Hakka discrimination beginnings. The ancestors of my wife and me were Hakkas living in the southern mountains of China. They were highly discriminated against by the earlier arrived lowland people who pushed them away to live up in the mountains. So that the lowland people could continue to farm the fertile plains.
客家人受歧视为起点。我和我太太的祖先是生活在中国南部山区的客家人。先前到那边的平原居民歧视他们，把他们赶到山上去，好让让自己独占那块肥沃的平原，继续在那儿耕种。
However, the great thing about discrimination is that it’s a training ground for resilience. Thus our people, trying to create farms on rocky hilly land, were often considered the most resilient, and able to withstand harsh trials. Poverty was a big issue, and it was important to be frugal and save as much as possible. To not waste a drop!
可是，被歧视的好处是它磨练人的韧性和毅力。于是，我们的民族在岩石多的山地开拓农地，便成为了最能吃苦最具毅力的一群人。因为环境贫困，所以节俭是很重要的，一个点滴都不要浪费！
Pollyannaish. We recently watched the classic movie Pollyanna where the hero girl always played the game of “glad”. She could always imagine good things happening out of bad. Usually people think that’s so unrealistic, even childish. I can definitely be accused of being “Pollyannaish”, since I’m really fond of the encouragement to “Rejoice always”, from the Good Word, because I know bad things can indeed turn out to be good!
像波莉安娜一样。最近我们看了一部名叫《波莉安娜》的经典电影，其中的主角女孩总是在玩一种叫做“高兴”的游戏。她总是能想象坏事中会出来一些好事。通常人们会认为这是很不现实的，甚至很幼稚的。在我身上一定可以用“波莉安娜”的称呼，因为我特别喜欢在经典著作（佳音）中的鼓励人的话：“要常常喜乐”。我知道坏事确实可以变好事！
Throughout our long life, we have often merged our ancestral Hakka frugality tradition with our “optimistic life attitude”. In some mysterious way, we feel that saving every drop gives us even greater Pollyannaish opportunities for the future!
在我们长长的一生中，我们习惯把祖传的客家人节俭的传统和我们“乐观的生活态度”融合起来。我们觉得只要节省每一个点滴，在未来都会莫名其妙地带来更好的“波莉安娜式的”机会！
照片：孤寒棍，粤语里的字面意思是“孤独寒冷的棍子”，是最好用的零头刮具。
Spatula lickin’ good. Do you even know what a food spatula is? Especially one with the rubber flexible end? And do you know how to use it well? In our Hakka DNA home, we do a thorough job with it. If you’ve ever done spatula scraping of the last remnant of anything creamy and tasty, you know that it’s a fantastic invention. So simple, yet so effective. A variant of “finger lickin’ good” tastiness!
吮刮刀回味乐无穷。你知道食物刮刀（spatula）是什么吗？尤其是带柔性硅胶端的那种？你是否知道怎么使用它呢？在我们具有客家基因的家中，我们使用它发挥得相当彻底。如果你曾经用刮刀刮下一些残留的糊状美味，会知道它是一项奇妙的发明。如此简单，如此实用，可称是另一种“吮指回味乐无穷”的美味（肯德基的经典标语）！
Even with just a little bit of leftover ice cream, you can retaste and relive the ice cream experience that “keeps on giving”. You can surprisingly spend quite a while doing that, all the while reminding yourself that you are doing a great good! For your taste buds, the economy and “world waste reduction”, isn’t that amazing. Try clam chowder, yogurt, curries and anything saucy!
哪怕只剩一点点的冰淇淋，你也可以再次品尝并重温“继续给予”的冰淇淋体验。你可能会不经意之间这么度过一段时光，还不忘提醒自己那是为了你的味蕾和经济，甚至为了世界上减少浪费而做的一件伟大的好事，是不是很了不起！你也可以拿蛤蜊浓汤 、酸奶、咖喱或任何酱类的东西来尝试！
In Cantonese, the spatula stick is colorfully and lovingly called a guhon gwan, 孤寒棍, literally a stingy stick, for good reason. Gu1 hon4 gwan3, if you want to be precise.
在粤语里，刮刀的亲切又生动的称呼是“孤寒棍”，字面意思“吝啬的棍子”，这在合适不过了！准确的发音是 gu1 hon4 gwan3。
Squeeze and poke. In our home, we treat the ordinary toothpaste tube seriously as a classic challenge when the tube gets thinner and thinner. It feels satisfying to squeeze out the last bit of the toothpaste, till the end! None of this American throw-away culture when the tube is still 2/3 full!
