Leaving, Staying, Going

Leaving, Staying, Going

The first thing I noticed when we arrived in China was that it was hot. Not just summer hot, or even sauna hot, but sweltering, boiling, melt your face off hot. I’d never felt a heat so intense in my life, it was like my whole body was put in an oven set to 400 degrees. 

The second thing that I noticed about China was that all the people were… Chinese. Now I know this might sound obvious, but to me, the only time I saw people who looked like me was at the Panda Bear Adoption Group meetings my mom had us attend. And those were only Chinese adopted kids, those who were Canadian, Westernized, like me.

I jumped back in shock as a motorbike with a man and two young kids clinging to his back zipped by. The air smelt heavy, like asphalt and sweat, like gasoline and cooking oil. As we passed a park on our way to the hotel, I watched in awe as a group of Chinese elders performed Tai Chi on the stone steps. Their movements were graceful and fluid despite their age, large sun hats obscuring their faces but I could see, I could tell, that they looked like mine. 

“Ni hao,” our tour guide greeted us on the steps of the White Swan Hotel, “Hello, and welcome to Beijing.” 

The first few days in China passed by in a blur. I remember eating rice porridge in the morning, and feeling the gurgle of my stomach at my mom’s comment,

“This is what you would have eaten every day in the orphanage.”

After that, the congee sat heavy and thick on my spoon, as I refused to eat it, and made a point of going for the bacon and pancakes at the continental breakfast. 

My friend Jason got sick on the second day in Beijing. He’d asked for milk at the restaurant, and was given spoiled milk in an old Coca-Cola can. He drank the whole thing. Idiot. 

Luckily for him, he didn’t miss out on much. We spent the first few days touring the city. The days were long and hot, the nights even longer and hotter. We went to a street market one day, and saw a vendor selling ice cream, which I bugged my mom for. I decided on what I thought was mint chocolate chip. I took a lick and immediately spit it out. It was wasabi flavoured. Now who would do that to a poor little kid? 

There were a lot of strays in the street, cats and dogs so skinny I could see their ribs through their matted fur. I gave one kitten a drink from my water bottle, before my mom pulled me away, saying it probably had diseases. It was going to die anyway. Why offer comfort to something so pitiful? Isn’t that just cruel? 

One of the street vendors was selling little homemade dolls, woven from thin fabric in intricate designs. They were smaller than my thumbnail, and the detail was astounding. 

“You put this doll under your pillow before you sleep,” the translator explained to us, as the vendor offered the doll to me, “and it will take all your bad dreams away.” 

I used to have this recurring dream when I was little. I was in my crib in the orphanage, I was in my bed at home, I was in a room with white, white walls, and I could hear crying in the distance. The crying grew louder and louder, until I couldn't hear anything but mournful wails. I was in a white, white room, and there was a baby. She was crying. I picked her up. She cries some more. I accidentally dropped her, but before she hits the ground, she disappears in a puff of smoke, white, white, white, and she is gone. The baby was not me. I was not dropped. I was placed, gently, onto the ground. I was in a white, white room, and no one was coming when I cried.

I don’t remember crying on our trip. I don’t remember feeling diasporic, displaced. I don’t remember trembling in the car as we waited outside my orphanage, begging to be let in. We were told that the orphanage was closed. 

“But we came all this way!” Mom tried to argue, but the guide just shook their head. Part of me was relieved, not to have to go inside. The outside was bad enough, a plain, grey building, tall and imposing and… lonely. Sometimes, I think I remember being in the orphanage. My therapist who specializes in childhood trauma and adoption told me that even if our mind forgets, the body remembers. Sometimes I think I can imagine it, lying in a too-small crib, rows and rows of babies crying in their cots, with no one to comfort them, no one to hold them. My sister can’t even let my nephew cry for more than ten minutes in his crib. She doesn't believe in the whole, “let them cry it out” approach. I’m glad. Babies deserve to be held. I deserved to be held. 

Part of me is jealous, of my nephews who are loved and cared for so warmly. I remember holding my oldest nephew for the first time, when he was first born, and all I could think was how could a mother hold this tiny little being in her arms, and let them go? How could she let me go? 

