Author: borderlesssg1

By Larry S. Su

I left China in 1997 with little more than youthful ambition and the resilience my parents had instilled in me. Since then, the United States has become my second home, first as an international student and later as a naturalised citizen. In nearly three decades, I have returned to my hometown five times, each visit less a simple trip than a pilgrimage, rich with memory, loss, and renewal. Of these, three homecomings stand out most vividly, moments when the presence of my parents, siblings, and villagers reminded me of who I am and where I come from. In their sacrifice, hard work, and quiet endurance, I found lessons in resilience and gratitude that reach beyond my own life and speak to something universal.

Home Visit in 1999    

My hometown lies in Heyang County, Shaanxi Province, about fifteen miles from the county seat and five miles from the nearest town. In my memory, a winding dirt road served as the village’s lifeline, linking it with surrounding towns and villages. Though not entirely cut off, the village remained relatively remote, as public transportation was non-existent at the time. To the east and west stretched deep gorges and ravine carved by centuries of rain and snow. Three miles to the north rose Mount Liang, the county’s highest peak, towering yet desolate.

Approximately thirty families, around one hundred and twenty residents, called this village home. The village unfolded along two streets which were riddled with potholes throughout the year. In dry weather, stirred up by the robust northwest wind, a pervasive layer of dust enveloped the streets and the villagers in swirling dances. Conversely, during the rainy season, the thoroughfare turned into a muddy quagmire, making passage difficult.  The villagers had to throw in discarded bricks, stones, or fragments of decaying planks to make a makeshift path. Dump sites, replete with smoldering wood, fallen branches, and both animal and human waste, cluttered the sides of the streets. There were very few trees, making the village barren and dreary.

The dwellings varied between mud or brick caves, with a few select families having brick and wood houses when they first settled here. Whatever they were, they had lost their usual shape and colour due to the relentless beating from rain and wind.

We lived in two cave dwellings dug into a high cliff, about three hundred feet from the village street. In front of them lay a small dirt yard, where sheds housed our pigs, ox, chickens, and rabbits. The yard also held the latrine, a simple pit enclosed by dirt walls, whose stench, especially on warm or hot days, often drifted into our living spaces.

This is my hometown, where I was born and lived for eighteen years before leaving for college in Xi’an, the provincial capital, in 1983. I studied English literature at Xi’an International Studies University, earning both my BA and MA degrees, and later joined the faculty of its English Department. I remained there until 1997 when I left for the United States.

Inundated by academic work in graduate school and lack of financial constraints, I did not plan any home visit during my two years of studies in the United States. However, the sudden death of a drunkard in the rooming house I shared with a few American students hastened my decision to make a visit to China.  

As a newcomer to the culture, I never linked the drunkard’s brown bags or bulky coat to the heavy drinking that would claim his life. His body was discovered days later, only after the foul smell crept through the air ducts and into our rooms. It happened three weeks before the semester’s end. Fearing I would soon be alone in that eerie house and weighed down by eighteen months of separation from my wife, son, and parents, I hastily bought a plane ticket back to China.    

My three-week visit to China was brief, quiet, and deeply comforting. I was overjoyed to see my loved ones and longed to linger in those carefree days, away from foreign foods, stacked books, and unfinished papers. My wife, also a faculty member of Xi’an International Studies University, went to Xianyang International Airport to welcome me back. We traveled by a slow train and a rattling farm tractor to reach my village home. Though I had gone only a short time, I noticed the brick caves, built fifteen years earlier to replace the old loess ones, were already losing mortar. A thin film of black grease from years of cooking stained the walls. Cold air seeped through the cracks in the doors and windows. The animal sheds, with broken doors and missing bricks, made the courtyard even colder and more desolate.

At meals, I noticed my father’s gnarled hands and heavy knuckles rubbed by decades of toil. The gray cotton padded coat was worn out on his shoulders and elbows. Around his waist was a thick hemp rope, the kind used to bundle corn stalks in the fields. Cinched tightly around his coat, it kept the biting wind from slipping in through the gaps, but it looked rough, even absurd. The cotton-padded shoes hand made by my mother were also tattered with cotton exposed. The towel he used to wear over his head in winter had totally lost its whiteness.  No doubt life was very hard for them.

