Stressed....

Stress.

So we meet again.

School won't start for another 4 days, and yet, you've already reared your ugly head. Granted, it's not all your fault - that final next week wasn't your doing, but mine. And yes, it's probably not as bad as I am making it out to be my head. I will probably feel fine in about 5 minutes - actually I'm already feeling a little better.

Take a deep breath. And breathe.

Stop thinking. Just do it!

Glimpse of China - Parte Un

This summer, I went back to China for the first time in 10 years. It was the first time I saw my extended family since I left China at the age of 9. So yes, that meant a LOT of visiting relatives. But in between visiting family, I had a lot of fun in Beijing and Hefei. So here's a belated photoblog of my time there!

First off...FOOD! Before coming I had promised myself I would take pictures of all the yummy things I would eat in China (which was a lot), but when I finally sat down for my first meal, I had forgotten all about taking pictures. And by the time I remembered to take the pictures...I already ate all the food. So this was all I could salvage..

First day there, we went to this awesome Sichuan restaurant (my favorite!!) in Beijing. All the food was super spicy and super yummy!

This was taken in the famous Wang Fu Jing snack street. It's basically a whole street lined by these street foods. I know they all look appetizing, but if you ever go there - never eat this! You WILL get diarrhea.

Outside of a famous baozi restaurant we went to in Beijing...Again, didn't have time to take any pictures of the actual food.

 When we were in Hefei (my father's home town), we went to this restaurant styled after an old Beijing opera house. So while you are eating at your tables, there would be performances on stage. The food above are actually all dishes that are native to Hefei - I didn't really like it too much, but my dad sure did!

 Before we left, we went to this fancy shmancy restaurant in Bejing. I only had time to take pictures of some of the appetizers...And yes, that is actual purple mashed potato. Don't ask.

My cousin-in-law - the amateur chef.

 For our last meal in Beijing, my cousin-in-law, an amateur chef and food enthusiast decided to cook us a meal. There was a lot of sea food I could not name, but it was good!

Song of the Cicadas

I recently came across this on my computer from high school. I wrote this during my senior year in AP English. The prompt was to wrote a short story in the unique style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Chronicles of a Death Foretold. Certain stylistic elements that Marquez used - references to nature, to sound, and unique capitalizations on words - were supposed to be emulated by us into our own stories. It was a great book, and I had a lot of fun writing it. 

So here's an oldie but a goodie...

The Song of the Cicadas.

It was one of those dry, hot days when Beijing feels like nails on a chalkboard. Outside, the sound of the Cicadas – like the sound of boiling oil, as the Grandmother used to say – stifled the air.

ZZZzzzz Zzzzzz

I grew up listening to the song of the Cicadas. As a kid, during those scorching hot summers, I used to take a stick and dig out Cicada nymphs buried deep underneath the soil. After the Cicadas’ symphony begins, signaling the beginning of their mating seasons, I used to search around trees, collecting Cicada shells molded and left behind long ago by the Real Cicadas that now sing for Birth and Renewal.

ZZZzzzz Zzzzzz

“Those cicadas,” my Grandmother used to say, “are the cruelest creatures. They leave behind their shells, so carelessly.”

So Carelessly.

That day, I sat on my bed, staring at the ceiling. It was blank, glaringly white. No spots. No blemishes.

Nothing.

Nothing except for the sound of the Cicadas.

ZZZzzzz Zzzzzz

“My grandfather keeps a framed picture of him and Chairman Mao.”

The voice suddenly surfaced from the chorus of Cicadas. It was a boy’s voice, a boy in my class. I closed my eyes. Memories flashed before me.

It was during lunch period. Everyone was bored, tired, and hot. Their clothes clung onto their skin as sweat became another layer of epidermis. The heat was suffocating. The sound of the Cicadas stifled the air. Suddenly, there seemed to be a commotion from the back of the room. I  looked to find a small crowd of kids cooing in admiration at the boy who sat in the center. He gestured animatedly. I walked up to the little crowd, curious at what was so entertaining.

“My grandfather keeps a framed picture of him and Chairman Mao.”

The boy said proudly.

He then went on, talking of his grandfather. A trusted comrade in the Party – a true model of Communist ideals. He talked of his grandfather as if he knew Everything about him.

I looked down and sighed. I thought of my own Grandfather. To me, he was the handsome face in an album of black-and-white pictures, dressed in starched Western shirts, staring with beady eyes similar to my own and a roguish smile untainted by the Cultural Revolution. He was the old man in the picture, with wrinkles that make him look decades older than he really was, holding me as I sat for her first birthday cake.

He was my Grandfather.

Yet, I knew nothing about him. Just that he was Dead.

Dead.

Dead? What is this word – “Death”?

