1. Shenzhen

Shenzhen is the most beautiful of cities. 

An airy glow wreathes the spacious roads; vibrant greenery and flowers bedeck the highways; the swooping bridges and buildings are at once delicate and imposing. And always in the distance: the fog-hewn lavender of the mountains and the steel-blue expanse of the seas, lending a powerful gravitas to the Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley. 

Even in the less modernized parts of the city, where scabbed apartments and bearded trees share the cracked pavement with sun-spotted fruit hawkers, there is a wonderful take-no-shit authenticity to Shenzhen. Here, I feel the same elation that I do in any big city, but there’s also something else that clicks - a sense of belonging. Whether walking past the gleaming economic sector or nestled in a wicker chair as my Yeye (paternal grandfather) lectures me on the origins of the Xia Dynasty, I feel safe. 

Maybe it’s that Shenzhen grew up with me: it seriously glowed up in the last few years. Maybe it’s that my family always returns to Shenzhen on our visits to China, so that I’m already familiar with its roads, restaurants, and customs. 

But I think it’s Shenzhen’s energy that attracts me - as a town that grew from a literal hole into one of China’s technological and economic centers, I can understand and admire the tenacity of its people. There’s a certain kinship that comes from discussing politics with the taxi drivers in Chinese; there’s the glowing solidarity of sharing a huge meal (and a vicious game of mahjong) with my family; there’s the joy in the simple sight of people with my skin and facial features bustling down the streets.

And then there are the drawbacks.

“Oh, look, she got fatter!” my nainai (paternal grandmother) gushed as I entered my grandparents’ apartment.

“Definitely,” my yeye (paternal grandfather) said. Nainai proceeded to pinch my arms and back.

I’d expected - no, dreaded - this moment. In the coming days, as we visited relative after relative, I would bite my tongue in anticipation of their stares.

In China, more than anywhere else, I’m highly conscious of my physical appearance. It’s true that my grandparents and many of my older relatives grew up with very little to eat; they don’t want me to be thin. But it’s more than that. In any foreign environment, where my social status is uncertain or inferior to those around me, I resort to my visible appearance to bolster my self-esteem. It’s a defense mechanism, and a pretty shitty one at that. But it’s common, and it’s very natural.

Here, my accomplishments - writing, dance, my magazines, activism - don’t translate into a different tongue and a different culture. Mental health and poetry aren’t tangible to my family friends and relatives; the only time I piqued their interest was by mentioning Stanford.

It has a lot to do with the expectations around women, too. Traditional marital expectations are rooted even in modernized areas; the Chinese feminist movement is markedly quieter than that in the U.S.; high heels and makeup swarmed the streets of Shenzhen and Shanghai. And yes, Chinese women have made significant strides within the last few decades. But - and I’m not discounting my own sense of displacement as a reason for my discomfort - I felt pressured here; at times, I felt an incessant itch for my makeup and more fashionable clothes (I’d left them in the States).

I didn’t start picking apart what I ate, or weighing myself daily. I didn’t start the obsessive exercise regime that’d marked my eating disorder. But this awareness was still draining - there is nothing more frustrating than being dogged by your own body.

I firmly decided against conformity; instead, I vented to whoever would listen (my mom - I really wore her thin with my complaints) and rebelled whenever I could.

I got a pixie cut; I disparaged wine culture and toxic masculinity; I ranted about a misogynistic joke my uncle made; I talked loudly to my dad’s business friends; I stomached wasabi and sichuan peppers on a dare.

In retrospect, some of this was immature. But it wasn’t entirely conscious, either; I was simply trying to reject something I feared accepting. To me, being a woman in China felt like turning against so many of my values and beliefs.

And I don’t think I have that figured out yet. Nor do I think that Chinese womanhood represents backwardness or misogyny; truth be told, I don’t know enough about China to judge half its population.

But in Shenzhen, a city that has reenvisioned and exceeded standards of cleanliness, beauty, sustainability, and innovation, it’s easy to hope.

4. Taiyuan

I have very conflicted feelings about Taiyuan. 

Toxic masculinity, wine culture - these immediately jump to mind. Besides, Taiyuan is a small city - it seems to fold in on itself, stewing and churning in the chaos of insignificance. And while I grew up in a small city (Bellevue represent!), I could respect Bellevue for its serenity. Taiyuan is the wannabe sibling of Shenzhen: all of the fire, none of the drive. 

