By Jennifer Wang

It’s in our blood; like grandfather, like father, like daughter.

It’s 1949 in Mainland China. My grandpa is a teenage boy who stands in front of a flyer tacked to a rusting metal pole. He should be in class, but the schools have been closed for a while. In times of war, children do not learn to read — they learn to survive.

The ground beneath his feet no longer roots him as it once did. The streets are haunted with an unnerving uncertainty.

The boy cranes his head at the flyer to read the characters printed on the thin parchment:

為國家生存而戰！【 FIGHT FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THIS DEMOCRACY!】

The force of communism had slithered through each province of a war-torn China like a snake, and the democratic Republic of China feared every scale on its back. There are whispers exchanged between the neighbors — the democratic forces have been losing ground. Staring up at the flyer, the boy feels it flutter in his heart: a tender flame of hope. He turns to face the military recruitment stand. The officers there raise their eyebrows at him, silently asking him the question they all had to ask themselves:

Will you sacrifice your youth to the tides of war?

It only takes a few strokes of a pen detailing his signature to completely rewrite his fate.

They usher him into a temporary camp within a few days. They place him on a boat within a week. There is no warning, no correspondence allowed — he isn’t permitted to write a single word about his departure to his family.

The boat’s large, metal body rumbles as the anchor groans on its way up. As they set sail, he sets his eyes on the abyss of blue, dancing by in waves. The ocean is beautiful, and its tides sway like the paddy fields back home. His siblings should be tending to them right now, he thinks.

Home.

He wonders if it will ever be his again.

---

I feel it on a rough Thursday evening.

The feeling starts in my fingertips. The nausea of homesickness, creeping up from my nails into my arms, infects my veins and swims its way through my body until it finally settles in the middle of my chest.

It’s a heavy, sorrowful weight. It drags me down with every heartbeat, until even standing feels like an impossible task.

I throw myself onto my bed, holding onto the one constant I’ve had since birth — a stuffed animal of a pink dog. I hold her crumpled body to my nose and inhale; despite how many years it’s been, she still smells familiar, like a place that’s been waiting for me.

I miss home — not home as in Frisco, Dallas, where my family is undoubtedly in our house, gathering around the dinner table at this moment — I miss the idea of a home I once had, 8,229 miles across the sea.

My family spent most of my childhood following my father’s job prospects; eventually, that led us to a developing coastal city in the south of Mainland China: Shenzhen. My parents always thought we’d eventually move again, but what they thought was a temporary stop quickly turned into thirteen years.

Without even realizing it, I’d grown my roots into the pavements of the city. When I left, it carved a permanent scar into the concrete in the shape of an eighteen-year-old girl.

---

People who grew up with nothing have to hold on to everything.

He boarded that boat to Taiwan empty-handed, with nothing to his name. He’s given a stipend once in a while — it’s not much, but he thinks eventually it might be. He has food to eat and a bed to sleep in, and in the night, dreams of democracy flood his head.

One day, his commanders finally give him the green light; he’s allowed to write to his family.

He’s not sure where to start, the absurdity of it all finally hitting him — he’s miles away from his quaint hometown, where his siblings believe he’s still with his uncle in the city. How does he begin to tell them he’s been shipped to an island overseas?

As the pen moves, so do his tears. He writes of his decision, of his dreams to contribute to the battle for freedom. He writes of his naivety, of his ignorance about what sort of a life his dreams entailed. He writes of uncertainty, of the fact that he may not see them again for a long, long time. He bids the house that he grew up in as much safety and peace as war will allow.

He grabs a pair of stationary scissors, holding it up to his head with quivering hands, arms still sore from training earlier that day. With a snip, a chunk of hair falls perfectly into his palm. He tucks it away into the envelope. With this piece, he makes himself holdable. He makes himself real.

That night, he lies in bed, praying to whoever is listening that the family is alive to receive his letter.

---

Leaving the city for good feels both like heartbreak and a sigh of relief.

I know I will not miss the people — years of small town gossip has drained whatever affection I had left for them. But the motions of packing softens my resolve to leave without emotion. It’s harder to let go of the smaller things.

Two weeks before our flight, my mom invites her best friends over and gives away some of her favorite china. She smiles at them, reassures them that it’s okay to take. She tells them it won’t survive the flight over anyway, but I see the way her smile drops with every piece that leaves her fingers.

We sort through the shoes we’ve collected over the years, and she tells me the story behind each one.

“This is the first pair of shoes your grandparents bought for you!” she grins as she holds up a pair of pink sneakers that are barely bigger than her palm.

We decide to keep them, for memories’ sake.

In the study room, my dad cracks a joke about our ever-growing shoe collection. He’s sorting through an entire shelf of books he’s never touched. I roll my eyes and tell him we’ll stop collecting our shoes when he starts reading his books.

“Fair enough,” he shrugs.

Our entire life is eventually packed into seventy-something boxes. A lot of things were thrown out or given away in the process. I find it strange that I’m missing the objects more than the people.

The night before my flight, I float through the rooms like a phantom. My graduation flowers sit rotting at the foot of my bed. The moonlight filters through the window of our living room — no, the living room — devoid of furniture. It’s not ours anymore. It won’t be ours ever again.

From the balcony, I can see the skyline. The lights pulse quietly, reminiscent of the city’s heartbeat. It lives, it breathes, and I watch — breathing with it as a girl who belongs to it, one last time.

---

The war never truly ended. But the battles eventually did.

After he’s out of the military, my grandpa settles down in Taiwan. He is no longer a teenager. He goes years without knowing whether his family survived. They won’t let him return, not even to visit. He doesn’t want his life back in Mainland China anyway, but he’d like to see his siblings at least one more time.

One day, he meets a woman. They get married and eventually, they have a son.

His son grows up curious. He tells the boy stories of where he’s from, of how he got to the life he’s settled into. He teaches him the history of the fight for freedom that never truly ended. He feeds him books and magazines to quench his thirst for knowledge. He is so proud of his son, and there was nothing in the world that would stop him from giving him everything he wanted.

He is a frugal archivist, a sentimentalist, and it translates into the way he lives. He stashes coins in empty film canisters and sturdy, plastic pill bottles. He accumulates newspaper   clippings in towers, until his wife berates him for it. He collects the propaganda booklets they pass out at his workplace, counting them as proof that his dream isn’t dead yet.

When he dies, his son lays down a flag of the Republic of China and one of the booklets next to his chest to be cremated with him.

Even in death, he holds on to his dreams.

---

My grandpa died when I was two, and I have no memory of him to hold.

Sometimes, my dad finds me failing to purge items from my room.

“You are just like him,” he’ll laugh.

I used to get defensive at that statement. I didn’t want to be labelled as a hoarder because a hoarder meant someone who had too much junk. My things weren’t junk; everything I kept, I kept for a reason.

There are oddities sprinkled all around my new room in Texas: snippets of ribbon, stacks of polaroids, letters from people I talk to less and less. On my bed, there’s that stuffed pink dog I’ve had since birth. Somewhere in a box, there are princess gowns I adored as a five-year-old. On my dresser, my dad’s old camcorder sits, unused for years. I’ve made it my mission to revive it someday.

Now, I know my dad never meant any harm by comparing me to his father. He is the same — the unread books he packed from China are still in his study, just sitting on a new shelf. When I look at him, I see the silhouette of my grandpa in a younger body.

We hold on to our things, our dreams, our hopes and aspirations. We hold on to our things, and in that way, we hold on to each other.

It’s in our blood; like grandfather, like father, like daughter. ■