I would have liked to hold the babies in my orphanage. To offer them some sort of comfort, to tell them it was going to be okay. Why offer comfort to something so pitiful? Isn’t it cruel, to offer them kindness and then take it away? Is it better to never taste sweetness than to taste it once and never have it again? That way, you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Would it have been better if I never came to China at all?

I wondered if the nannies who cared for me still worked at the orphanage. I wondered if they remembered me. If they still had my file. If they still had my mother’s letter that she left for me. Every year for my birthday, I asked my parents for the letter, asked them to write to the orphanage to send me a copy, if I couldn't have the original. I just wanted to hold it, to have some physical piece of my mother, the only thing she left me. I never did get that letter, and I wondered if maybe there never was one.

I know the story of my finding like the back of my hand—in that, who truly knows the back of their hand? It is always there, but often overlooked, underseen. Maybe there was no note, maybe I never had a mother in the first place. Maybe my birthday wasn’t the day I was found, but the day I was lost. But to lose something is to acknowledge that it belonged to you in the first place. This place was never mine, was it? 

China was never mine. She took the word “mother” and turned it into “stranger.” I think, if I had the chance to meet my mother, I wouldn’t take it. Not if I couldn't keep her. Not if I couldn't call her name. 

I love when names reflect the very thing they are named for. When the Forbidden City really was prohibited, and Zhejiang truly has a crooked river running through it. We visited the Summer Palace, which is so aptly named, as it truly showed its beauty in the summer months when we visited. Why we chose to visit China in the middle of a heatwave, I don’t know. The Summer Palace had numerous galleries, pavilions, and temples on its grounds, all stone and brick and history. The stone walls held hundreds of Chinese artwork and antiquities, literary works and compilations.

The Palace was a testament to Chinese history and culture, and standing on its grounds, I felt a bit more connected to the legacy of my country. But as my mom called my name, I turned to see other real Chinese kids playing on the stone lions that sat at the front of the Great Hall. I heard their mother call their names in Mandarin, and suddenly, I felt lost. I felt like a tourist. Which is exactly what I was. An intruder in my own home. 

I had wondered, before we went to China, if going back would feel like coming home, or if I’d feel like a stranger entering a house, unwelcomed. Will I take my shoes off at the door? Am I a guest here?

By the time we went to the Great Wall, the magic and excitement of China had faded, leaving behind a deep sense of loss. I no longer cared about the bones built into the walls, too busy with the skeletons in my own suitcase. 

The walk across the Great Wall was long. Longer than I thought it would be. We only walked for a few miles, but the milestones under my feet felt significantly more. The bamboo walking stick I had begged my mom to buy me from a vendor at the bottom of the Wall felt heavy in my hands, which was weird because bamboo is hollow in the middle. On the plane ride back, we weren't allowed to bring our bamboo sticks because they were considered “weapons,” except for one girl who, in an incredible feat of strength, broke hers in half.

Most of the travel group were made up of kids from the Panda Bear club and their adoptive parents. The one girl who got to keep her bamboo stick, Carrie, had a younger sister who was her parents’ biological daughter, named Jada. I always wondered how Carrie felt, to be adopted to fill the void of a child, only for her parents to succeed in having a “real” daughter. I never asked her that, mostly because Carrie scared the shit out of me, being four years older, and as mentioned before, able to break a bamboo stick in half. Her sister, Jada, was the same age as me.

Being the only little white girl in the group, Jada was the star of the show wherever we went. In every town, every store, every street, groups of locals would stop us and ask for pictures of Jada. It was like she was a princess, or a popstar. She was special. Us other Chinese kids, thinking they wanted a picture of all of us, were very confused when we were pushed out of the way to give Jada, and only Jada, sweets and smiles and hugs. I remember standing to the side, watching as Jada received all of the love from my country that I never got. I wondered then, why being different was good on her, and ugly on me?

Even here? Even here. 

