Every Chinese New Year before I moved to the US, my family and I would pack our bags and return to my father’s small hometown of Shifang, Sichuan, to visit my grandparents. The trip became an integral part of my year; it was everything I ever knew when it came to celebrating Chinese New Year. Every time we drove into town, a familiar smell that accompanied an overwhelming yet comforting nostalgia would flood my senses. The glimmer in my grandparents’ eyes as they welcomed us was a constant in my life that I could always count on. It was a peace I never knew at any other time of year.
We would drive around town, eat at the same rice noodle place each time, shop at the New Year’s fair, and set off fireworks or firecrackers at an open space 20 minutes away. My grandpa never stopped reminding me that these are all things my father did too. My cousins, aunts, uncles, and other relatives would gradually gather at my grandparents’ house and the kitchen would transform into a battlefield, which, to me, felt more like a hug than anything else.
The town of Shifang was a world away from the grandeur of my life in Beijing. 30 years ago, it was nothing more than a few impoverished shacks scattered amidst sprawling farmland. The stark contrast between the hustle and bustle of Beijing, where skyscrapers towered above me as blaring car horns echoed throughout the city, and the quiet, humble streets of Shifang, where every day felt slow and simple, always left me more than bewildered.
I grew older, and my understanding of the world started to broaden. The power and significance of the town and the traditions that came with celebrating Chinese New Year there started to feel increasingly palpable. It grew to be almost tangible when I began to perceive my family’s history with a clearer understanding of the weight of the fact that I was able to attend a prestigious international school in Beijing. I looked beyond my own time on Earth and saw an entirely different universe from the reality in which I had grown up.
Sometimes, we would visit the old shack where my father and his siblings were raised, situated in the middle of a grassland. I took in the floor of bare dirt, tables of unfinished wood, and the hole drilled in the floor that served as a toilet. A massive wok sat on top of a cooking furnace. Time wore down much of what once stood there, yet everywhere I looked, I only saw traces of sacrifice — evidence of the toil and grit making up the days of my grandparents, and their parents, who built up the life that my father, aunt, and uncle could lead, and by extension, the life that I now live.
My father, who grew up eating meat only once a year when it was Chinese New Year, studied his way to Stanford and then Wall Street. My aunt became a professor, and my uncle a businessman. Mapping out the treks that each of them embarked on, starting from this tiny town where my grandparents worked humbly and tirelessly for decades, and then returning to witness the starting point myself, left me nothing short of astonished.
But by the end of my fourth-grade year, my grandpa passed away from cancer. It was indeed a devastating blow, but at the time I couldn’t feel the full weight of its devastation. We continued to return to Shifang to engage in the same New Year’s traditions, but it all felt slightly more subdued, but I couldn’t pinpoint why. What’s important, however, is that everything continued.
Years later, only three months after moving to the US, my grandmother also passed away. Suddenly it felt as if everything I owned, all the opportunities I had, everything I came to know in my current life became detached, as if disconnected from its roots. I found myself studying and living the “American dream” on the opposite side of the world, unsure of how I had gotten there. Beijing felt far away, but Shifang, my grandparents, things that kept me in line with my culture and roots felt even further out of reach. Every time I pictured how my grandparents raised my father and his siblings, objects around me almost started to float – the contrast was so extraordinary that I couldn’t grasp onto the reality of it.
But then came a sense of determination – something that I had never felt whilst living in China. I was driven to bridge the gap between the past and present, to lessen the distance between me and my grandparents by honoring everything that they honored. I wanted to carry those Chinese New Year traditions with me, bring them over from Shifang, decorate the house bright red each year, and constantly keep the Chinese language as near as it can be.
Every day, I am struck again and again by the magnitude and value of the fortune that was handed to me on a silver platter. Everything around me today acts as constant reminders that I am enormously privileged. Privileged, my biggest concern is getting a good grade on a recent test in IB Math Analysis. Privileged, simply in the fact that I can even say I am taking an IB course. And this realization continues to keep me grounded as I strive for the same kind of excellence that my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents demonstrated throughout my family’s history — never forgetting for a second how everything came to be.
