Going home: A Chinese-Canadian shares her experiences

Credit to Author: Gu Zhenzhen| Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2023 22:18:47 +0000

Summer is a peak season for travel. People I know take the opportunity when the children are on vacation to make a trip back home. I will never forget how I felt when I returned to my hometown, Beijing.

The first time I went back was January 1995. As my plane was landing, I saw millions of lights glittering, like diamonds scattered across the land of my people. I said to myself happily, “I am home.”

My family welcomed me back with flowers at the airport. They were the same people who had waved goodbye when I left five years earlier. I realized that there will always a bond between us.

At home, I was spoiled. My sister and sister-in-law fixed my hair. My mother and mother-in-law cooked local foods I missed tremendously. It was so nice to be taken care of, to be loved.

For the first time in years, I sat down with my family for boiled dumplings on Chinese New Year Eve. It was like eating turkey in Canada at Christmas. I had crossed the Pacific for this togetherness, closeness and joyfulness.

Beijing had changed enormously. What pleased me the most were not those fashionable shops, but the red lanterns hanging from the roofs of traditional houses in alleyways. They reminded me of times when I was a young girl.

Thirteen years later, in the summer of 2008, my seven-year-old daughter and I traveled to Beijing, the city hosting the Summer Olympics. I had been told many times that there were enormous changes but I was still not prepared for the dramatic transformation I witnessed. So many new roads and buildings had been built. The buses and subway trains were new and had air conditioning. There were even double decker buses!

It seemed that everything had changed except the chirping of crickets and the whistle of a train in the middle of the night. Beijing had changed and I felt like a foreigner in my homeland! Fortunately, there was an army of volunteers on the streets.  With their help, I found my way.

In the spring of 2010, I returned to Beijing with a heavy heart because my father was in a hospital. But when I arrived, it was already too late. I still consider this the darkest, scariest and saddest night in my life. Five years later, I went back for my mother’s funeral. She had just passed away peacefully in her sleep.

Although Canada is home today, and it has been a long time since I left China, my emotional ties to my home country and my people are always there, strong and unbreakable. It feels like the most natural thing in the world.

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