This August, for the first time in 16 years, I went to visit my ancestral lands in southern China.
The previous time I went back it was to say my last goodbyes to my grandfather. I was 11 then, I’m 27 now. You’d think I would have learned about the importance of time and family since then, and I did, but the lesson had to be taught twice.
You see, my great-grandmother died in March.
I meant to go back in February then Covid happened and I cancelled my travel plans. There were many chances to visit earlier yet I didn’t, something which I deeply regret. I don’t have many memories of her and I’ll never get to make more memories. She was the matriarch of a large family, and by all accounts, she lived a good, long life. The year she was 27, the People’s Republic of China came into being. The year I was 27….it was 2020.
I hope she has good memories of me as a chubby grandkid.
I stood in the courtyard of her home, the incense sank down to my nose from the hanging burner and the sun-baked stones floated the heat up onto my already warm face. The cicadas continued to assault my ears and the traditional welcome sweet soup I just drank lingered on my tongue. The paint looked fresh from a renovation last year as we lined up for this photo. It was homecoming.
Two years ago as I was finishing up my second year of teaching in London I faced the choice of either staying or going somewhere else. I felt lost and like a foreigner no matter which country or continent I was on. Throw some 20s existential crises on top of my cultural identity crisis and I was ready to leave.
I read a book around that time said people who feel themselves to be part of something greater are more content with their lives, so I decided to go back to China. My goals were to see what has become of the motherland, reconnect with my relatives, (and increase my savings with the misguided hope that more money would solve this conundrum).
My first year back here was certainly a shock. I’ve never realized how much western propaganda influenced my views of China until I came back and lived here for myself. I’ll save all the similarities and difference for a different post but will sum it up with this: life is good in China. Things have certainly changed since my parents’ childhood weekends collecting firewood and river crabs. For one, my dad is no longer a frat boy.
I slowly began to rediscover the country of my birth. And I kept on putting off visiting my family.
We haven’t seen each other in so long and most of them are strangers to me. I barely remember them from my childhood. I put off visiting properly for a couple of years out of no small amount of anxiety and fear of being different, though I did get in touch with an aunt in Beijing and visit her family a few times. Finally, I managed it in August. 6 months too late to see my great-grandma but not too late to start feeling like a part of something greater.
I stayed with three different aunts over the course of about two weeks, lived with them, ate with them, laughed and cried with them. I met their friends, their children, and their loved ones.
It was great. I’m an idiot for not visiting sooner.
There’s something to be said about being surrounded by people who look like you. My aunts in Xiamen smile like my sister and when they talk I hear my mother’s accent. I see my grandmother’s reflection in my aunts in Putian and glimpse what I can look like given enough time. My younger cousins have grown up around the memories I have of them, one already has a child and the other one is just finishing up a degree in coaching.
I went to see my grandfather, 16 years later and found out he had siblings. I did not cry at his grave, because like all good Chinese, I’ve mastered the art of repressing my emotions. Instead, I ate some longan from the trees in the grove and felt grateful other members of my family were there with me. His younger brother shared some news about the family with me over homegrown apples and pears.
Later, we went hiking up a mountain where I took that first photo thoroughly drenched in my own sweat. It was my body’s way of getting back at me by making all the tears that didn’t come out of my eyes come out of my pores instead.
In my aunts, uncles, and cousins, I see the genetic and cultural history that lives on in my habits and thoughts. The separation between us is something that can be bridged over future dinners and bowls of stewed noodles.
A lot of things changed and yet some things stayed the same. The beds are still blocks of wood, the heat was just as unrelenting, and I am still Ah Hui’s daughter.
The village where I spent my weekends with my grandparents was still there. Most of the houses are empty now with the younger generations moving to the surrounding cities. It was humbling to meet the neighbours who are my grandma’s childhood friends, to once again meet her schoolmates and know that in me, they’re seeing her as she was at 27. They tell me I look a lot like her.
It was a very warm two weeks, both emotionally and physically. In the best of ways, I felt like a small leaf on a big tree. Day by day, meal by meal, I understood them better, the way they live and see the world.
I am still different from them, but it’s a difference I feel more comfortable with. I feel like there is less of a Great Wall and more of a door between us.
By the end of the trip, I found something greater than myself, but I did not find myself. That will take me the rest of my life I think. As they say, life is a journey and not a destination.
