Homecoming

by Jasmine Wang

It’s January 27th today. Lunar New Year’s Eve.

This morning, I shimmied on a beautiful brocade qipao—China’s sexiest dress with its high collar, embroidered silk, and delicate cloth buttons—and stared intently at my reflection for a good long while, glowing with pride. 

This was my first qipao I’d worn in years, gifted to me by my mother, and I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the slit that ran down the length of my skirt and how it barely caressed my leg. I tilted my head a bit to the side as I smoothed down the silk, feeling the intricate gold embroidery under my fingers. 

This is a pretty shade of red, I thought. 

I breathed in deep, becoming acutely aware of how my qipao delicately clung to my body, how my culture clawed at my rib cage, how it wanted to return home, how I wanted to return home. I exhaled a soft smile.

“No time to waste,” I whispered to myself, pushing aside the many thoughts barrelling through my brain.

Shaking myself out of a daze, I hurried off to complete a long list of Lunar New Year tasks. I hastily washed my laundry and cleaned my room, sweeping all the bad luck out of my apartment. I packed small red envelopes stuffed with money for all the people I love in my life and made sure to say 恭喜发财 (gong xi fa cai) with a small bow to everyone I met regardless of whether they celebrate, because to me, spreading luck means receiving luck.

In the evening, I gathered my friends of all cultures to show them the delicate art of dumpling making. They watched in awe as I showed them the fastest way to churn out dumpling wrappers with a swift hand and a strong rolling pin. And together, we carefully folded small pockets of edible art, lining the hollow walls of my cozy college apartment with lyrical laughter. 

Today, I allowed myself to indulge in culture and tradition. I soaked it in like a warm bath and let the current of Lunar New Year history wash over me, baptizing me for the new year. But as the clock struck midnight and we roared in celebration, my memory flooded with what it meant to grow up as a daughter to Chinese immigrants. For all the other days were not like today, not this joyful, not this prideful, not this easy.

Growing up, my identity as a second-generation Chinese American was synonymous with the upturn of small button noses when I pulled out my thermos during elementary school lunchtime. It meant wishing for double eyelid surgery after fellow elementary school kids ignorantly stretched back the corners of their eyes. And as I got older, it meant having high school peers who were “so glad to have an Asian in their lab group,” simultaneously outraging me and pressuring me into excellence despite having zero passion for AP Physics. It meant shock and disdain when classmates left casually cruel comments about how the “Chinese eating bats started the virus” in the Zoom chat during virtual classes. It also meant tirelessly fighting against generational differences over diverging social and cultural views, desperately trying—and often failing—to bridge the gap between my parents and I.

In those moments, being Chinese American made me feel small. It felt like a burden—an identity that I was ashamed to inherit. It became a label that I tried to distance myself from, burying it under the umbrella of being simply “Asian American.” For so long, I painted over the nuanced hues with one monochromatic swipe. While I was proud to be Asian American with its delicious foods and vibrant traditions, I never wanted to be uniquely Chinese. Instead, I submerged myself in sister cultures, accustoming myself to their beauty, while buying into the sinophobic myth that demonized my own. 

But a small voice in my head constantly nagged at me, begging that we come up for air. 

How much longer will you drown out your identity, it asked. I stared blankly.

I’m not sure, I replied.

Sometimes when I cry, when I feel so overwhelmed that tears can’t help but fall from my eyes, my only desire is to go home.

“I want to go home,” I cry. “I want to go home.” Each word is more punctuated than the last.

But where will I go? Where is home? Even after living in the US for almost a decade, I still don’t have a place to return to. Is there a true home for the perpetual foreigner?

Only on days when dumpling assembly lines await my idle hands and bright red auspicious door couplets with gold writing adorn the walls, the large reunions from my childhood feel intimate—like home. 

For home is not a place. Home is perfectly peeled pears and sunflower seeds scattered across dinner party tables. Home is being scolded for not wearing slippers on the frigid tile and for drinking icy glasses of water on wintry days. Home is racing to devour dumplings on Lunar New Year, hoping to find the ones hidden with pennies to ensure our luck for the next year. Home is nestling into my mom while watching Chinese dramas and cackling with my sister over variety shows. Home is catching each other cheating during our fast-paced games of mahjong and hearing the same stories of my parents’ childhood in China instead of an American “I love you,” but that is enough—more than enough.

For home is not a place. It is remembering a time when things were more simple. It is a version of myself that felt more safe, secure, and happy. It is that feeling of joy, of warmth, of pride, of acceptance. Home is where my identity lies.

I want to go home, I tell the nagging voice in my head. 

Then go, it says. Go home.

It is January 28th today. Lunar New Year’s Day. And today, I am going home.

This piece was originally published as “When Will You Come Home?” in Iris Magazine, a feminist literary publication sponsored by the Maxine Platzer Lynn Women’s Center at UVA.