Home is where the Heart is by Anika H. '26
visiting my grandparents
Featuring my sister’s drawings cuz she’s awesome.
I went to China for the first time in 6 years this summer. Although 9th grade of high school didn’t feel all that long ago, I could only remember a few blurry memories of restaurants, relatives, and a zoo.
I flew over to California a Monday afternoon and stayed there with my family for a day before heading out together for China the next morning. While I packed pretty light, bringing just a few clothes for the week, we brought 8 suitcases in total, many filled to the brim with gifts for our relatives. When mom couldn’t fit everything, my suitcase was eventually used as overflow. We hauled ourselves and our bags onto the 14 hour flight. The best part was that not many people took this flight, and nearly everyone on the plane got an entire 3 or 4 seat row to themselves. My sister, parents, and I all took turns entertaining my little brother, and somehow, I managed to get him to sleep for an hour or so. Exhausted and jetlagged, we then caught a train, and got picked up by an auntie to go to my grandparents’ house in Fuxin, a small city in the Liaoning Province of China.
My grandparents have gotten visibly older and weaker, and it sucks seeing them like this, knowing that they’re only gonna get older. Grandpa’s gone deaf, and grandma needs help walking now. They raised me since I was born and stayed in the US with us until I was 14. The last time I visited them was in the 9th grade of high school, so I was super excited to see them again.
We got visits from relatives, many many many relatives. So many relatives I don’t even remember how they’re related to us anymore. I’m just going to refer to them as uncles, aunties, and cousins for the rest of this blog.
The first few days, it felt a little awkward getting back into the habit of speaking Mandarin. My vocabulary was more lacking since the last time I last went, and I had a very slight, albeit audible American accent. Despite being guests ourselves, we spent a lot of time entertaining the other relatives that all decided to meet up at the same time.
One of the aunties that lived in the area tried to take us clothes shopping, and with my sister and I being socially awkward nerds in another country, we just ended up trying on weird outfits at the behest of the employees. I caught my sister throwing them some bombastic side eyes for their tastes in fashion, and I had to briefly excuse myself to snicker off to the side where they couldn’t hear.
The next few times we went shopping were a lot more casual. I ended up learning *fashion* from my sister and getting styled up in clothing stores. She thinks I look better in oversize clothes. Everything is ridiculously cheap. For maybe the price of a weeks worth of groceries, we got two massive bags of clothes and shoes, totaling around 60 items. I think we did an entire year’s worth of clothes-shopping that day. Besides that, I found it really funny that the stores had NKTE and NZEK shoes. They stocked Daidsa instead of Adidas, and ENT RONEH TACE instead of THE NORTH FACE. I had a ton of fun snapping photos of off-brand names.
my sister dreaming up an outfit for me
While I could engage in polite conversation with our relatives and my sister was hiding from human interaction, my little brother was having a blast, making friends left and right. It was quite the scene watching my little brother harass a distant cousin and playfight him until the poor guy was out of breath. Between our cousin threatening to toss him off a bridge and simultaneously begging for mercy, I had to intervene at times for the sake of my brother’s safety and our cousin’s sanity.
my cousin carrying my little brother like a sack of potatoes
Every morning, grandpa and I would get up early to go to the breakfast market. There were people selling fish and fresh meats, steamed corn and tofu soup, fresh fruit, steamed buns and desserts galore. In other words, all the flavorful food and groceries you can’t find in the US for dirt cheap. Then again, I’m biased towards Asian cuisine. The cost of a batch of tofu soup for 5 people is less than that of a bag of chips in a Boston vending machine.
For 3 days in a row, I helped my grandpa haul a giant watermelon across the entire market and up 6 flights of stairs because there’s no elevator. Grandpa’s quite fit for his age, but he’s 90 and his age is catching up to him, and his legs aren’t getting him anywhere with that watermelon. When we got back, he told my parents that I was pretty much as reliable as a son, which made me very happy because that’s high high praise coming from an Asian grandpa.
We ate out at restaurants with family style meals and spinning center tables. Unlike the US, where everyone orders their own dish, people order a bunch of food to taste and share together. The entrees were mouthwatering to say the least. The two times we went, I ate until I had no space left for dessert.
As we were living there, I helped bring grandma food, trim her fingernails, carry things up the stairs for my grandpa, and do other little things around the house. It felt nice to be depended on. Whenever they told me that I’ve grown, I became more acutely aware of my future responsibility to my family.
I didn’t know enough engineering vocabulary to tell grandpa in detail what I was learning in school or tell grandma about the fun community I found, but I knew enough to let them know I was doing an internship, excited about learning, and generally doing pretty well. Grandpa looked really proud every time a neighbor asked if I was his grandkid, gloating about how I just came back from the US. He kept trying to buy us more popsicles.
Grandma can’t go down the stairs, but we were more than happy to hang out with each other inside the house. I showed her my fire spinning videos, and she kept asking me whether I had a boyfriend yet. Then I hear grandma’s cousin tell my 9 year old little brother that he should find four wives when he grows up. There’s a bit of a cultural disconnect, but I see they care for us all the same.
by the way, my sister’s actually really good at art.
my sister’s color sketch of me