After Beijing, our travel group split up, to go to each adopted kid’s orphanage. My mom and I took a midnight train to Hangzhou, in the province of Zhejiang. I gripped my mom’s hand tightly as we made our way through the train station. What if I got lost? What if I couldn’t find her? I can’t speak Chinese. What if my mom accidentally leaves me? What if she leaves me? What if she takes another Chinese kid home with her? What if she mistakes me for another little girl with jet black hair and phoenix eyes?

On the train ride there, I had a meltdown. I was inconsolable, crying and screaming, clutching at my chest. I don’t remember any of this, but my mom later told me about it when I asked her what she remembered. 

“Mommy, mommy…” I had cried, voice rough and jagged, “Mommy, I have an icicle in my chest. It’s so cold in my heart. Mommy, hold me. Mommy, make it melt.”

Apparently, I’d cried for hours, unable to be comforted. It was as if I was back in the orphanage, crying and having no one able to hold me. Maybe it was not because I wasn't held—it was that it just wasn’t tight enough. 

When we arrived in Hangzhou, my eyes were puffy from crying in my sleep. We followed the map while referring to our translation book, until we made it. The place that I was left, the street corner where I saw my birth mother for the last time. This perfectly ordinary street with its crumbling sidewalk and imposing buildings and indifferent passersby. I suppose I had built up in my mind the idea that coming to China would be like coming home. Instead, I just felt lost in a sea of faces that looked like mine. All of a sudden I felt so very small, and the world was so large. 

The ground was dirty, covered in stale urine and garbage tossed casually aside. A mother had left her newborn baby here on this very ground, protected against the cold and snow by just a thin blanket. I felt the heat of the day begin to get to me, sweat trickling down my forehead and into my eyes, causing them to tear up. At least, that’s what I told myself, as I felt hot tears sting my cheeks.

I closed my eyes and imagined this same street corner eight years ago. Instead of a hot summer’s day, it was a cold winter’s night. The highrise buildings that were built in the past few years were gone, the modernities not yet finding their way to this rural town. The wind was brittle and chilling, the moon hidden by dark clouds in the even darker night sky. Everything was quiet except for a baby’s cries.

A car driving past pulls me back to the present, and I open my eyes. The sun shines cruelly into them, the air hot and carrying the scent of cooking street food and the sweat of all the bodies pushing their way through the crowd. Hand-pulled rice noodles bathed in a spice mixture of Sichuan peppercorn and ginger root, eaten with freshly steamed pork buns, and followed by the finest Longjing tea. Children riding on the handlebars of their parents’ bicycles laugh as the wind rushes through their dark hair, and I feel a sudden longing deep within my heart. 

I wondered to myself, how long I must have cried before someone found me that night. The street would have been far less busy, perhaps even abandoned. I don’t know how developed Hangzhou has become since I was last here, but I know that the city before me is different from how I left it. Even if I can’t remember how it was before, I know that it isn’t the same. This city has changed, but I’ve changed too. Maybe we didn’t change together, but it’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who left, and came back different. This city is a perfect mixture of old and new; decaying cobblestone pathways leading into asphalt main roads. Bright city lights cast a glow against paper lanterns, old-fashioned inns overtaken by apartment buildings. I know that this change was inevitable, but I think it’s only noticeable to outsiders. The same way children don’t notice how tall they’ve grown until grandparents point it out.

I think that if I had stayed, I wouldn’t be able to feel the difference now. These smells and sounds, so foreign to me, would be familiar. The language would flow off my tongue like honey, the way it was always meant to. Instead, I feel like an intruder in a space that was meant for a different me. And now coming back here, I don’t feel like I belong in the place I was supposed to call home. But if that’s the case, does that mean I don’t belong anywhere? 

No, that can’t be. This must be home. This must be…

“I understand,” I say to no one in particular. My mom looks at me, but I don’t explain what exactly it is I understand. I don’t need to. I understand because standing in this same spot as my birth mother is the closest I’ll ever be to her, to walking in her footsteps. And I can see now, the path she was following on this run-down street corner. 

“I understand now…” I understood, and it hurt to understand. You give love to something that has never known it, because it deserves to know. Yes, give me every scrap of kindness, every morsel of mercy, I will lap up every drop. I understood that my mother leaving me was her first and only birthday gift to me.

Take me home, I will come back here. Take me away, I will come home.