In Chinese, the word for “death” is sĭ.

Sĭ.

 I’ve always hated that word.

Sĭ.

There is such an eerie Finality to it. One syllable. It ends as quickly as it begins. Yet, its sound drags on forever.

Sĭ.

This simple word. My parents never explained to me what it meant. I just knew that my grandfather was Dead. Gone. Poof! Disappeared.

Never to come back.

It was as if he didn’t even exist. No one ever mentions his name. Except to say how shameful it was for a man – so weak – to lose to alcohol and cigarettes. We speak only of how horrible it was when he used to go to the kitchen everyday with a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of spirit and come out, an hour or two later, empty handed.

We never speak of anything except that it was a shame he died so young.

I looked up at the ceiling. I could feel the heat of the silk under my skin. So smooth. Yet, Coarse against my sweat.

I thought of my grandmother. A woman perpetually afraid she will contract some kind of incurable disease that she checks her Blood Pressure at least 5 times a day. I thought of my great-uncle, my grandfather’s younger brother. A man with a round face that usually glistened with oil and sweat. The perennial drunk during Chinese New Years. He used to sing Beijing Opera. That, of course, never manifested into anything. He got divorced. And became the Black Sheep of the family. There was my aunt, whose son never met his grandfather because his grandfather died a month before he was due. During New Years, his mother always tries to stuff him extra dumplings. As if he never got Enough.

Then, there was my mother, who always holds my hand when I cross the street.

Never Forget to look both ways, she would always remind me.

Never Forget.

ZZZzzzz Zzzzzz

Suddenly, I could feel the hot flush of tears swelling from behind my eyes.

My grandfather is Dead.

Dead.

Sĭ.

That word. That short, yet noxious word. It would not stop ringing in my ears.

Dead. As in he would never come back. He would never be able to listen to me playing the piano. He would never be able to see me grow. He would never tell me stories of his youth.

I would never be able to say, “My grandfather used to be….”

My eyes blurred as tears swelled up again. I choked back those tears. My chest hurt as I swallowed my tears. Hard.

 Yet, I remembered not to make a noise.

It’s Useless. Useless to Cry.

My grandmother used to say that. My mother used to say that. Everyone still says that.

They expect me to act like my grandfather was Dead.

As if he never existed.

-------

“What if grandpa was here to see this?”

It was another one of those hot, Coarse days.

ZZZzzz Zzzzza

My grandmother turned to me at those words. In her arms, my sister was sound asleep.

She stared at me as the Real Cicadas sounded their mating calls. Singing of Birth and Renewal.

ZZZzzz Zzzzza

“He would have celebrated with a bottle of a bottle of alcohol and gotten drunk on the deck,” My grandmother said with a sneer.

She looked away.

ZZZzzz Zzzzz

We sat there as the sound of the Cicadas stifled the air.

Suddenly, she turned around, and motioned for me to take the baby.

“Here, it’s time for me to take my Blood Pressure.”

ZZZzzz Zzzzz

------

As a child, I used to collect Cicada shells. I would bring them home and line them up in my room. They fascinated me. They looked exactly the same as the Real Cicadas outside.

Except they were Fake.

Hollow. Fragile. Broken.

------

Outside, the Real Cicadas sounded their mating calls. Singing of Birth and Renewal.

ZZZzzz Zzzzz

Looking back, I realized I never noticed.

How cruel they sound.

 

*Note: In China, Cicadas are often used to symbolize immortality. They are often found in tombs and during funerals to follow the dead to the Afterworld. The shedding of their skin is supposed to symbolize the resurrection of the dead in the Afterworld, immortalizing the dead in their passing.

When cicadas are born as nymphs, they are burrowed underground. As they near adult stage, they construct a tunnel towards the surface and emerge. They then shed their skin on a nearby tree, and abandon their skins, still clinging onto the tree bark.

Memories

Most of the times when I look back at high school, I would usually dismiss those four years of my life as somewhat of a blur. Memories of nothingness usually jumble together to become a muddle of things I try not to think back to anymore. But recently, probably because I came back home for the holidays, and I was just so bored I had nothing else to do other than think back to those times, I’ve  began to look back to those memories I’ve tried to suppress. And in thinking back, I realized why high school was such a “blur”  - I was lost. I mean I still find myself lost in life occasionally, but back then, I realized I was lost in who I was. I had no idea who I was. I had no idea what I liked, what I wanted in life, what I was passionate about. And that, inherently, developed into apathy, and soon after that, it became lethargy – not just in school, but in life.

