Worst of all are the windows. Inexplicably arched despite the overwhelming squareness of everything else. They, too, are made of tile- a cheap, sturdy material found on every new, kitschy house on the island. Large square tiles pave the floor. Small, rectangular tiles of all colours march in brick-pattern along the walls. Irregular tiles work their way around curved edges. The walls are remarkably flat and straight, and grafted onto them are curious imitations of architectural elements from other cultures: slanted English attics, Greek pillars, double, triple, quadruple doors.
In a space that is partially indoors and partially outdoors is a front yard. Ancient, lanky trees hold thin hammocks of webbed green plastic, a sheet of metal is the ceiling, shielding the place from rain or sun but clattering terribly whenever a hardwind blows. A chicken coop or two exist, one for the hens and one for the roosters, and inside are chickens of indeterminate shapes huddled together, their feet caked with shit.
Inside: too many flights of stairs, long hallways, empty spaces followed by crowded, tiny tiny rooms.
And everywhere, always, the noise: of mahjong tiles rumbling across tables, of firecrackers and various packets of gunpowder exploding at the crack of dawn, at midnight, at all hours of the day, of relatives shouting and laughing with each other, of animals squealing as their throats are cut and bled, of roosters crowing, of bashing gongs alerting one god or another and downright deafening mortal ears, of blaring television, of wailing babies, of tin pots clattering on the ground.
When I think of my roots, disgust mixes with panic. I don’t go back often. When I do, it’s on the week of a Chinese New Year. Inevitably I am paraded throughout the village with cousins whom I speak to once every few years, greet the elderly whom I have never met, collect red packets of wrinkled ten-dollar bills. I study the faces of strangers and relatives, especially those at or above fifty, see their weathered skin, blackened teeth or nails, eye-whites yellow or cloudy with cataracts, flinching whenever they talk too loud, wrinkling my nose whenever they smoke too much, read the same line over and over again in my book whenever they turn the television volume up too high, rub my feet together uncomfortably whenever they arrive at topics of hostile political beliefs. Sometimes I withdraw from them like a reflex. And other times I stay long enough for panic to settle in. The overly leathery skin: is that indicative of a skin cancer? The bad teeth or nails, the discoloured eye-whites: indicative of bad healthcare, bad diet, or both? The stairs inside the house are too steep. The mountains are too steep. The cooking area requires you to squat down for long periods of time: will their knees be able to stand it?
At an interview for a political science college program, panelists ask me: “What is one topic you are interested in exploring in Asia?”
I panic. My mind goes blank. “Plastic waste. At my grandparents’ village, I see plastic bags littered on the streets everywhere.” Actually, not quite true- the trash sorting seemed to be improving the last time I visited. My statement sounds phoney, but judging from the looks of the panelists, who are white, they cannot tell. I cringe a little at selling short where I come from again- offering a less nuanced image of my homes and upbringing once pressed for time, for nerves, for opportunities.
Offering an image of a place exotic and impoverished and ignorant enough, something that fits with the view the foreigners already hold. I compensate for the lie with other truths, but it is the lie that I remember most. Other things I say:
“Currently, I feel too close to home to be able to study China objectively.” True.
“Getting an education abroad is important to me because there is more freedom of information outside of this country.” True.
“I’ve always travelled growing up. I don’t feel particularly attached to any one place and I would like to travel more in my twenties.” Also true.
In the end, my responses work, and I do get into the college, and my motivation for applying to the program has never wavered: I want this. I want to learn about Asia. I want to do good. Please believe me.
When my uncle was a little boy a bunch of baby chickens imprinted on him and followed him everywhere. His favourite was a chick with three horizontal markings on its forehead and one vertical marking down the centre, bisecting the other three lines.The markings spelled out wang, the Chinese character for king. The chicks followed him with a compulsion etched into their DNA. And he was a child, whose carelessness and clumsiness was also etched into his DNA. One day the chicks followed him too closely and when he stepped back, he stepped on a soft, frail body and accidentally killed his favourite chick.
Growing up is realising that some things are hard to love. And choosing to love them anyway.
I spent my childhood oscillating from loving to hating my face, my surname, my language. Now I have settled on embracing my heritage, although sometimes, I still curl my hair. I spent my teenage years trying to return to my home country by stumbling over words on paper written in a foreign language. When I write, I feel a compulsive responsibility to remember my home, to draw attention to it, to help it. When I write, I follow my home wherever I go, I can’t help it, no matter what hurt I find. In the Chinese New Years when I do return, I often get diarrhea. At mealtimes meat is served not quite cooked all the way through, raw lettuce leaves are placed directly on the table, and family members peel and wrap and hand over food with unwashed hands. I tell myself, for this one week of the year I will be less fussy. I will train my immune and digestive systems. So I eat the raw lettuce leaves encapsulating parcels of fried vermicelli and shrimp, eat whatever relatives hand me, and my pescatarian excuse saves me from the undercooked meat. Don’t get me wrong- the food is delicious- and I persuade my stomach to digest the food like a local.
I also didn’t wash myself as often as I should have when I visited as a child. This was before I trained myself to slip my feet into their rubber slippers and hang my clothes and underwear on their rusty clothes- hooks beside the shower-head. This was before I learned to glance over the tubes of toothpaste and toothbrushes with their bristles facing me wedged between the exposed pipes and the walls. No, when I was a child, I was fussier and couldn’t control my germaphobic tendencies as well. One visit, I wouldn’t bring myself to shower for the four days I was there. At night, I rubbed my legs together in bed and felt their griminess. The part of my father’s childhood home I do like: plastering the spring festival couplets onto doorways with my cousins. Their hands are long and lean like mine. One of us holds the ladder still, one holds a tub of sticky paste, and the third takes a column of red paper in one hand and a paintbrush loaded with paste in the other, and tries to stick the banner as neatly as possible on the wall. I usually wake early- it is impossible to stay asleep after the blasting assault of the firecrackers on the day of the New Year- and then seek out my cousins to do this task. We take turns holding the ladder, holding the tub of paste, and holding the couplet with a deceptive closeness. We’re used to silence with each other, after all.
So I get diarrhea and sometimes do gross things because I am too fussy about their domestic facilities. I cannot sleep well whenever mahjong tiles or firecrackers assault my ears even through multiple layers of walls and doors. I need my dad to translate what relatives say because they speak in a dialect I never learned. I sometimes flinch. My father’s childhood home is a place to which I am allergic and therefore can only love in half-measures. So what I cannot offer in the flesh, I try to offer in my writings.
One night I dreamt about the house. All the furniture was gone, the doors thrown wide open. The yard existed but the metal sheet on the ceiling had disappeared and sunlight filled the place. The chicken coops and their chicken shit were gone. Impossibly clear water filled the entire ground floor. I stood barefoot in the living room, the water up to my knees, and then moved into the front yard until the water reached my waist, my neck. And then I submerged my entire body.