Great People Have Lived In My Veins: A Reflection on My Trip to China

There are so many ways to say "fleeting". I have used my childhood as a descriptor, my teenage years, my time in college, and every month that passes by. I've seen it as the hill in my front yard, the one that scared me shitless when I was first learning how to reverse my car, the same one I used to sled down on no-school snow days. My last relationship was fleeting, my favorite song is fleeting, wishing things were longer than they are. My recent trip to China -- though exhausting as it was, was also fleeting. This trip was an eye-opening, refreshing, heartbreaking, soul-searching week in my life. It was also a harsh reminder of reality, of time passing, of the complexities of family and mortality.

My Father's Side

My father grew up in the city of Yantai. Though he is an only child, he grew up surrounded by loved ones. Family friends who took care of him as a child because his father was constantly occupied as a professor and his mother was not entirely fit to care for a child on her own, aunties and uncles who were always there to help out. It's a funny thing to meet these people for the first time, people who are practically family to my dad and know so much about me, yet I am just hearing about them for the first time.

My grandmother on my father's side has been living in a nursing home for the past year. Ever since her husband, my grandfather, passed away from Alzheimer's in 2018, our main priority for her health and wellness was for her to avoid isolation. Luckily, over the past year, she has really enjoyed living in the nursing home and the community it came with. However, when I walked into her room and saw her for the first time in almost ten years, sitting by herself on the couch peeling an orange, it instantly brought me to tears. I can't quite put into words the emotion that overcame me -- it was like sympathy, guilt, and joy all at once. But, the smile that lit her face when she saw my father and I made the 24+ hour travel day worth it.

After spending a couple of days traveling with her, I can see parts of myself in her. Her humor, her tenacity, it shines from her despite her old age. Leaving her with my parents on the train platform, and seeing her tear up as we said goodbye, broke my heart. Everyone at the station who saw me break down crying can testify to that. Knowing that it was likely that was my last time seeing her was a reality I wasn't prepared to face. Still, my mind is not ready to accept that truth. Time is a fickle thing. I know she will continue living a fruitful life, with friends and family at her side even when we cannot physically be there. I know the last thing she wants is for me to pity her, but that's not what this is. It's something I still can't fully conceptualize. It's just a feeling, a giant "what could have been" shaped pit in the hollow of my stomach. 

My Mother's Side

My mother grew up in Hai'an, in the countryside. As a little girl, she was surrounded by rice fields and stray dogs, surviving winters with no heat and\ blistering summers with only the solace of metal fans. This tough childhood shaped her into the soft woman she is now.

My mother's parents are lively people, having spent their whole lives working hard harvesting rice, thriving in a life without the luxuries of plumbing and electronics. They speak a different dialect of Mandarin, one that my sister and I can't completely understand. Though this makes communication infinitely more difficult with them, I see myself the most in my mother's father. Though I can't fully put my finger on it, I feel it heavily. Even as a little girl, I always found myself gravitating towards him the most. It makes me wonder how much closer we could be if I could speak to him properly. Circumstances like these make me wonder so much, make me wish things could be different, but that's the reality. It's a pill I have to swallow.

My mother's father has four siblings. One of his older brothers, also his neighbor on the farm, is suffering from end-stage liver cancer. I am not close with him, nor have I ever been. But seeing him on this trip, seeing his wife crying as we left, made me resent the world. Made me wish for the first time that immortality existed. It's the circle of life, my mom said. It's just how it goes. I know this, but I hate it. Family is such a complex thing. Someone I barely know, someone I don't even know the name of yet we are related by blood. I could not even tell you how old he is, yet I still feel tied to him. So many things I wish I could do to help. So many things I wish I could do.

My Parents' Childhood

I always believed that I knew my parents well. To a certain degree, I do. But there are still holes missing in their story. Whenever we come to visit China, they are flush with anecdotes of their childhood, pointing out significant landmarks that played a role in their childhood. Hearing these stories fills me with joy, but at the same time, I am also somewhat saddened from only learning about these parts of them at the age of 23. My parents are not private people when it comes to their children. So I have to wonder, is it my fault that they are not open about their upbringing? Do I not show enough interest in them as human beings, rather than just my parents? Or do they not think it is relevant to share their past with us?