But it’s still where most of my paternal family lives. Aunts, uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles, [insert relative name]-twice-removed-and-thrice-removed. On Thursday evening, we congregated at a restaurant around a magnificent oak table. 

Relatives whom I hadn’t seen in half a decade accosted me and my brother. I sang the ABC’s with my baby cousin; my aunt chattered about colleges with my mom; my male relatives got drunk on 42% mao tai. 

I was uncomfortable. I couldn’t help but compare the experience to Taiping, which seemed like a PG version of the scene here: fewer aggressive relatives, less wine and alcohol. Despite the language gap between me and my Taiping relatives, Mama’s side of the family was much more familiar. 

In Shaanxi Province, home to several of China’s legendary heros (Guan Yu, for one), masculinity and wine culture go hand in hand. Everything from dining to toasting is strictly structured: seating arrangements are made around our grandpa-once-removed; one shot is downed for every relative who proposes a toast to us. Nan xi han da zhang fu - a phrase basically meaning “brave/very masculine man” - is passed from mouth to mouth like watermelon. 

And as for the women - boisterous and fiery though they were, I couldn’t help but feel as if they were filling in the cracks left by the men; they didn’t start any conversations or make any moves to change the topics, but laughed along after their husbands/fathers/sons.

Just respect the customs here, I thought, as one of my uncles made a rather misogynistic joke. But the day afterwards, we drove an hour and a half to Pingyao, a neighboring city, to watch a show discussing Pingyao’s history. The short story of the spectacle: a guy recruits 232 men to rescue a seven-year-old child. The guy and all 232 of his men die on the way back, though, leaving the child (and the audience) to reminisce on the values of ancient China. 

While the set was breathtaking - two large streets styled after ancient China, complete with authentic lengths of silk and a drum performance - I found myself cringing more than once. 

One scene depicted the soldiers about to rescue the child. Before the march, the soldiers bathed (some performing impressive karate leaps into basins of water) and shouted impassionately about their bravery; then a host of women ran delicately onto the stage and toweled them off.

Huh? I thought, more startled than irritated. 

“The mayor of Pingyao had handpicked two-hundred thirty-two of the most beautiful and slender women,” the narrator said, his voice dripping with sorrow. “If the soldiers were to die on the campaign, they would still have one last, blissful memory of these women toweling them off.” 

Sounds like their sex lives are kinda lacking, I wanted to mutter. But the scene changed: the general of the 232 men had decided to choose a wife before he left on his campaign, so that he could bear a son and continue the family line. 

A dozen women entered the stage, all dressed scantily. Body part by body part, they exhibited the smallness of their feet, the delicate length of their arms, the slenderness of their waists, the barely-concealed swell of their breasts, their faces pasty with powder and blush. Then they began to (for lack of a better word) twerk to show off their hips and butt: the most important childbearing part of a woman. 

What? I thought. There literally is no reason for them to include that scene other than the appeasement of guys’ horniness. All around me, men were lifting their cameras. I couldn’t tell what the women onstage were thinking - had they just become desensitized to this? Or was this normal for them? Was I overreacting? Worse, was I insecure because these women all had bigger boobs and slenderer waists than me? What was happening? 

The show progressed. The protagonist chose a wife, married and impregnated her, left Pingyao, and died. Then the woman bore her son.

“I’ve had my husband’s child,” the woman said. “My job is done. And now I die.” 

You gotta be kidding me, I thought. What are you, twenty years old? But the lights faded dramatically on her, and the audience let out an appreciative sigh for the glow-in-the-dark embroidery on her wedding garments. 

Yeah, I know it’s unfair to hold history up to the criteria of third-wave feminism. And I know there are books and college majors discussing culture/feminism (to which I will say I can respect a culture, but not when it sacrifices the basic dignity and safety of women). But this show debuted three years ago. It discusses an extremely oblique part of history. And the women...for a good hour after the show concluded, I kept trying to figure out why they included that scene. How it could push the narrative forward, how it could add some dimension to an already-layered set design....