This dawning realization, along with the pressure of college applications, made my senior year in high school one of the most depressing times of my life. I began to not care about anything. I half-assed most of my college essays, my homework, and almost everything I did. I constantly lied to my parents, telling them that everything was fine, when in fact none of it was. My grades were slipping, but I tried covering it up by trying to intercept the mailman whenever report card would be sent home. I remember fidgety hours I would spend in my living room, trying to peek at when the mailman would come, and sneaking away my report card into my room. And when my parents finalized asked where the report card was, I panicked. I could not face the humiliation of letting them see a “B” in my grades. Especially not that “B” in math. My parents would be devastated. So I sneaked upstairs to my room, and photocopied my report card onto my computer, and painstakingly photoshopped the letters to change them into “A”s. I did that to every single one of my report cards that year.

Looking back, I cannot say why I did what I did. I cannot comprehend how my mind might have warped to thinking that by changing those Bs into As, I could lie not just to my parents, but to myself as well. It was as if, by photoshopping the A in place of the B, I even made myself believe I had gotten an A. And that was how I spent the majority of my senior year – running away from the truth, and lying in order to cover up the truth.

But the lies caught on fast. By the end of the year, when the valedictorian and salutatorian were announced, my name was not called. I remember there was a moment when time seemed to stand still. I was humiliated. I knew that everyone in the auditorium were wondering why I wasn’t announced as the salutatorian. Everyone in my class was so sure that I would be salutatorian, I was even interviewed by the school newspaper a week before as the salutatorian. Everyone was so sure that it even made me believe that I had the rights to the title. But looking back, I knew deep down that I was just lying to myself again. I had known that my GPA fell hard that year, but I kept telling myself, and my parents that they had nothing to worry about – everything would work out eventually.

But things didn’t magically work out. And at that moment, when my name wasn’t called, I realized my lies crumbling down in front of me. My heart sank deep, and I could feel tears starting to build from behind my eyes. And the first thought that came to mind then, was my parents. I could not let them know. My lies had to go on.

Those months before graduation were a blur to me. I lived each day hoping for the day to end. I avoided my parents at all costs. I holed myself in my room not doing anything. Sometimes I would cry silently, feeling sorry for myself. But I made sure that my parents would not know about me not being the salutatorian at all costs. I constantly hounded the front door, waiting for the newspaper to come so that my parents would not have to see on the newspaper that instead of their daughter’s picture next to the work “salutatorian”, it was someone else’s.

And somehow, this game of constant dodging and hiding lasted till the day of graduation. My mother had already gone back to China with my sister, so it was just my dad and I in my house. It was just a couple of hours before graduation. I was standing in the doorway, about to go back to my room so that I could avoid my father. But just as I was about to go up the stairs, my father walked down. He asked me, “Aren’t you supposed to write a speech today? I remember last year, there were speeches.” I looked down, not knowing what to say. “I – I” I managed to sputter out, “I’m….not the one giving a speech today.” There was silence. “What do you mean?” My father asked.

“It’s Emily. Not me, giving a speech.”

SMACK. My dad hit me in the face. I looked up. His face was red with anger. I immediately started crying, which only made him even more angry. He started throwing things on the ground, all the time yelling at me about how he always knew I was a failure and a disappointment for him. “After all the money I spent on you, this is how you repay me?”He yelled, “I cannot believe I have you as a daughter.” I could only stand and cry as he went around the house yelling at me. When he finally came back to where I stood and faced me. He looked me squarely in the face, and said, “I’m not going to your graduation.”

So that night, I had to go to graduation with my friend’s family. I lied and said my father was working. And as I walked down the football fiend to receive my diploma, I knew my father would not be in the sea of parents taking pictures of their children. And when the ceremony ended, when everyone else went to hug their parents, I just looked around the crowd, craning my neck, searching and hoping my father might miraculously show up.

He never did.

Looking back, I realized that aside from being miserable, all I did that year was running away. I ran away from my problems, afraid to confront my shortcomings and afraid to face the truth. But what I learned at the end of the day is that you can never run fast enough. Problems will always catch up to you. No matter what. Looking back, I wish I had stopped running before everything snowballed into a gigantic mess I did not stop until it was too late. I wish I could have had the courage to face my issues, and had the guts to try to fix those problems.

But of course, all that is in the past. Yes, I still find myself wanting to bolt away and run as fast as I can whenever I come across a problem. And no, I cannot say I’ve come to terms yet with who I am and what I want. I still have days when I feel my world falling apart, when responsibilities, feelings, and everything seem too overwhelming for me to bear.  There’s still days when I think I have no idea what I am doing. But now, instead of shutting myself in my room and crying in silence, I try to deal with each situation, head-on. That, I realized, was the only way I could ever stop myself from sinking into the black hole of lies and depression I fell into during senior year.

So, in light of this new year, here’s to new outlooks on life, and a better me. A happier me.