A little history: My parents left China in 2000. I was 4 at the time.
Since my siblings were all born in the U.S., the trip was like a vacation to them. To my parents, the trip was like returning home. For me, it was somewhere in between -- although closer to the latter.
We got off the plane at an airport in Beijing late at night. My first memory of the trip is of my cousins, all female, jumping and whooping with excitement. In my half-awake state, the whole thing seemed a little surreal. I felt like we were celebrities. Of course, it was a reunion ~12 years in the coming, so it was a big deal, but it was still pretty awesome to see people so excited.
Something I felt very strongly in China which I've never felt before is the power of the word "family". I'm not sure what it was specifically -- listening to my aunts' and uncles' stories of Past Weiliang, perhaps, or maybe the first-time-we're-seeing-these-people-in-12-years part -- but I really felt the significance of my cultural heritage, in a way that I hadn't before. The entire atmosphere was different from normality.
My second memory, which for some reason is the sharpest out of all of them, was seeing Benjy fall asleep standing up. We had just gotten off another plane and were taking a trolley to a bus (apologies for transportation overload). It was shortly after the 16-hour plane ride from Seattle to Beijing, so we were all still heavily jetlagged. The trolley was packed to the brim (I think we exceeded the intended passenger limit). Somehow, in this enormous crowd, I saw 5-year old brother leaning against my father's leg, sound asleep. I'm not sure why this image stuck with me. Maybe it was because Benjy looked so young and innocent. Maybe it was because I didn't expect to see anything in that trolley, jammed as it was.
Now generally speaking, my mother's side of the family is from the city, and my father's from the country. This is important information, because the wealth gap in China is astonishing. We went to the country first, and it was the most rural place I'd ever been. Everyone was a farmer. Some places lacked electricity; others lacked running water. We helped our uncle do menial assembly labor, screwing two bits of metal together. We later learned that he eared 1 cent for every thousand screwing jobs he did. We washed our clothes by hand until we got tired and didn't do it anymore. (This is important info for later.) I ate chicken feet and pig brain and wild mushrooms. Our cousins collected a lot of herbal tea from the mountains and we brought it back with us. Our dad bought a huge crate of cigarettes and shared a smoke with every family member we met (over 50 people). We had tea constantly.
Then we left for the city. None of us had clean clothes, so my mom called her friends as we were driving to Shanghai and asked for laundry locations.
My mom went to one of the best colleges in China and studied economics, so she was friends with a lot of wealthy Chinese buisnessmen. When we got to Shanghai, we discovered that these people had bought us each outfits costing upwards of $120. Pictured below is one of the shirts they got me.
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| This shirt is kind of famous (infamous?) among me and my friends. Can you guess why? (Hint: Sometimes the best answer is the most obvious one.) |
The first thing we did in Shanghai was take a dragonboat cruise (because my mom's friends went all-out. No expense spared). The friend told us that if there was no traffic, we could get there in 15 minutes. It took us over 2 hours to arrive. Later, I learned that the average commute time is 3-4 hours in Shanghai. In Beijing, that rises to 5-6 hours. That means that some people spend 12 hours of their day driving to and from work.
My siblings played Ninja on the cruise. We ate caviar and jellyfish and other delicacies. We had a pristine view of the gorgeous Shangai skyline, all skyscrapers and architectural genius.
Like I said, the wealth gap in China is absurd. In the city, we ate out every night. Here's how restaurants work in China: Everyone sits around a big, circular table with a spinny thing in the middle. The servers bring in dish after dish after dish, putting them on the spinny thing. Everyone has their own bowl of rice and chopsticks. You grab a little bit of each dish and eat it. Here's where it starts getting a little ridiculous: Most of the time, our hosts ordered 30+ dishes. (One night they ordered over 80.) You have a little of each, then you go on to try the next thing -- often you don't take more than two or three bites out of a single dish. This meant that no dish was even half-finished by the time we were done eating. Every dish was thrown away at the end of the meal. We probably wasted more food in one month than our entire family eats in two or three months. It was somewhat unnerving to realize we were eating this much food, while other people were starving in the streets.
We also went to the Shanghai museum, but the remainder of the trip was mostly a whirlwind of meeting new people.We met a ton of friends and family that I'd totally forgotten about. They told me stories about my childhood over a decade ago. My aunt was the disciple of a kung-fu master. This guy was 70 years old, but he was stronger and faster than me. (More humble, too).
Apologies if this post was poorly-edited and rambly. I'm not feeling great today -- just wanted to get this Monday post in.
-Me
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