“You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It’s for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone.”
- Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie
My parents turn 60 this year.
My Dad said it was mingyun, it was fate that we would spend Chinese New Year in Shanghai this year of all years. I’ve been thinking about a placement in Shanghai since my first year of medical school, but I didn’t realise it would happen in a perfectly timed February. I had some childhood friends with me placed in hospitals in and around China, and my parents decided to fly over as well.
My parents, who immigrated to New Zealand in 1995, had never come back for a New Year celebration until now.
In one sense, perhaps this was a by-product of manifestation - explicit conversations, indirect hints, all pointed in this direction.
It also was, of course, fate.
…
Chinese New Year celebrations come in all shapes and sizes, depending on each family and culture. My parents’ families come in two types. My Dad’s family is small. Every member of the Hou family can cleanly fit in my Aunt’s dining room table, who would cook us homemade rice cakes for lunch, before moving to a restaurant for dinner. My Dad’s parents - whom I never met, as they passed away in their 60s from cardiac complications - had, incredibly rarely, few siblings. My Grandpa was an only child.
My Mum’s family, on the other hand, is more typical. My paternal Grandpa and Grandma, both of whom helped raise me in New Zealand, had a whopping five and seven siblings respectively. Although most of them have passed away, their tales are full of colourful and dark stories reflective of their generation: twins separated from birth, adopted cousins, and war stories from the Mao era.
Different family sizes warrant different banquet logistics; in Minhang, my Dad’s family could fit around a single table. In Hongqiao, my Mum’s family demanded an entire room with four tables fitting around forty. This was not even the true size of the family, with many of the younger generations missing, perhaps tired of tradition. But regardless of size, there was always a round table.
…
As a kid, I hated the round table. I hated the forced social expectations, the excessive alcohol, suffocating smoke, the gluttonous dish-ordering, the layered meanings in language and expression, the need to show off every child’s superficial accomplishments whilst also admonishing them for their flaws.
Not every round table went like this. Some, where money or business is exchanged, required these formalities; others are where old stories are relived, and nostalgia is shared. As a child, every round table blurred together into an emotionally loaded haze; you would sit around the other kids while your parents bid for serendipitous social connection. At more unappealing tables, I would wait for the dishes to come, quickly eat, and then escape to my book or Gameboy while the adults drank. I was introverted, but it seemed the other kids were too. This is partly why I both yearn for Shanghai to piece together my diasporic identity, but also dread the inevitable cultural suffocation.
Age has made me appreciate the dance and made me a better dancer. As a newly minted 24-year-old, a rare age range in this group, I had a couple of cards up my sleeve: I inherited a tolerance for Chinese white wine, I feel at home speaking Shanghainese (a rarity amidst a declining dialect), and I’ve learnt from my parents how to tell stories with emphasis. Armed with these tools, and with my parents willing to lead (having danced their entire lives) I found it easy, perhaps even enjoyable, to dance. I jing’ed my elders, drank Moutai, engaged in discussions on society and culture, presenting the alternate ‘younger’ voice. When one meets the expectations and conforms to the rhythm, there is something special left at the end…
Stories.
There are certain stories that only come out in certain settings, amongst certain people, in certain rooms. In each round table, I put together another jigsaw piece of my parents’ lives. With each story came a bout of emotion, reminiscing, and shared experience. The round table brought out tomes and depictions of my parents’ lives that I devoured, as the ‘historian’ of my own family. Here, I felt I was the final link in a continuous unbroken chain, observing the tempered links before me.
…
After the festivities and the raucousness, I would retire to my room and think about these stories. With my parents turning 60, this might be one of the last New Years that I spend with them, if not the only New Year I spend with them, in Shanghai. It was perhaps the happiest I’ve seen them in a while.
In the days that followed, as we explored China, played cards on the train, and ate delicious food together, I felt that they too, were thinking the same. They were hoping to leave me with some memories, memories I could take and cherish when they are gone.
There was one round table that caught me off guard. My mum’s cousin from Japan brought a photobook with photos of my parents, grandparents, my sister and I as infants. I was reminded of how young my parents were, back then. Family members would always say, “you have your Dad’s eyebrows, and your mother’s face”, and now, at 24, I could see it clearly. But what these photos revealed most was how their hair had thinned and greyed, how their faces had grown more lined, how their bodies were not what they once used to be. One uncle showed me a picture on his phone of Dad older, but with jet black hair.
“How long ago was this? Ten, maybe twenty years ago?” I said.
“No, this was in 2021. Only five.” I looked over at Dad, at his recent 60 year old birthday photo, and was reminded how rapidly age takes over in the later years.
I’ve been wondering why the quote at the beginning, from the Paper Menagerie, has stirred so much emotion in me over the last few years. Yes, in your twenties, a bit of maturity can do this for you. But in the past, this was more of a theoretical possibility. Seeing these physical changes in front of your eyes viscerally compels you. Our parents won’t last forever. They are mortal.
…
During one of the round tables, I reconnected with a family friend - our parents wanted us to meet, since we both came from diasporic backgrounds. Amidst bonding over our interests in technology, our respective experiences in America and New Zealand, he told me about his philosophy of psychological development.
First, we learn that we are not the centre of the world. Second, we learn that our parents are simple, ordinary humans. Third, we learn that we are ordinary, too (we both were still struggling with this stage).
During my Shanghainese New Year, this second lesson was clear. Seeing my parents’ families, stories, histories, and memories humanised them to the n-th degree.
And because they are human, I want to care for them that much more.