挤一挤，戳一戳。在我们家里，当一个牙膏管越来越瘦的时候，我们就会把这个普普通通的牙膏管当成一个十分严肃的经典挑战。能够挤出最后一丁点的牙膏，令人感觉相当痛快！根本不像美国的一次性使用文化一样扔掉还三分之二满的管子！
Going even further, recently I found that small cleaner-brushes for between-teeth brushing also can be poked into the tube outlet to penetrate the last bit of toothpaste. Every happy little drop can be used on receptive teeth. In Cantonese, m4 hou2 saai1 zo2 keoi5, “not good waste really it”. Nothing wasted for sure!
再更进一步，我最近发现一个用于刷牙缝的小清洁刷也可以用来戳牙膏管口，便把牙膏的最后一点也抽出来。这么一来，每一个快乐的点滴都可以用在乐意接受的牙齿上。粤语里说，“唔好嘥咗佢”， “不好浪费它”。的确什么都没浪费！
Last exorbitant eye drop. We never realized that eye drop medications could be that expensive. I was using a medication that cost $400 for 60 days or about $6 per drop! Never had I seen (or paid for) something like that. Practically a meal in Cincinnati, though not enough in Seattle!
昂贵眼药水的最后一滴。我们从来没有意识到眼药水会那么贵。
照片：小小的一瓶400美元就等于一滴眼药水值6美元，你能想到吗！！绝对激发节省最后一滴的本能……
Our natural Hakka every-drop-counts frugality came to the rescue. By squeezing carefully each drop, so that not too much, or too little, came out, my super-Hakka wife could literally extend the life of the drops! And the last drops were indeed precious.
我们客家人的“每一滴是值得的”节俭本能大大派上了用场。
Fortunately we later found a better price, though still too pricey for us Hakkas. Every drop counts still meant every dollar saved! Thank our ancestors indeed.
幸运的是，我们后来找到了更划算的价格，
Checkout counter little encounters. My wife’s superior instincts on counting each dime came in extremely handy at some grocery stores where she was able to catch the cashier’s missteps, though fortunately for mostly small charges. Clearly American high school mathematics classes could be improved!
在收银台的小偶遇。我妻子在计算每一分钱方面有超强的本能，这在超市购物时非常有用，能够抓住收银员的失误。还好一般都是小数目。显然美国的高中数学课程有待改进！
However, the flip side to this careful mathematics is that my dear wife could spend 20 minutes at the manager’s office just trying to return money that was accidentally given to her because of a technical or cashier error. Oh well, it should work both ways! Frugal to us should be frugal to them also.
可是，这种细心计算的另一面是，我亲爱的太太可能会在经理办公室花20分钟之久，就为了退还由于技术或收银错误而多找给她的钱。好吧，这应该是双向的！为我们省钱，也应该为他们省钱。
照片：每一根可爱的头发都算得上。想象一下，一个节俭的灵感在几十年里可以带来多少节省。
Baby haircut inspiration. My wife was very impressed by a picture of my surgeon dad giving me a haircut when I was only a few years old. She thought it was the cutest photo. I suspect that one picture inspired her to cut my hair for 40 years, definitely in line with our frugality theme. After saving by my guesstimate nearly $4,000, I think she finally got tired of saving(!) and sent me off to the hairdresser.
来自婴儿理发的启发。有一张我几岁时外科医生父亲给我理发的照片，让我妻子印象深刻。她觉得那是一张特别可爱的照片。我怀疑是这一张照片激发了她40年来给我理发的灵感，这毫无疑问符合我们节俭的意念。按照我的估算她一共省了将近4，000美元的理发费，而后来她好像厌倦了省钱（！），让我去理发店剪头发了。
This savings is actually more inspirational to us than the legendary “one less Starbucks Coffee a day saves a fortune” over one’s lifetime. Which of course we definitely and easily nail at 15c a day with ready-to-mix good enough Vietnamese or Indonesian coffee.
这种省钱其实比传说中的“一天少一杯星巴克咖啡省一大笔钱”更能激励我们一生。当然，我们以喝起来过得去的越南或印尼速溶咖啡一天只花15美分而绝对轻松地做到这一点。
One hair trimmer hair-dresser. All through the decades, Esther used the same hair trimmer given by friends at our wedding! 56, years ago. Probably our most useful (and frugal) wedding gift, out of lots of impractical ones that have totally disappeared!
