Nanjing, China. I thought I would eventually write this. It’s just too emotional for me. It’s hard to put into words, which is funny, because you’re also where my words began.
To me, you’re not real. You’re fantastical, idealized, sunshine and flowers, glitter-covered. After leaving you when I was ten, I almost forgot about you. Or maybe I didn’t forget. You just became too big for me to remember all at once. As I grew older, I started collecting memories of you in pieces and putting them together. Two brown sofas in the lobby of the apartment, the bamboo stalks in the neighborhood, the alleyways, roads, lanes I used to walk on holding my grandparents’ hands. Sometimes it feels futile, to search for memories that weren’t recorded as photos, to rediscover my childhood obsessions, to remember every street and vendor and sounds I woke up to everyday. I guess these come with being born in 2006. Remember the few photos I have of myself, all from my mother’s digi cam?
I almost hope you stay as a beautiful memory in my head. I don’t want reality to take over, whether it’s your new development, my old school’s new teachers, the possibility of new residents taking over my old home. Oh right, my old home is a museum now. A museum of my childhood. A museum of evidence of my first writing, first report card, first sticker I earned in school, first coloring book, first secret box that hides all the letters from my classmates when I left. They read those letters out loud to me at a farewell party. It felt ethereal and it still does. As if I didn’t leave a city… I left an entire universe where people knew everything about me. We were practically a big family of 36.
I know you kept moving without me. You don’t pause for anyone. You don’t reserve yourself out of kindness. And yet, last summer, you let me back in for just two days.
You’re not the same anymore. Two days isn’t enough time to meet a city again. Two days is barely enough time to get used to the blazing heat that I never remembered existing. The Deji Plaza that used to be a once-a-year family gathering spot during holidays, dazzled in a way that almost felt aggressive. It was filled with celebrities, luxury goods, high-tech equipment. Multiple, multi-million-dollar bathrooms. Bathrooms. Can you imagine that? But those new things don’t mean anything to me. I turned away and searched for the street food that still spoke in my mother’s dialect. The skewers, roasted duck stands, wonton shops. I went looking for the sweetness I remembered. I indulged in the flavors — they never changed.
I replay a scene in my head: As I came out of the station, skyscrapers, electric buses, shopping malls, all came into view. I can hear the rushing footsteps and the aggressive honking of car horns. The familiar smell of cigarettes weaved around the streets. It’s a metropolis after all. Instead of going in the direction of the crowd to the center of the city, I turned into a small alleyway. Concrete walls of dilapidated bungalows were covered with graffiti and relocation notices. I wonder how many generations lived there before modernization decided these kinds of houses cannot exist anymore.
There’s a soup dumpling restaurant. There’s freshly made soy milk. There’s a laoban who knew I lived in the area. “I’ve been at the restaurant for thirty years,” he tells me. As I finished the last sip of warm soy milk, I felt something inside me soften. Maybe it was the authentic taste or the laoban’s smile, but for the first time in a long while, I felt a strange sense of peace and joy in this simple moment.
Summer in Nanjing feels so different. The willow trees flutter with the wind and make rustling sounds, like the long hair of a young girl. The elders sit on wooden benches and chat about their grandchildren’s mischievous behavior, waving a meticulously crafted bamboo fan. Where are middle-aged people? Probably at work. It isn’t easy to care for the old and young in the family anywhere in the world. I know that my mother also had a difficult time balancing work and life before immigrating. My heart clenched. Maybe I’ve never appreciated her enough. I want to know what her life was like back then, in this quiet little neighborhood amidst the city hustles. Maybe part of my longing for you is also a longing to understand her, to know her before she resigned the job she loved to face immigration paperwork and American routines.
Nanjing, you hold the versions of my family and me that I can’t fully access anymore. You hold the child I was. You hold the woman my mother was. You hold my grandparents in the exact shape of their everyday lives. I’m afraid to return for real. I’m afraid of discovering that the places I worship are gone. Or worse — still there, but different enough to make me feel like I’m the one who’s been replaced.
But I’m also writing to say: I love you anyway. I love you as a city and as an idea that never left my mind. I love you as a place that raised parts of me I didn’t know how to name or feel. I love you for the way you make me crave simple human connections and the way you remind me that peace can exist in small moments. I want to try to love you in your changes, and love myself in mine.
Here is my letter of cluttered thoughts about you, finally. Nanjing, thank you for being my first home, even if I spent years trying to convince myself you were only a dream.
Linda Huang is a sophomore from Rockville, Md. majoring in Biomedical Engineering. Her column celebrates growth and emotions that define young adulthood, inviting readers to live authentically.
