Back to the Roots

I realized I’ve been absent from here for close to a quarter. I’ve gone on a few trips and just hibernated in between!

It started with flying back to the birthplace for my first ever Chinese New Years celebration in over 13 years. Before this trip, anyone and everyone warned me about the air pollution. At the time, I would just snicker and think ‘amateurs’. However once I flew in I felt like Ben Affleck landing on an asteroid, I guess I didn’t know my hometown as well as I thought.

As soon as I got back to our family home I found everything to be frozen in time. My grandma sat in the exact same arm-chair, eyes glued to the TV on some generic soap opera about a polygamous royal marriage, the decades old telephone with the same address book that I scribbled my classmates’ numbers on and my pencil boxes left untouched in the desk drawer. There’s nothing cozier than changing into my pajamas and going into couch potato mode with my grandma. Over the course of the following week, I put on all the winter weight I missed out on in Hong Kong as my entire family of food enthusiasts feasts our way through Beijing. We’re like a tornado- we come fast and leave nothing behind.

I went on a hunt for childhood mementos around town. I used to bike through districts looking for McDonalds’ with my classmates, go to the zoo with my dad but get distracted by the nearby arcaded instead, visit the fanciest theme park with my grandpa because it had a merry-go around, race with my best friend on finding the shortest route back from school and play for hours in the campus garden. After recognizing nothing but a rainbow arch among the financial district that fell out of the sky, I decided I might as well go sightseeing with my friends like a first-time visitor. That actually wasn’t bad, I hiked the Great Wall in -7 degree smog-free weather, visited the festival fair with half of Beijing and saw five motorcycles in full motion in a circular cage at the acrobats. Every-time they brought in another motorcycle, I gasped louder than the most visible foreigners in the room. I’m glad I got to see two different perspectives of Beijing and appreciate both of them. Sometimes the touristy things aren’t all bad.

Evidently, my identity crisis peaks whenever I’m in China. I’m fresh off the boat enough that I can still pass off as a local but my mannerism, thought process and delay in response throws people off, the result is a confused audience wondering if I’m slightly retarded. So it seems that I should start brushing up on my mandarin so I can still speak it by the time I’m raising kids.

The best part about my trip was learning about holiday traditions with my family. My dad felt the need to reference other holidays in explaining Chinese New Year’s. On one hand I’m shocked that he thinks I’m so ignorant but sadly, I had no clue for example that Chúxī (除夕) is equal in significance to Christmas Eve for the Chinese. I proceeded to talk the ears off my family asking about what festivities happen on each day of the festival.    

I’ve always been proud of my hometown, I get quite obnoxious about it and tend to bash any competition (i.e. Shanghai). However as it now seems, a lot of it lives in my memory and my friends and family have all moved away. In all honesty, the continual facelift will probably render Beijing completely unrecognizable in five years. This makes me realize that memories are precious. I better start using that new camera!