只用一把理发推子的理发师。这几十年来，我太太一直用我们56年前结婚时朋友送的那把理发推子！这大概是我们最有用（而且最省钱）的结婚礼物，而那些不太实用的礼物都早已经无影无踪了！
I for one have been thoroughly impressed by my dear wife’s singular professional and artistic haircut act, for all these years. She was called out of hairdresser retirement to reactivate her skills, when Covid-19 hit, to add one bonus year of pandemic home haircuts.
这些年来，我亲爱的妻子的非凡理发艺令我十分佩服。新冠疫情爆发的时候，她从退役中被召唤出来重新发挥技艺，多加了一年的在家理发服务。
Takeouts that linger. We have Chinese friends who insist that no one should eat rice that has been cooked/heated twice. gaak3 je6 faan6, “overnight rice”, a pejorative term in Cantonese! I guess that’s a holdover from old days without refrigerators. One friend gave us a scolding for doing that! However we regularly break this tradition and buy Chinese takeouts that we could string out for a while. I hear that’s what non-Asians intelligently do anyway. A wonderful way of prolonging the lingering joy of Chinese, Thai or Korean food for us. Every last leftover forkful or chopstick pinch.
留恋不舍的外卖。我们有华人朋友坚持认为二次热过的米饭是不应该吃的。“隔夜饭”在粤语里是贬义词！我觉得这个说法是从没有冰箱的年代留下来的。一位朋友甚至因此而批评过我们！然而，我们经常会打破这个传统，点中餐外卖让我们可以吃一阵子。我听说亚裔之外的人反正也用这种聪明的做法。这是一个多么美好的方式来延长中餐、泰餐或韩餐给我们带来的挥之不去的快乐，直到吃完最后一叉子或一筷子。
Sourcing frugal medical supplies for missions. Our ancestral drive became extremely useful when we collected medical supplies and equipment for medical missions in Asia. We knew well the tremendous waste in US hospitals, totally useful materials just thrown away because of habit, without thinking how it could be either reused or saved.
为了援助采购省钱的医疗用品。当我们在为亚洲医疗援助工作收集医疗用品和设备时，我们祖传的节俭习性就起到了很大的作用。我们对美国医院普遍存在的巨大浪费很清楚：完全好用的材料会习惯性地被丢弃，也没有考虑如何重复使用或保存下来。
But once we alerted our hospital nursing staff that we were collecting materials for missions, the response was tremendous. We satisfied both our charitable and modern day recycling instincts! Frankly our ancestral instincts were truly ahead of the times, recycling being an ancient Hakka last-drop tradition!
可是，一旦提醒我们医院的护理人员我们在收集医疗援助用品，他们的响应是极其积极的。这么一来，我们的慈善本能和现代的回收本能都得到了满足。实话实说，我们祖传的本能确实是领先于时代的——回收就是古老的客家不浪费最后一滴的传统！
Mission and poverty full circle. So in a sense, I have come full circle from my relatively poor ancestral frugal roots, to modern day frugal practices, to helping promote frugality as a connection between past and present, both useful and emblematic.
从贫困到援助的圆满。可以说，我圆满结合了祖先的相对贫穷而节俭的起源，现代的节俭做法和提倡节俭作为过去和现在的连接，是既有用又具象征意义的。
“Not rich nor poor. ” I love the principles in the top bestselling book, which urge us to desire to be “neither rich, nor poor, in order to be neither prideful, nor jealous to steal (1)!” 1 I think frugality throughout our lives has readily helped us to be safe from being poor. But also, in the right spirit, frugality can help remind us to give to those less privileged, which might help keep us from being rich and prideful. The practical beauty of frugal last drops!
“不穷也不富”。我特别喜欢全球销量第一书中的原则，劝告我们渴望“不贫穷也不富足，免得我傲慢，又恐怕我偷窃”（1）！我想，我们一生节俭肯定帮助了我们远离贫穷。同时，在正确的心态下节约还可以提醒我们去施舍给那些贫困中生活的人，使得我们可以避免因富裕而骄傲。这就是节省最后一滴带来的实际美丽！
1. Proverbs 30:7-9 NIV
1、箴言第三十章七至九节
