Author: Lucy Garberg
Instagram: @lucygarberg
一
In the country of my birth, I’m like everyone else. I have the straight black hair, the almond brown eyes, the features that check off the typical Chinese girl boxes.
In the Beijing airport, a security woman stops me—I’m the only Chinese person in the group. Words spill out of her mouth, and I know she expects that I will understand. Most of what she says floats past me, but I’m able to grasp a fragment of her thoughts. It’s something about luggage, but what exactly about it? Wo bu dong, I say. She walks away shaking her head.
二
One day, you’ll want to go back to China, Mum and Dad say to me in the car. We were driving back from Chinese school, the place where all the Chinese-American kids and their parents go. The school is 40 minutes away from home, and we go there every Sunday to study the language and participate in traditional Chinese activities, like tai chi and calligraphy. There, we’re out of the ordinary: two tall Caucasian parents and their Chinese daughter who can barely cough up a word of Chinese.
三
Do you know your Chinese family? I’m asked this at the dinner table where I’m seated with my Chinese host parents, Mama and Baba, and their thirteen-year-old daughter, Alin. We eat san xian (pork, shrimp, and mushroom) dumplings that Baba made the minute he found out how much I loved dumplings. They’re delicious, and they smell just like they taste—full of umami. I look up from my plate, No, I tell them in Chinese. Silence wells up for three minutes. They stop eating and drinking, and they hold their chopsticks still. Baba nearly drops his dumpling in the vinegar bowl. Really? they finally say in disbelief.
四
In Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, in the west of China, I go into a restaurant where they serve hand-pulled noodles. The store is pristine and ornate—the tables are set with red napkins folded like cranes and red banners with characters I cannot read hang on the wall. I suppose they are about good luck and prosperity. Fragrant scents waft through the air—star anise, stewed beef, and freshly cut herbs. I approach the counter with my friend, mapping out the conversation in my head. The woman at the counter sings huan yin guang ling, which I recognize as welcome. I stumble over my words as I try to order a simple bowl of beef noodles for the two of us. She smiles at my friend and I and asks us where we’re from. America, my friend says. Her too? the woman asks as she looks at me, she looks Chinese.
五
Mama and Baba are the only Chinese parents I’ve ever known. They treat me like their own daughter, giving me identical slippers to wear in the house, taking me to calligraphy class and making me all their favorite traditional Chinese foods: zhajiangmian, noodles with vegetables and sesame sauce, yang mei, a sweet and somewhat bitter berry, and you tiao, a Chinese-style fried dough. They tell me I act like a Chinese girl, that the Chinese life is suitable for me, and I puzzle over what this means. Is it the way I carry myself? Is it my manners? I wish I had the Chinese to ask exactly what they mean—but I’m speechless.
六
Every day at seven, Mama cooks me a big bowl of congee and a fried egg. First, I eat the egg and then I slowly eat the bowl of congee, one small spoonful at a time. The flavors of pickled ginger and fermented vegetables in the morning are overwhelming for my western palette. At seven-forty-five, I leave our xiao qu, our gray, twelve story tall residential complex and head to Er Fu Zhong, the local public school. The Beijing hutongs and streets are painted with colorful motorbikes, elementary school children in their yellow visors, and businessmen who talk on their phones with cutting Beijing accents. I wear the t-shirt with the school’s mascot of three colored sails on it and the baggy blue boy shorts. Wearing this outfit, I blend in—I look like any other Er Fu Zhong girl. I am unnoticed.
七
The lesson of the day is China’s One Child Policy. I shudder as I recite the words in Chinese: only child, abortion, policy. This is language learning, I tell myself, nothing less. As we continue reciting, the words don’t become numb like I want them to, but rather, they become raw and cutting. I am a product of this One Child Policy. The policy that sent me six thousand miles from my birth family that I do not know. We repeat after the teacher: ni bu neng sheng liang ge hai zi (you cannot raise two children), and tears fill my eyes. I was probably the second child they couldn’t raise. I never knew language learning was this hard.
八
One night, I walk into the living room where Mama and Baba sit on the couch watching their favorite Chinese reality show. Mum is on the phone, on video chat, and I ask Mama and Baba if they want to say hello. Their faces light up, and they say hello in their heavily accented English. We love having a second daughter, they say in Chinese, and Mum beams. I know she doesn’t understand a word they have said, but their smiles have spread to her across the world. Then, I tell her what they have said, and she smiles even broader, and the conversation slips into a dance of translation.
九
In the country of my birth, I’m not sure if I’m like everyone else. I walk the red thread between China and America, seeking a balance between the two. As I walk, I wonder if you can ever be at the end.
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