I have found that this is common among first-generation children with immigrant parents. It's almost as if they because they sacrificed so much to give their children a life of fertility and wealth, they want to shield us from the harsh truths they grew up in. They want us to revel in the life we are able to live now. But, if that's the case, I resent it. On one hand, I want to learn all there is to my mom and dad, their life, their favorite hobbies, and their crushes and hardships when they were just a boy and girl. But on the other hand, I despise that hearing about these tribulations could be the catalyst for my appreciation and gratitude for what I have right now. I know my parents suffered to provide us the fortune we have now; I should already be eternally grateful for their efforts now.

In another lifetime, I wish I could meet my parents when they were just a little boy and a little girl. I believe we would be good friends.

My Relationship With My Grandparents

I am not close to my relatives. At all. There are so many factors that come into play, creating seemingly impossible obstacles to overcome to close the divide between my grandparents and me. First off, there's the obvious distance between China and the US that prevents me from seeing them more than once or twice a decade. Then, there's the language barrier that makes it hard for us to connect on a surface level. My Chinese is mediocre at best, and communicating my thoughts properly and concisely is quite the feat. With the cultural barrier, it makes it even harder for me to connect with them on a deeper level. To be frank, admitting these tribulations feels like excuses. I could have done more to stay in contact with my grandparents. I could have practiced my Chinese more. There are so many things I could have done to be proactive about keeping my relationship alive with my grandparents. But it's no use to think about what I could have done to change the present. All I can do now is take responsibility for how I can do better now to stay connected with them.

This sort of guilt didn't really affect me until this trip when I was able to see my homeland in person for the first time as a more mature adult. From the city where my father grew up and the farmland where my mother spent her youth, the stark difference between my childhood and theirs is undeniable. Seeing the rich history of the country itself and then all of the places that hold so much meaning to my parents leaves me feeling unsettled. Unsettled because I felt so incredibly disconnected from this place, almost uncomfortable because I feel like I didn't belong. Walking down the street, it is beyond obvious that I am American. Yet in the US, it is clear that I do not fully fit in there. My identity is in this place of limbo, and I know that I am not alone in this sentiment.

Visiting China this time around was a completely different experience for me. I am at the age where I understand things better, I can grasp the gravity of situations more, I can communicate better, I am more in tune with my emotions. This made traveling easier and more difficult at the same time. I was able to help my grandparents physically, converse with them more, etc. But it wounds me at the same time. I hate that it took this long for me to genuinely connect with them, with them being at the tail end of their life and me feeling like I just began mine. It doesn't feel fair. It makes me resent mortality, wishing that I could have more time with them.

I know there is no blame to place, not even on myself. My parents willingly left their home country to pursue a different future, enduring racism, xenophobia, financial struggles, uprooting their entire life to move to a country they don't even speak the language of,  just so my sister and I could grow up with less resistance. It's a decision I will never be able to thank them enough for. They knew this choice would not only create a disconnect between us and their parents, but it would also put them at a distance from their own parents. I can't imagine how they feel, only being able to see their parents for one or two weeks every five or so years. As a child, I was envious of my classmates who were so close with their grandparents, whereas in my lifespan, I would only see mine for not even a year's worth of days.

Life is a fickle thing. Time feels like a heartless beast, relentless in its reminder of its passage. The ruthlessness of impermanence follows me everywhere, in the echoes of my grandmother's laugh and in between the teeth of my grandfather's smile. I trace my habits back to them, all the parts of me back to them, the dimples at the bottom of my spine and my sturdy feet.

I confess; I wish I could tell you this story of them without having to be in it. I wish I did not have to endure the inevitable grief that comes with this sort of history, but it is not realistic. I can not escape it.