—
I MET MY ONLY brother at JFK later that night. Eight years older, he was in what he called the new and fit middle age. It didn’t matter to him what age I was (thirty-six)—I was younger, would always be, and he liked to tell me what to do.
Fang was rich now, his Connecticut house massive. Since he had arranged the travel, we boarded first class, where I had a small room by myself, my seat the size of a one-person L-shaped sectional, with a divider to my left that pulled open and closed. For the hour before takeoff, my brother visited me in my room to talk about how great first-class amenities were: the meals and service, different options of heated blankets, ability to recline and lie down, the L’Occitane bathroom kit, blue pajamas with red piping—things our father never had nor could appreciate.
Because he grew up in a village, I said.
It wasn’t a village, Fang said. A small town in the countryside, yes, but not a village. Don’t talk about things you don’t understand.
Then Fang explained the L’Occitane kit. He opened his bag and held each item out between his two index fingers. This was a mini tube of toothpaste. This was a retractable comb, earplugs, moisturizer, and cologne. Tiny, powerful mints. He promised that once I flew first class, I would never be the same, there was no other way to travel.
When the meals came, we ate them in our respective rooms with silverware and drank our glass flutes of Veuve Clicquot. From across the aisle, Fang asked when I would be getting promoted at work, and I said I was already an attending/the most senior person in the room.
Sure, he said. But it can’t hurt to ask, there’s got to be one position higher. I said probably. He replied most definitely. Then we finished the champagne and gave back our meal trays and prepared for sleep.
But for the entirety of the flight, I didn’t sleep. I didn’t use the L’Occitane kit or my blue pajamas. By accident, I pushed the call button, and soon a pretty Asian flight attendant came by to ask if I needed fresh towels for my face or help with my recline. Her teeth were very white and she said that a total recline was what these chairs were built to do, to go flat like a twin-sized bed and provide passengers maximal support. Unbelievable to me that she could smile and talk at the same time, a task I once thought humanly impossible. When I didn’t have a request for her, the pretty attendant reclined my sectional, pulled closed my room divider again, and dimmed the lights.
Waiting for us at Pudong airport was our mother with newly permed hair, a colorful crossbody purse, and ankles that shimmered from her translucent silk socks. My mother liked to break my name into two syllables.
Joan-na, she said, and assessed my shoulder.
During residency, I had lost the weight of a forearm. I’d since gained it back, but my mother still liked to check, and to ask if I was eating enough, if I had already eaten, if I could eat any more.
Greetings between some families can be so anticlimactic. My mother and I spoke often enough through phone calls and texts, but after two years physically apart, there were no big embraces or kisses.
She didn’t greet Fang as he was already at baggage claim, ahead of the crowd. I had forgotten about crowds in China, that being in a crowd here was like being lost at sea, and for airports, train stations—for any transportation hub, any city really—for all the tourist sites, all the shopping centers, especially around the holidays, especially food markets, escalators, the phrase rén hǎi exists, or “people sea.”
By now, Fang was twenty feet ahead of us at a sleek black booth, calling us a private sedan. In the sedan, he gave the suited-up driver with white gloves no directions. He said just the name of the hotel and the driver was off.
I was checked in with simply a handshake.
Hotel amenities: a three-inch binder.
* * *
—
A HUNDRED PEOPLE CAME to my father’s funeral, most I didn’t know. He had two brothers and many friends. My mother has a brother, two sisters, and more friends. These aunts and uncles I’d spent less than a week with in total for the entirety of my life.
Eighteen years ago, my parents moved back to Shanghai and have lived there ever since. Once I was bound for college, they saw their jobs as parents complete. Fang was already established then and I was on my way. None of their siblings had immigrated, and my parents were still not as comfortable in America as they’d hoped. So, after they left, it was just me and my brother in the States, the rest of our immediate family abroad.
At the funeral, I couldn’t talk about my father in a significant way, and once I got a few words out others just wanted me to stop. Afterward, a smaller group of us gathered for dinner at an upscale restaurant, in a private room. The room had a round banquet table with a lazy Susan wheel built in. Customary in this country for families to sit for hours-long meals and turn this wheel back and forth, politely forcing everyone to eat. Once one meal ended, another began. Elaborate dishes were brought out, at least ten varieties of soup. Children would run around the table, laugh hysterically, and hide behind the upholstered chairs.
But there were no children at this dinner and I wondered why. To the woman next to me, I asked where so-and-so was. She pointed to herself. She was this former so-and-so, my father’s youngest brother’s second child, now my cousin of twenty-two.
Oh, I said.
Hasn’t China changed? my cousin asked. In the last ten years, it’s become brand new.
I said I didn’t know the country too well.
She said that given how my face was Chinese it was a shame to know nothing about myself.
We pushed the lazy Susan clockwise and then counterclockwise.
About our country, continued my cousin, it used to be poor, but now we have caught up. We have surpassed most Western countries, even yours.
She showed me her fancy leather wallet and told me the price. She passed me her new phone, which she noted was even more advanced than mine. So palpable to me what she was trying to prove. Everything was a race.
I told my cousin that I was sorry for her loss. My father was a good uncle to you and a good comrade overall.
* * *
—
TO RESUME WORK ON MONDAY, I had to fly back the next day. Neither Fang nor my mother suggested otherwise, as they both knew my job had come to define me and in China there was not much for me to do. My aunts had already helped my mother clean out the apartment; other family and friends regularly brought over food. My brother was also staying another two weeks to settle the rest of my father’s accounts.
Fang had stronger ties to China than I did and knew more people at the funeral. Born in Shanghai, he was raised by my parents until age six and then by my mother’s side—her own parents and siblings—after she and my father left for America. Common of many families at the time, that only the parents went first, and the phrase “it takes a village” has never sounded hyperbolic to me but the truth. Plan was to send for him sooner, but by accident I was born and a few more years had to pass. From Oakland, my parents and I moved to Kansas. Then one grandparent died, followed swiftly by the other. There was a day in Wichita when I didn’t know I had a sibling, and within twenty-four hours, an older brother appeared. To curious neighbors, he was simply a relative from China, visiting for a little while. Odd and obvious. A twelve-year-old boy who looked so much like my mother and half like me.
At Pudong, I went to the ticket counter to trade my first-class seat for coach. The airline clerk squinted and asked if this was what I really wanted. Once I switched to economy, I wouldn’t be able to switch back. The seats in economy didn’t recline into beds, I would be without L’Occitane kits and Veuve Clicquot, no more pretty flight attendant with white teeth.