by Alice Shen
My cousin drives me to the train station; the surrounding area blurs into one ambiguous color while the wind whips my hair. Behind us, the sun is rising, illuminating something new.
***
I want to cry when I find out that I’m going back to China.
And it’s not because I have something personal against Communism or the culture-rich history—it’s more like I don’t like the heat, and not to mention the fact that air-conditioning is almost as rare as iced-water, which is all I want after liquifying into a puddle of sweat and cells in this unfamiliar place.
Americans think of China as Mao Zedong’s face. The Bird’s Nest, the Oriental Pearl Tower, the Great Wall of Chi- na—powerful and iconic. As quaint villages with dirt roads bordering rice paddies—peaceful and idyllic. All of which are featured in the photoshopped pictures of the glossy travel China guides depicting a place that I’m sup- posed to know like the back of my hand. The reality is that I only know three words in Chinese: “hello,” “thank you,” and the classic nod. Simple things. Little things. Enough to get around.
But, it’s not enough when I visit all the family in the lao jia with the traditional houses without any air-condition- ing or running water where they feed me zong zi because I’m too skinny and say things to me in a language that is incomprehensible; and it’s not enough when I see my aunt for the first time in ten years and my aunt is crying and even my dad is crying (and he never cries) and when she holds my face, I can only stand there and study the soft wrinkles adorning her skin, unable to say anything back; and it’s really not enough when I’m spending my last night in the lao jia and I’m about to leave and never see my relatives again for another ten years or so and while they’re saying that this is my “home,” that they will always have a spot for me, and that they love me, I’m fighting back tears while I just do the classic nod and smile and think…
About America. I think about the movie theatre where I went on my first date and the park where I spent my Sum- mer nights. I think about the mall that my mom takes me to and the mountains in Colorado where my sister lives. Despite all the love China has to give to me, I don’t return it because it’s not America, and it’s all too unfamiliar. Maybe that’s why I want to cry.
***
And for a moment, on this desolate road in a village that gentrification has not yet claimed a victim, I close my eyes and escape from existing in a place, and, instead, I exist in the enclave between noise and quietness, speed and still- ness, America and China, and I’m lost in that moment of feeling—really feeling that familiar feeling—of home.
When I open my eyes, the sun is shining on my home.
I hug my cousin one last time before I get on the train and leave it all behind, except not really because I have souve- nirs and memories—the distinct scent of camphor wood, the bite of burning incense, the tender love of family. And there’s one more thing.
With stars in her eyes and stripes lodged in her throat, she says in her best English, “I’m going to America. Next time we meet, let’s meet in America.”
I nod and hug her tight one more time. “Come home soon.”