The convenience from the click of a button. That is the fuel the engine known as Beijing runs on. Technology is the lifeblood that makes China’s capital feel so inhuman. It feels like a mechanized dystopia where citizens are governed by technology that unknowingly eats away at their humanity. On the street, you can no longer call a taxi because why would you? You can simply pull out your phone and press a button to call for someone. On the streets, the crosswalks, and the sidewalks, you can see takeout containers and plastic scattered about because why wouldn’t you enjoy the luxury of having things delivered straight to your front door?
Don’t get me wrong, Beijing has an unimaginably rich culture and remarkable history. Trust me, it’s been the city I grew up in for six years. Its culture is undoubtedly rich, diverse, and complex: shaped by thousands of years of history with its ancient history, language, and cuisine. However, if you step outside the preserved museums and memories of the past to take a look at the present, you see how cold and lifeless that place is, despite its hot temperatures.
So, you may think my criticisms are false and untrue; exaggerated and biased; or conceited and ignorant. Perhaps I have been gone far too long from my “home” and my “mother” to appreciate its glory. But, stepping away often magnifies the flaws. After merely one month of returning to a place I once considered my sanctuary, I realize that my first six blissful years spent in that homely apartment have become nothing but veneer; a facade that I, as a child, could not grasp yet.
A sea of people stretched out like an endless, monotonous tide under a leaden sky. Faces devoid of life and vigor merged into a canvas of muted tones. Here I exaggerate, reader, because as I look through the muddied car window of the taxi, vibrant reds and jade-like greens are all that I can see, a tapestry woven with the rich blend of tradition and modernity. However, on that dreary day, all I could see was gray. Perhaps, it was the muddied car window, or maybe it was the uncleaned glass of the taxi that had been tirelessly running around the area since five in the morning. But I’m sure that it wasn’t my blurry eyesight. I knew this because I could observe every little detail of the middle-aged, balding man who spat and threw his cigarette on the ground.
This is a man who lives in a country and a nation where the words “don’t forget your dreams,” “never forget your purpose,” “come be a 文明人(1),” “serve the people,”and “love your homeland, recycle and be climate-friendly” are plastered in bold yellow letters against big bright red blocked walls. Yet he spits upon his own promises as he now sits in front of the “do not smoke” sign, poisoning the lungs of passing children. He remains part of that nation as he walks along the public pavements and spits upon the street, tainting it with no care in the world. He remains part of this nation as he dines at a restaurant, eating his share, then throwing the tissues and trash onto the floor when a trashcan lies barely two meters away. He remains part of this nation as he screams at his fellow brother for asking him to abide by the rules and not budge into a line, shouting at him to stop pretending to be a stuck-up saint. He remains part of that nation as he honks his horn, slamming the button over and over again as the cars around him do the same, nonverbally cussing out at each other for no faults of their own. So, as you can see, I lived in a world full of hypocrisy, of moral boosting propaganda that encourages you to be a model citizen while the ones who are supposed to live by that propaganda turn around and violates that very message. I lived in a world where one needs to lack a conscience unless they know someone personally and have a heart as cold and rock solid as the ground that they walk on. I’m told that this is the local unspoken customs of the country we are in, but if this is a nation built on people like these, I will be no part of it.
The taxi finally arrives at our destination, a retirement home. A bright banister welcomes residents and visitors into a place of echoing coughs and soft shuffle of slippered feet. I stand there in awe and disbelief as I watch my mother cry, her face flushed bright red as she sniffles and sobs. How could she feel such human attachment as I, just a few moments before, had thought that I wouldn't bat an eye if I’d never seen them again. I feel no connection with these people, but I feel happy for my mother as she clutches her hands and smiles warmly at the man and woman sitting in wheelchairs before her. Forgive me, mother, for I am a bad daughter, granddaughter, great-granddaughter, niece, grand-niece, great-grandniece, and cousin. I don’t care about them and they’ve never made an impact in my life. I don’t get it. I don’t understand. Je ne comprends pas. 我不懂. I’ll say it in all the languages I can speak, hoping that you’ll know one of them so you can explain to me how and why my mother burst into tears for the third time today just at the thought of them.
I suppose that this is the consequence of immigration. I sit by the window sill, the furthest away from them all, this physical distance reflecting how far I am emotionally from my relatives. In this room full of people, they all laugh and smile and speak in another language I’ve never known, an alienation that sends ice cubes down my spine and makes my jaw muscles tight with words unsaid. If I had stayed in China and not moved away, would I be laughing with them? Would I feel connected with them in this room full of death and life?
