I started writing my memoir in 2021, three years after my father passed away. It was meant to be about my experience with grief as a late-teenager, or lack thereof, since my relationship with him was fraught and unsolved. The first 10,000 words came to me so naturally – memories of family gatherings, conversations with my Buddhist uncle, the death of my first-ever pet – but the work grew into something unexpected. It became (and is becoming) a study of language, of loss beyond the mortal.
It’s incredibly useful to have a near-perfect memory when your life’s work is dedicated to recalling them. As a food writer, I can remember just about every restaurant meal I have eaten in the last eight years. Sensory memories are unshakeable. If I smelled, tasted or heard, you can bet a pretty dollar that it’s still living up there, ready to be written or screamed into the void. When it comes to childhood memories, many of them are stark, even visceral – going all the way back to early primary school – but with time, they have changed or become a mirage of themselves. The ever-present question is whether this change is my brain reaching its capacity limit, or if it’s because I am no longer fluent in my mother tongue.
"When it comes to childhood memories, many of them are stark, even visceral – going all the way back to early primary school – but with time, they have changed or become a mirage of themselves."
My parents and I moved to Australia when I was six months old. They did not know how to speak English at a working proficiency until I was halfway through primary school, which meant we only spoke Mandarin at home – even between me and my younger sister. All the camcorder footage of us playing with stuffed animals, performing choreographed dances and swimming in the pool are in Mandarin (most of which involve me mocking her four-year-old vernacular). Even after my parents learned how to speak English, we had a strict no-English rule at home, which looked like a snappy shuo zhong weng! (“speak Chinese!”) anytime we substituted Mandarin for English. At the time, it felt unfair to be beseeched by my father for the Chinese word for athletics day or orchestra – how was I, a child balancing between two worlds, meant to know it all?
When we went to China in 2018, six years since our last visit, I experienced a unique strain of unfamiliarity. The people were the same, of course – my grandparents, cousins, extended family and friends; as was the smell of game and smoke in apartment stairwells; and the taste of fresh spices, wok hei and blistering oil in the home cooking. But each time I had to ask my mother what the word for assignment or the day after tomorrow was, or when a cashier or waiter asked me questions I couldn’t answer, I moved further away from the place I once knew.
A scene from this trip from my memoir, Birth Right:
A cultural lesson: in China, the woman does not take the man’s family name. She maintains her family name, which is her father’s name. Chinese people are birthed by the mother but there are no names to claim this. As soon as a child is born, they are automatically associated to the father by name. My mother insisted that I take on a part of her, and thus, I was born with her family character (“Qing”) in the second half of my first name. My father’s family name is my family name.
It is customary to address all members of your family by their familial title. I still do not know my grandparents’ names. They exist as “nai nai” (grandmother on my father’s side) and “waipo” (grandmother on my mother’s side), and never as people who play bingo and teach dancing classes in the park. The personification of family members outside of my parents is as foreign as the stamps in my Australian passport, signifying I had now travelled to the motherland twice since I was born. When I handed the airline stewardess my passport, she ran her fingers over the embossed gold against the navy surface, beamed and exclaimed, "Wel-come!"
Motherland. Why do we call it that?
"The personification of family members outside of my parents is as foreign as the stamps in my Australian passport, signifying I had now travelled to the motherland twice since I was born."
The trees there were always naked and the roads covered with a thick film of ashy dust. The trains there were packed even at 2pm on a random Sunday. All the children there had black hair and brown eyes. The motherland doesn’t know who she is. I don’t know who she is. I walk her streets and drink her water, yet I cannot feel the ground beneath my feet nor the wetness in my throat. When I take pictures of her, her wrinkles are defined by the shadows in the mountains. Her bulbs have plucked the stars from the sky, leaving only a glimpse of a far away land through the eyes of a blinking aircraft.
Chinese persimmons: fleshy and super sweet, truly unlike anything else. Her persimmons are extra fluorescent, the skin waxy, shiny like plastic. You’re meant to eat them when they are collapsing in on themselves, the fibres losing shape. I like them crunchy, to feel my teeth part the pieces.
Seven years since I saw the motherland. How much is that in distance? Perhaps measuring in memories is easier: ten-years-old, reading street signs and menus, making friends. Now, I can no longer remember how to ask for the time. Perhaps it hurts, but perhaps letting go hurts more. Sitting around the white plastic table, picking at the dishes in the centre, I do not recognise this place, these people. I am relearning them.
‘Jingjing, xi huan chi shi zi me?’
Jingjing, do you like persimmons?
‘Heng xi huan! Xian zai you me?’
I really like them! Are they in season?
'Dan ran le! Wo qu mai le gei ni chi ba.’
Definitely! I will go buy some for you.
As day broke, nai nai put on her cardigan made of old quilts and marched to the flea market. She filled a woven basket with the red-orange fruit, carried it in both arms while waiting to cross the road. Her skin is usually shiny from dancing in the morning. On that day, it was dry from the winter wind.
For the next six days, after every meal I would turn around to a plate of cut up persimmons and a crooked-toothed smile.
‘Chi ya. Keng ding mei chi bao!’
Eat up. You’re probably not full yet!
Motherland – Chinese people don’t use this term. They say “lao jia”, which translates to “old home”. Home does not belong to a woman, a mother; land does not belong to a woman or a mother. The land where we belong, is the mother. She is close and she knows all.
Only through writing have I come to understand that language doesn’t have much to do with memory, but memory has all to do with language. It means that being able to keep your mother tongue does not hinge on how well you can remember what Chinese number plates look like or the gait of your grandmother on a cold Sichuan day – you must live in language to wield its power: speak it every day, consume its media, surround yourself with its people – all of which seem impossible now. My childhood self is grieving this loss, but I know for certain there will come a time when I will reunite with it all. Hopefully it’s not too late.