During my year and a half in the United States, I spent most of my time in the library and rarely ventured beyond the college campus to see how Americans lived. Still, I caught glimpses of their lives. From visits to my professors’ homes, I saw spacious houses surrounded by trees, lawns, and flowers, with garages large enough for two or three cars. They wore casual yet high-quality clothes, and at parties served sandwiches, barbecued meats, salads, and red wine. Such abundance and variety were things I had never experienced before. Years later, when I owned my own house, I came to understand that Americans had achieved this standard of living after World War II, so I could not help but ask myself: Both Americans and Chinese are human beings, how could their lives be so different, with Americans enjoying plenty, modernity, and comfort, while the Chinese peasants endured poverty, primitiveness, and hardship?

The morning of our departure for Xi’an, my father carried my suitcase on his shoulder, his steps steady on the familiar dirt road, while my wife and I followed behind. The path, worn by years of passing feet and baked dry by windless days, had turned into a powdery film that rose with every footfall, stinging our eyes and filtering into our nostrils.  He glanced back and quietly suggested we move to the edges, where the earth was less trampled and the dust less suffocating. As we walked, the frosty wind whistled through the withered corn stalks, their hollow rustle echoing memories I could not keep down. 

I was pulled back to those early mornings two decades ago when my father and I walked this same road with a cart of potatoes. Nothing had changed in the region since then.  Now with each step, a heavy sadness settled over me. I looked around at the land that my parents lived on for most of their lives; its parched, colourless soil gave little and demanded much.

A few questions throbbed quietly inside me: How lucky I was to escape this poor land! If I had not made it to college, would I be living the same kind of life as my parents? What would be the future for my parents and siblings? When would they finally see a day of plenty, not like the Americans, but be able to eat wheat flour at every meal, not as a holiday luxury, but as an everyday certainty? The silence around us offered no answer, only the sound of the wind scraping through brittle stalks and the soft crunch of dust beneath our shoes.       

In less than half an hour, we reached the bus stop. The sun had yet to rise, and the morning air still clung to its chill, though the brisk walk had warmed our bodies. We stood by the roadside, the sky slowly paling, waiting for the van to appear over the horizon. I turned to my father and told him to head back home. He shook his head gently. “I’m not busy,” he said. “Waiting a few more minutes won’t hurt.” He stood beside us, his hands folded deep within his sleeves.

He stood there quietly, patient as ever, perhaps a little awkward too, never at ease in public spaces. Six feet tall and striking in his younger years, he had never learned to take pride in his height or in any part of himself. Life had worn it out of him. Decades of bowing to weather and labour had stripped away any sense of vanity, replacing it with a humility so deep it bordered on invisibility. He saw himself as nothing more than a poor peasant, a man whose only worth came from the work his hands could do in the fields or on the mountain slopes. In his eyes, he was always falling short, always inadequate, someone who never quite belonged unless tethered to a plow, a hoe, or a load on his back.         

We waited nearly twenty minutes before the van finally appeared, its headlights slicing through the pale morning mist. When the door creaked open, he stepped forward, lifted our suitcase in, greeted the driver with quiet courtesy, and said, “They are my son and daughter-in-law. They’re heading back to Xi’an.” Then he stepped back, just a pace or two, and stood off to the side, his tall frame silhouetted against the dim sky, waiting without a word. I leaned out and told him he could head home now. “It’s all right,” he replied softly, not moving.

As the van lurched forward, he began to wave slowly at first, then with greater insistence, as if trying to hold on for a moment longer. We waved back, again and again, until the village road curved and he vanished from view. That farewell, quiet and unceremonious, was the last time I would ever see him.