Foot-binding is real. Misogyny is (and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this) real. Men choosing women based off body shape is real. Family and childbearing as pillars of Chinese culture is real. But the twerking, hip-swirling, boob-spilling exhibition depicted in the show? Not real.

I decided to stop wasting time trying to justify what my mom, my brother, and I all thought was a highly uncomfortable and misogynistic scene. The simple truth is that the show was not trying to preserve Chinese culture, nor trying to expose an unjust part of history. To the contrary, it was sexualizing history, reducing women to scantily-clad farces to appease a sweating, sunburned, horny audience. It was letting the story - and an interesting discussion of China’s values - take second-place to the capitalization of women.

“Imagine if I chose my husband like that,” I joked with my mom on the drive back. “Have them line up in a row and show me their feet, abs, faces, hair, dicks....”

I couldn’t wait to leave Taiyuan.

On Friday morning, we woke up early to clean my great-grandparents’ grave. 

I wouldn’t call it a grave occasion (heh heh), but it was important. I dressed in the most appropriate clothing possible: white pants and a gray t-shirt (and about half a gallon of insect repellent). We drove an hour to the cemetery, which occupied a snug alcove between some breathtaking mountains. 

I had performed the ritual several times before, but it’d been five years since the last one. My grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins pulled into the parking lot - I helped them carry the bags of food, cleaning rags, wine cups, and flowers towards the graveyard. 

The tombstones in China are much bigger than those in America. The nicer ones we saw bore gold engravings of the deceased’s name(s); incense spiraled lazily from where recent offerings had been made. 

We wound through a hill of onyx tombstones before arriving at my great-grandparents’ grave. 

Wordlessly, my array of relatives began to assemble the offerings, the wine, the flowers. With wet rags, they wiped down the grave until the onyx gleamed. 

Then we lined up and began bowing. 

We started with the grandpas and grandmas, then the aunts and uncles. When it came time for Baba’s bow, he murmured a prayer, the incense drifting gently past his face. 

“Great-grandpa and great-grandma,” he said, kneeling, “I’ve brought your great-grandchildren. I hope you are happy; I hope you will preserve the Chen family.” 

It seemed to hit me now: the weight of my name. How Chen was so much more than part of Baba’s WeChat ID, so much more than one of the countless characters I cannot write. And I didn’t know how to feel about that - proud? Ashamed? As I bowed, knelt, and kowtowed before the tomb of an ancestor I had never met, rooting my three sticks of incense in the pot of ashes, I just felt confused - there was a spider next to my right knee, a huge black ant crawling up the side of the grave. Should I pray? Pray for what - the wellbeing of my family? Those words felt trite, insincere in their predictability. 

Thank you for bringing us together, I thought instead. I stood. 

And as we scattered chrysanthemum petals over the grave and poured wine on the earth, as my grandfather arranged the food upon the tomb, I realized that this was what I could genuinely understand and appreciate about the ritual: the quiet unity of three generations - four, if you consider my great-grandparents - from across the world.

On Saturday, before we left for Shanghai, my family gathered in our great-uncle’s apartment for a game of mahjong.

His apartment struck me as immaculately clean, with a bit of a retro vibe and a shelf spilling with books. As I took a place at his mahjong table with one great-aunt and two other great-uncles, it occurred to me that perhaps I really hadn’t seen enough of Taiyuan to make any judgement about it; perhaps in my longing to leave, I’d missed out on opportunities to genuinely enjoy the city.

Or maybe I was just thinking from the imminence of goodbye.

It’s funny, how the rules of mahjong reflect the culture of each city. Taiyuan mahjong is very different from Taiping mahjong. With my maternal family, the game is played rapidly, the rules as straightforward as the players’ tongues. In Taiyuan, the tiles are handed out at a much slower pace; a series of rules I’d never heard of (we also used poker cards, another set of dice, and a rule of four arrangement that confused me for a good ten minutes) gives the game a methodical lull. 

“Come back soon!” one my great-aunts called after me, as I stood up, hugged my relatives, and walked towards our taxi.

No way, I thought. I smiled instead and nodded - here, I was a granddaughter, a daughter, a cousin, a woman. I had my duties, just as they had theirs - they would support me, and I would treasure that support.

“Of course,” I said. Closed the car door behind me.

Even if I had judged Taiyuan harshly, I was unmistakably happy to leave.