Its like… I momentarily forget any grudges I might’ve had and just mentally regressed back to when I was a kid… and just… the feeling of being on a team… connected by blood and lineage… together exploring this strange world…
Its like… you ever moved? Or like went somewhere together and then like you both experience this thing together…
Like, when we first moved from Brooklyn NY to Philly, and we are in the new house my parents bought… and oh there’s no wifi here, since we just moved…
so here you are… you’re just offline this whole time… (okay this was before unlimited phone data became a common thing)
And like you have no friends, no connections, no one to talk to…
Then like you just wanna annoy your older brother…
Such deep connection… like nobody else even speaks your native language… nobody else have experience this from a perspective so similar to yours… like everyone just has this weird role in the family…
Like parents are just wondering why us kids are “misbehaving” all the time (spoilers: immigration fucks with your anxiety a lot)
Then my older brother is wondering why his younger brother is being so “annoying” (what did he expect from someone 5 years younger)
Then there’s me… desparate for love and affection…
(at least I remembered the time before relationships degraded so much)
And like you are just in this new house together… a place where y’all have to live for a long time…
I remember when we used to eat in the dining room together…
Now I, and my older brother as well, just hide in our rooms to eat…
what a family, amirite? 😭
…
Anyways… I am staying behind in the US…
So yeah…
Gonna be a lot quieter for the next 30 days…
So right now they’re going to JFK Airport…
Oh btw I asked my parents about the local “dialects” issue and apparantly my cousins in China are now responding to their parents in Mandarin and not Cantonese (the province language) or Taishanese (the home village language)…
Oh well… Chinese Diasporas in the west are kinda similar… most prefer their new host country’s language.