By Christine Wong
San Francisco Chronicle
January 13, 2002
Living in the United States is a luxury. Clean water, huge cars, IKEA.
But like rich folks with heart disease, the luxurious lifestyle catches up
with us. Affluence can be a trap: I'm never pushed to talk to my neighbors,
trust people or have a sense of community -- but I always lock my car doors.
When I traveled in China this summer, I had to open up and humble myself.
And I realized there are luxuries even we Westerners can't afford.
I'm a 23-year-old American-born Chinese (ABC) California-girl artist-
iconoclast. I went to China with eight other ABCs -- first gen-ers, sixth gen-
ers, hapas (half-Asian/Pacific Americans), artists, engineers from UC Berkeley,
a party girl from Marin. We're "In Search of Roots Program" interns.
Basically, we're all trying to visit our ancestral villages in China. And if
we're lucky, we might learn a little about ourselves.
In China, I become a 3-year-old asking endless silly questions. Kilometers
and exchange rates. Squat toilets and pink money. How come the sky is so big
and white? Do people actually live in those shacks? Are people staring at us
because we're foreigners, or because of my crazy hair and tattoos? Have they
never seen hapas?
Why are people surprised that we can use chopsticks?
Everyone in our group is Cantonese. Meaning, we're all from a southern
region of China called Guangdong (Canton). The story goes that Guangdong was
populated by a bunch of thugs trying to escape the emperor up north in Beijing.
No wonder the Cantonese language is so much more colorful and soulful (and
crass) than the northern Mandarin.
We quickly learn that Guangdong is huge, and there are tons of different
dialects, customs and foods in each area we visit. Some dialects are
imperceptible; others are indecipherable. Many regions have a specialty food -- tiny custard cups, local fish or fried insect.
I had always thought of China as some huge, incorporated mass of billions
of people who ate rice, wore Mao outfits and rode bicycles. At least that's
what's portrayed on TV.
Rural China is breathtaking: endless fields stretching deep into the
horizon, where faint, rocky mountains cradle our view. Short ladies in straw
hats in rice paddies, bamboo groves, 19th century architecture. Still,
something always catches my eye, reminding me that China's not caught in time,
not a stereotype. Like kids in remote areas wearing Tony Hawk T-shirts, or an
ad selling hip-hop gear by Coca-Cola.
I prepared for this trip for five months, doing research, interviewing my
parents, collecting maps, going to seminars. Still, I realize I'm completely
unprepared to visit my father's village as we step off the bus in Nan On.
Nan On means "southern peace." The village is a cluster of grand old two-
and three-story buildings, a paved plaza, glittering rice paddy, river and
watchtower overlooking miles of fields and distant mountains. It's dazzling.
What a blessing that I came from such picturesque country, a little village
cradled by lush green shoulders of the earth. So different from my sooty
apartment next to the freeway in East Oakland.
No turning back now. My stomach churns and my palms are sweaty. What if
they don't care that I'm here? We could be related, but what if we don't
relate?
I walk up and I meet Ah Ying, my father's nanny and my great-aunt. She is a
slight, 65-year-old woman, capable and springy. She is warm and sweet, with a
great smile and little barrettes in her ear-length, salt-and-pepper hair.
"You're Ah Fook Yerng's daughter?" she asks. "Fook Yerng's daughter has
come home?"
She welcomes me into the home built by my great-grandfather. The house has
two kitchens, four rooms and a large main room that looks up to a huge
ancestral altar on the second floor. I learn that my great-grandfather was the
deputy commissioner of the region. She asks about my great-grandmother. I
don't know how to respond -- I've never met or even heard about my great-
grandmother.
My relatives barrage me with good wishes for my parents, and the constant
question, "How come your father hasn't come home yet? He's been gone 50 years.
" They speak of him as though he just left. I realize that I could have been
raised here in Nan On, instead of sunny suburban California. Instead of
hustling design jobs and shuffling zip disks, I'd be going to school on a
rusted bicycle in Guangzhou, or washing clothes in the river.
Suddenly, the earth seems so big and I feel the weight of the distance that
my family's story spans.
How can I describe being welcomed home by total strangers? I came home to a
home I never knew I had. I was scared and overwhelmed, confused by the
language. In the end, I just felt a powerful sense of family. My father left
China 50 years ago at the age of 11. I returned at the age of 23. My great-
aunt, whom I'd never met, welcomed me into my ancestral home as though I've
never been gone. She hung onto my right elbow the same way my mother does.
When it was time to leave, I boarded the bus and waved goodbye to my
ancestors through clouds of dust, memory and time.
In China, I was forced to trust total strangers, give thanks to people who
opened up their homes, humble myself to constant learning and accept the fact
that I knew myself as a Chinese American, but not as an overseas Chinese. I
had to learn to take off the mask that I wear, the one that says, all at once,
"Don't f-- with me" to the potential criminal, "I don't have time for you" to
proselytizers and crazies alike and "Not your bitch" to males with staring
problems.
I had to relearn smiling. The villagers stared at us because we looked
strange -- high-tech backpacks, shiny watches, baggy pants that obviously
didn't fit right. We stared at them because everything in China looked so
familiar and so foreign at the same time.
Learning to communicate was more than a matter of translating words -- it
was being able to communicate sincerity in a smile. It's something I might try
with the neighbors in America once in a while.