Home Visit in 2009

In August 2009, a year and half after my father’s death, my wife, son and I took a flight from Chicago to Shanghai to visit home. From 1999, when I last saw my father to this homecoming, ten years had passed, yet due to our tight financial situation, we were not able to visit my father and mother. Neither could I attend his funeral in 2007 due to the cost and the hassle of reapplying for a visa after the visit. So this home visit was long overdue.  It was a 14-hour flight, and I could not wait for the plane to touch down.       

The Shanghai Pudong International Airport was modern, spectacular and state-of-the-art. We waited for two hours to transfer to Xi’an, the nearest city to my wife’s hometown and mine.  We first stayed in my wife’s parents’ home for a few days, enjoying the comfort and hospitality my parents-in-law extended to us, but I was counting the days to be with my mother and siblings.

As the car was racing through the newly built highway, my heart was flying home faster than the wheels.  When it hit the county seat where my father and I sold potatoes thirty years ago, my heart was pounding faster.  I was gripped with a longing and anxiety that I was unable to describe in words. As the car got on the road from the town to the village, memories of the roadside landmarks came back to me: the scattered villages, the apple orchards, and the sudden curves of the road.  Now, the surface of the old road had been removed, and a new layer of asphalt had been laid on it. It was also lined with trees.  With the summer air and greenness all around, the surroundings were mellow and pleasant. 

When the car got to the edge of the big valley before it raced down the slope, I could see vaguely my village.  In five minutes, I would get home. My heart tightened and it kept tightening until I felt out of breath. In no time the car arrived at the west end of the village.  We almost missed it because the stone lion that was always stationed there had disappeared.  As I grew up, the lion was the landmark of the village, and the villagers would always stand there chatting and seeing traffic pass.

Now my feet touched the street I had long missed over the past decade. In my absence, both the houses and the streets had changed beyond recognition. The streets had been widened and cleared of debris. The old dirt houses had given way to brick and cement structures. The gateposts, once made of mud bricks with rough wooden planks for doors, had been replaced by sturdy gleaming metal gates.

The car parked outside the courtyard. My mother and the siblings ran excitedly outside. My mother was older and thinner but in good spirits, as she always was even though she suffered from poor health her entire life.  She stooped quite a bit and walked more slowly. Her once abundant hair had also become thin and silvery. My younger brother, my two sisters and their husbands had all changed their clothes for the welcome, but their brown faces, greying hair, and callous hands all gave them away, showing the crushing impact of years of hard labour on their bodies.  It was especially heart-breaking to see my two sisters, slightly fairer than their husbands, but still wore rough skin and tired expressions, looking older before their time.  They all helped to unpack the car and carried our big suitcases to the sitting room.

In the courtyard, my younger brother had built a new brick flat of three bedrooms.  The two on the sides were installed with doors and livable, but not the bigger one in the middle that would require a bigger, specially made door.  With the added bedrooms, the living space had been expanded.

I felt its spaciousness, but I also felt its emptiness and loss because of the absence of my father. When he was living and I was in college and graduate school for seven years, his presence in the courtyard filled it with warmth and love. I never failed to see him on the roadside waiting for me when I got off the vehicle. He guessed the dates and would always stand on the roadside to try his luck.  Some days he was disappointed when I failed to show up, but when he did see me, his face was all smiles.  He walked fast to carry whatever luggage I had. He excitedly exclaimed that he thought it was about time I should return home. He repeated this sentence for years. He put the luggage on the floor of the kitchen, sat in silent contentment at the edge of the Kang[1], and quietly smoked his water pipe while mom was preparing food.  I could see that among his life-long laborious hustle and bustle this was the most relaxing and enjoyable moment for him. 

For all my years in school from the first grade to graduate school, he never asked what I was learning and how I did it — not that he was not interested or did not care. Given his taciturn nature and lack of education, he felt he was not equipped to inquire about my progress. He knew he could count on me to do well in school. His lack of words conveyed more of his love and expectation than any language could express.

Now he was gone. It must have been very hard for my mother to face the days and nights without him. For more than forty years of marriage, my father bore the burden of most of the fieldwork so that my mother, always in fragile health, could remain at home, focusing on making clothes and preparing meals for us children. Their life together, though often marked by conflicts born of poverty, was sustained by a shared sense of duty to raise five children and to hold on to hope for the future. With her partner gone, the strong shoulder she had leaned on for forty-six years was no longer there. The loneliness must have been overwhelming.