They sit in wheelchairs, strapped in with a dulled red vest that keeps them in. She wears a hearing aid of the same color that gives her the slightest bit more of a sound that she doesn’t understand anymore. His skin is pale with balding wispy white hair with a long clear tube in his left nostril. They are treated with utmost care as if they were mosaics made of glass and delicate paper. Are they even still alive? Is this truly living if you lack all the properties of living other than the biological definitions of a living organism? If I hadn’t moved away, would I even be having these thoughts? In this room full of people, I realize that they are nothing more to me than strangers of whom I have distant blood relations with. What truly is a family? Is it blood relationships or people that you share a bond with, being able to share the dark recesses of your mind with? These people full of smiles and jubilation look more superficial to me than the strangers I meet on the street.
Once again I’m sitting there, but this time in a pink leather chair, but the feeling of alienation is the same, this time more choking and angry. Seated all next to this circular table, I’m the one that sits at its corner. They speak in the foreign tongue of my mother language, one that has never been taught to me and one my mother has only spoken on occasions while talking to my grandfather on the phone. After the suffocating white noise, I feel the conversation shift, and their inflections change; more upward, inquisitive, with a light but ever so present undertone of mockery disguised as affection and playfulness. I knew instantly this was directed at me. This hurtful, shameful, brutally insincere tone is the signature way that an adult addresses a child. 她不懂啊(2)?One scathing critique said from across the circle. All eyes turned to me, smiling, waiting for me to step down, tuck my tail between my legs, and let out a meek ‘no’. “啊,我不说上海话,只说普通话(3).” They laugh. Why do they laugh? I clenched my hands into fists, feeling my uncut nails dig into my skin, but never break its bondage. Did I sound too weak? Were my inflections off? Did I use improper grammar or had I misused a word? Was the language that they were speaking not Shanghainese? Had I somehow exposed how I wasn’t one of them? How could I understand a tongue that I’ve never been taught, never used, and barely heard? Why do you seem so disappointed and mocking me, who had never even learned the language to forget it while being overseas? They peer over their filled crystal goblets at me, talking in their tongue, knowing I don’t understand. I am human, I can tell that they are talking about me, mocking me, calling me a child, but how come that they, the adults, would stoop to the level of a “child” and make this one so uncomfortable, isolated, alienated, and the butt of their jokes? I know they don’t mean anything negative since to them, I am family, and I know that they really love me. So why is it that I feel this way? Is it because I immigrated? Is it because of the pandemic, with the four years that it stole from us? Or is it simply because I had grown up? I heard my name mentioned and I looked up. They laughed. “See? She knows when you mention her name. Now she understands.” I know my own name. Obviously, I would hope so, after having to write it for more than seven years at the top right corner of worksheets and exams. Perhaps, this is what becoming an adult means, not becoming more thoughtful and growing mature, but instead forgetting all the righteous childhood rage, indignation, wronged, bitterness, and that deep feeling instead of your chest when you want to speak but they don’t understand. To become an adult is to forget all that makes us children so human. To become an adult is to want only face, superficiality, and false respect from those who are younger than you, all under the excuse of wisdom achieved through age and your shiny new title as an adult, the mature one, the wise one, and the one you shall respect. I know that any adult or parent reading this will scoff and look sad with a pitiful statement of “you’ll understand when you get older”. These people who sit around me next to this circular table are not family. They are cruel, phony adults who are no more than strangers related to me by distant blood relations. I may look like you, but I will never become you.
So, here I am. Caught in a whirlwind of contradictions, full of societal critique for no fault of people’s own and the need for authenticity in this world that seems to demand conformity. It seems that I cannot belong to two places as my thoughts are constantly torn away by the tides and brought out to sea. Do I fit in, do I stand proudly in the center, or should I paint a picture with these colors that were given to me, letting them mix and creating something entirely new? Both this familiarity and foreignness is something that many of those who have immigrated or relocated feel, and it is a tumult that I will continue to fight against every day, because how can anyone choose which one to love more, your birthmother, or the one that raised you?
Translation: 文明人(1) —> Civilized person 她不懂啊?(2)—> She doesn’t understand? 啊,我不说上海话,只说普通话(3)—> Oh, I don’t speak Shanghainesse, only mandarin