof

If you never comforted me in strife

It was you who raised me up

Saw me drink from my first cup

It was you who gave me a home

Gave me wide-open spaces to roam

Although you never let yourself say a word

You just knew when the black and white of this life was blurred

Although you never opened your heart to me

Your zeal for life was there for us all to see

From afar,I hear the sweet strains of the voice I love

Brings to mind your gentle spirit like a dove

Oh,take me once more under your loving wing

Lift our voices and start to sing