I looked forward to being by her side in this difficult time, but I was also weary of the return. After all these hard years, I finally made it, becoming a professor in an American university. The status of a well-educated intellectual teaching in a Chinese college was enough to call for admiration, let alone a professor teaching in America.  Even today, the mention of America would create in listeners associations with wealth, money, status, and superiority, yet could I have delayed my father’s death? Could I have done more for him and the family? What could I have done differently? At the bottom of my heart, I felt embarrassment, regret and guilt.                

We were led into the sitting room of the new house which my younger brother had built. Right on the wall of the sitting room, I saw a big canvas portrait of my father’s bust my close friend asked made for his funeral. I stared at that picture.  All the emotions that had been pent up within me seemed to explode. I sobbed with tears pouring down my face. The picture was probably taken shortly before his death.  His hair was receding, short and mostly white.  His stubble also grew white and had not been trimmed for a few days. His skin, due to long years of exposure to the sun, rain, snow and wind, had lost its hue and become dark brown. Wrinkles were engraved on his forehead and around his shrunk and mournful eyes. The hard life had reduced a tall and handsome young man into a visage too painful to see.    

My younger brother helped me to our father’s memorial tablet in another room. On the table was another picture of him and some tributes like incense, dry fruits and paper that we burnt for him.  I lighted a few incense sticks and knelt on the floor.  I said I was sorry to come home late, and I asked for his forgiveness. For all these years, all my father did was work. He never stopped working till his last breath.  He gave all he had to his poor family.  He started his life’s journey early, walked on the frozen road of hardship for years, and his life was cut short because of too much exertion and exhaustion. He died too early. He did not deserve any of these.        

I wished that my stable financial and overall status change in America had come earlier, so that I could do something for my father and family. It took me seven years to obtain my master’s and PhD degrees before I found my current job. It was difficult for me and my family.  Both my wife and I depended on assistantships in the States to finish our doctoral degrees and raise our son, but it was harder for my Chinese family left behind.  How did he and the family survive all the hardships all these years? From time to time, I called and asked how the family was doing, my father, as reticent as he was always, would say, “The same as usual. Now we had enough to eat.”  He never shared details.  He did not want me to worry.

Now he was dead. For his short sixty-nine years he lived a hard life, supporting his wife and five children.  Never did a day go by without him thinking how he would put food on the table and,  when we were young, how to save to send us to school.

One scene remains vivid in my memory. When I was in elementary school, my father, elder brother, and I hauled a cart of potatoes to the county market sixteen miles away. We stood beside the cart the entire day until every sack was sold. By the time we started home, night had fallen, and the air was dark and cold. Near the outskirts of town, we stopped at a nearly deserted food stand. My father bought my brother and me a bowl of noodles to ease our hunger and warm our stomachs. For himself, he asked only for a bowl of hot noodle broth, free of charge, into which he soaked the cornbread we had brought from home. That was his dinner. After a whole day in the cold—calling to passersby, weighing potatoes, helping customers pack their goods—he longed for a bowl of noodles that cost barely three American cents, but he would not spend that money, choosing instead to save every coin for daily necessities and for his children’s tuition and supplies.

This was who my father was, a hard-working yet destitute Chinese peasant living at the bottom of society, always lacking food, money, and the basic necessities, dying so untimely without enjoying a day of hearty meal and relaxed mind, leaving nothing behind for people to remember him by: no money, no property, no words, except the good memories people had of him.  Is this what life is? What kind of world is this? Who should be held responsible for him and people like him? 

It had never occurred to my father to complain against any individual, institution or society.  Like millions of Chinese peasants living from the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, he was a victim of his time marked by the Great Leap Forward, the People’s Commune Movement, the Great Famine, and most devastating of all, the ten-year long Proletariat Cultural Revolution. It was estimated that over forty million Chinese starved to death just from the Great Famine from 1958-1961.

During my short stay at home, I ventured to the villages nearby. I saw peasants as old as in their 70s and 80s, stooped and frail, still toil day in and day out in the poor soil, to contribute to their sons’ building a new house or paying their daughters’ dowry. I read about millions of migrant workers, leaving their aging parents and small children behind, selling their labour to factories and workshops in big cities earning $600 a month. They work fourteen hours a day with only one or two days off in a month.

My 45-year-old sister recently worked in a factory in Guangdong. She told me she worked more than fourteen hours a day, with only two short meal breaks of about twenty-five minutes each. The rest of the time she stood in front of a machine, collecting washing machine parts that poured out nonstop. She could not step away, even briefly, without parts piling up and crashing to the floor. To prevent this, she avoided drinking water so she would not need to use the restroom as often.

I often wonder what our father would think, knowing from the grave that his grown children, though no longer hungry or ragged, still must toil so hard to make a living. They still depend on crops and apple orchards for survival. They still lack savings for family emergencies, vacations, or helping their children marry.

Home Visit in 2019

I visited China in May 2019, during which I delivered a lecture entitled “William Faulkner and His Works” at my alma mater. Before the talk, a formal ceremony was held, and I was awarded an honorary professorship. I had invited my mother to attend, but she declined. For a woman in possession of a lifelong interest in meeting people and seeing new places, her refusal seemed unusual.

Later I learned that her health had declined sharply over the past two years, making long trips difficult. This became painfully clear during my walks with her in the village. I held her weakened arm, little more than thin flesh over bone, as we moved slowly along the path. Every few minutes she had to stop and sit, murmuring that her legs were too weak to carry her farther.

 As I walked with her through the village, I noticed many changes. The streets had been paved with cement, streetlights now stood on every post, and running water had been installed in every household, yet the village also felt emptier. Wealthier families had moved to the county seat, and younger men and women had left for jobs in larger cities. What remained were mostly the elderly and children, giving the village a quiet and desolate air.

My younger brother had upgraded his home. In September, I learned from my younger brother that our mother was seriously ill. It started with a few swollen teeth, then a big ball grew on one side of her face, so big that it squeezed her eye.  My brother and sisters thought it might be some infection that would heal in a week or two, but when it became more than two weeks, they decided to take her to the county hospital, only to be told that they could not treat her, that she needed to be transferred to a hospital in Xi’an.  She was taken to the emergencies of two big hospitals, only to be told that they could not treat her.

They then took her to the third hospital affiliated with the Fourth Military Medical University, one of the best ones in Xi’an. I happened to have a friend working there, and I called him repeatedly, asking if he could help arrange for my mother to see a doctor. Through his connection, she was admitted to the emergency department. A team of specialists were assembled, and they diagnosed her case as advanced oral cancer, with very slim chances of recovery. If we insisted on treatment, two hospitals would need to be involved. Part of her face would have to be cut, and her chest opened to drain the fluid. Given her age, the likelihood of surviving such a surgery was minimal.

After careful discussion, my brother, sisters, and I decided to forego the attempt and brought her home, leaving her final days in God’s hands. It was indeed a hard decision for us.  We felt extremely guilty for our mother did not deserve to die this way, yet she accepted it with resignation and sigh. She said, “How did the Lord allow this weird illness to happen to me?”  For two weeks she lay on bed, becoming weaker day by day, withering away until she lost her last breath.   

Since she was diagnosed, I had been preparing to fly back to China for the funeral. Because of my absence from my father’s funeral, I was determined to attend my mother’s funeral, to make sure she had a decent burial. I told my siblings that I would be glad to pay for all the expenses. That was the least I could do to show a little appreciation for what she did for the family and me. I spent fourteen hours flying from Chicago to Beijing, then two hours from Beijing to Xi’an, then four hours of drive home.  By the time I arrived home, more than twenty-four hours had passed.      

The moment I knelt before my mother’s dead body in a coffin, my eyes were filled with tears.  I told her how sorry I was not to be with her for the last weeks now that she was forever gone. With a heavy heart and hasty breath, my words were repeatedly interrupted by my sobbing. My brother and sisters, kneeling beside me, tried to calm me down and asked me not to be carried away by my grief.

The second day was filled with preparations for the funeral. A few large tents, complete with tables and chairs, were rented and set up by a group of young men. The caterers arrived in their big truck, bringing utensils, meats, and vegetables. They busily set up the stove, chopped the meat, and cleaned the vegetables. In the nearby field, the grave diggers worked diligently, laying bricks to line the walls of the grave. My brother and I carried home-prepared food to the gravesite, along with light refreshments, cigarettes, and liquor, as tokens of our appreciation for everyone’s efforts.

The funeral ceremony was held the next day. Relatives, villagers and the people nearby packed the small square in front of the courtyard. My mother’s coffin was carried by a few strong men from the house outside and placed on a frame for people to pay their last respect. Our sisters and the women relatives knelt around the coffin, cried and chanted the hard life my mother had lived, while my elder brother, younger one, and I knelt in front of the coffin. The band started to play music of mournful nature.

I then stood up and gave a short eulogy outlining mother’s sacrifice and her impact on us. As I started to utter those words, they invoked images of the past years when my mother, always in poor health, did her best to make clothes and food for us. I especially mentioned how she insisted on us siblings going to school to get an education during a financially challenged times. Without her push, encouragement and resourcefulness, our lives now would be different.

When the ceremony ended, the coffin was placed on a motorized vehicle for transport to the graveyard. As it moved slowly toward the site, we siblings, along with relatives and villagers, followed behind, carrying the funeral decorations. When the coffin was about to be lowered into the grave, everyone gathered along the sides. I offered a prayer for my mother, thanking the Lord for bringing her into our lives and for all she had done for our family. I asked Him to remember her sacrifices and contributions and to welcome her into heaven. I recited a verse from Revelation 21:4: “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” After my prayer, the villagers helped cover the grave with cement boards and dirt.

On the journey back home, and later on the flight to the United States, my thoughts were consumed by the many sacrifices my mother had made. She did not come from this region.  She was born into a prosperous doctor’s family in Gansu Province, but during the national famine, she was forced to leave Gansu and migrate to Shaanxi, where she married my father. Within four years, she had given birth to three sons, placing an immense burden on our already poor family, and later she bore two daughters. Years of poor health, inadequate nutrition, and endless labour to provide food and clothing for the family left her frail. I remembered how she often lay on her side, wracked with pain from stomach ulcers caused by malnutrition, yet the family could not afford medicine.

My mother was a very ordinary peasant woman. She had only three years of schooling, yet she understood the value of education and how it could shape the future of her children. One memory remains carved in my mind. Every time I returned home from four years of boarding school, she made sure I had a bowl of noodles to give me some nourishment. Our family was extremely poor and survived mostly on corn and sweet potatoes, yet she used the small amount of wheat flour she had saved to make me that simple meal. Watching me enjoy a hearty bowl after days of dry corn bread and hot water brought her more joy than when she ate the food herself. She would sit beside me, relaxed and smiling, asking about school as I devoured the noodles.

I recalled more… One winter during high school, I was short just one dollar of my tuition. My homeroom teacher, stern and unyielding, made me walk five miles home and warned me not to return without the full amount. My parents, especially my mother, went from house to house in the village, humbly pleading for a small loan for a week or two. Most turned them away, citing their own hardships, but a few, out of pity, offered a yuan or two. By late afternoon, the small contributions had added up. I returned to school at dusk.

Now that both of my parents are gone, I probably will not return as often as I once did, yet home will always hold a permanent place in my life, its significance untouched by time. It has become a wellspring that nourishes me, as it has for many years. Whenever I think of home, I remember my parents, siblings, and the villagers. Their hope, hard work, and resilience have inspired me throughout my studies, career, and life. I have always thought: if my parents could endure those grueling years, far harsher than anything I have faced, I could persevere as well.

Struggling with a difficult reading, drafting a paper, or completing a PhD dissertation feels like a minor challenge compared to the battles they fought for food, clothing, tuition, farming tools, seeds, and fertilizers. For my challenges, I could seek more time or consult a professor. For my parents, failing to buy seeds or fertilizers in time could mean missing a season, leaving the family without a harvest, a matter of life and death. It is almost unimaginable how they survived those years. Their stories of sacrifice and resilience must be remembered and passed down through generations.

I have benefited most from their hard work and sacrifice. I owe a profound debt of gratitude first to my parents, and then to my siblings. My father spent his life labouring in the fields, always placing his faith in the land; my mother devoted herself to cooking and sewing, always ensuring we were clean and presentable. My siblings, who left school early, worked alongside our parents, giving all they had to support the family. I, the one who stayed in school the longest, completing graduate studies, reaped the rewards of their toil and perseverance. Without their sacrifices, I might be living the same life as my siblings today, repeating the same exhausting work my parents endured. For my entire life, I can never fully repay what they gave to our family.

Beyond feelings of indebtedness, these homecoming visits also prompt me to reflect on deeper issues. The contrast between my life and that of my siblings in China could not be more striking. It is almost as if I live in a king’s palace, eating what I want, buying what I desire, and traveling to places that interest me, without concern for cost, while they worry daily about whether there will be enough rain for the crops, whether they can save enough for their children’s education, or whether they have enough to face unexpected emergencies. Yes, they do not go hungry, but their lives remain far from secure or comfortable. Witnessing their struggles, I often feel guilty that I cannot do more for them. I cannot help but wonder why some people are able to change their lives through hard work, while others, despite equal or greater effort, cannot. Is there such a thing as fate? What lies behind it, and can it be changed?

I cannot answer these and the frustrations that are hard to quell, I remain hopeful and calm.  My parents often told us when we were children that even though we could not control the weather or the harvest, we must give our best effort and never let drought, storm, or hail prevent us from planting the next season’s crops.

 I realise homecoming is no longer simply about returning to a physical place; it is about returning to the essence of who I am. My parents’ fields, the worn paths of our village, and the laughter and burdens shared with my siblings shaped the foundation upon which my entire life was built. Though I may not walk those village roads as often as before, they live within me, and every achievement of mine carries their unseen footprints. My parents’ sacrifices and my siblings’ endurance gave me the privilege of education and the chance to live a life far removed from the toil of farming. Their lives remind me that fate is both mysterious and humble. We cannot fully explain why one child remains tied to the land while another journeys across oceans into universities and cities; nor can we fully reconcile the injustices of unequal rewards for equally hard labor. Still in this tension between destiny and effort lies the lesson my parents embodied: We must keep planting seeds, even when the harvest is uncertain. Their resilience teaches me that while we may not command the outcomes of life, we can command the spirit with which we endure it.

Thus, homecoming becomes more than nostalgia.  It is a renewal of faith, gratitude, and responsibility. It compels me to remember not only what I received but also what I must pass on: the stories of hardship, the virtues of perseverance, and the wisdom of contentment. Just as my parents left behind a legacy of strength and dignity, I too must carry forward their spirit, telling and retelling their stories so that the future generations may know the price paid for their opportunities.

Even as life pulls me farther from the village, home will remain my wellspring, reminding me of the values that no distance can erase. In remembering, I find balance between guilt and gratitude, between abundance and humility, and between fate and choice. And in this balance, I carry with me the most enduring inheritance my parents left behind: the courage to live with resilience and the grace to be content in every circumstance.

[1] A heatable clay bed, a traditional Chinese sleeping platform made of earth or brick. It has hollow interior channels connected to a stove or external fire source, circulating warm air to heat the clay mass and provide energy-efficient warmth during cold winters

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Larry S. Su has been a professor of literature and writing for the past thirty years.  He has also been a passionate reader and ardent writer since college.  He writes both in Chinese and English, and his writings have appeared extensively in the Chinese and English publications, mostly in the form of articles and essays. 

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