I was born in Guangzhou, the third largest city in China. I am studying in a boarding school near New York City, but I am a farmer at heart, belonging to the little village Zhangcun, which my grandparents call “my roots.”
My family had always been farmers, but in 1985 my father became the first college graduate in the village. After university, he settled in Guangzhou and raised me. Unfortunately for us, my grandparents refused to move with him, but they loved their grandson so much that they insisted on seeing me at least once a year. Therefore, visiting Zhangcun became my summer routine from the time I was in kindergarten.
Going back felt similar every time. The train wandered steadily between the khaki-colored mountains and beside the sun-scorched cornfields. The locomotive horn sounded, signaling the station to welcome a new arrival. Dragging my luggage onto the platform, I waved at a middle-aged couple. Uncle pulled the suitcase handle towards him, asking about the journey; Aunt received my backpack and handed me a bottle of water. Smiles always stayed on their faces, just as welcoming and familiar as everything else in town.
In my memories, my grandparents have been living in this brick-walled house with a flat cement roof forever. I loved the structure of their house because Grandpa once told me this setup would gather the most wealth and luck according to fengshui, a philosophical system to harmonize one with the surrounding environment. Behind the bronze rusted gates with portraits of a pair of angry Chinese deities was the den for our family’s bodyguard, a brown dog. Whenever I approached the gates, it would happily circle around one of my feet three times and start licking my toes. Opposite the den was an open kitchen with only a brick rectangular stove. It always fascinated me to think that all the food came out prepared in that same iron pot. Across the yard from the kitchen, a pit dug in the ground served as a common bathroom. Surprisingly, I never felt uncomfortable squatting over the hole while fruit flies were flying around and worms were writhing near my feet. Dried leaves were always available as organic toilet paper. Occasionally Uncle would pile up the excretions and ask me to bring them over to the apple orchard. Then I would pinch my nose firmly and transport the natural fertilizer with a wheelbarrow. Three bedrooms and a living room directly faced the main gates. Every year I found Grandma inside, she would pat my back, call me by my childhood nickname, and assure both me and herself repeatedly, “You are back. You are back.”
On the street, vendors would shout out how fresh and cheap their tomatoes were while the elders would sit under the roof playing Chinese chess with one another. My grandparents would introduce me to their friends one by one. Everyone shook my hand so firmly as if trying to squeeze their hospitality through my skin.
As a child, my days started just as early and busily as my grandparents’. The sun woke up, lazily pulling up the shade of the world. Bathed in the faint sunshine, the slowly rotating windmill informed everyone that it was a good day to work in the field. Pushing a wheelbarrow, Grandpa followed Grandma, who was holding a hoe. Splashing some water on my face, I sighed and sat on the stool in front of a stove. The stove comprised half of the kitchen, accomplishing all jobs from frying to boiling. Sparrows squeaked sporadically as the breeze caressed my water-dripping cheek. I lit up a match and ignited handfuls of soft grasses. Then I lit a torch by sticking its end into the dry grasses. The sulfur scent plucked my nostrils. Tossing both the dry grasses and some twigs into the stove, I swirled the mixture with the torch. Above the stove lay the big iron pot filled with water. Trying to strengthen the fire, I used the homemade “wind-blower.” It was a piston that controlled the closing and opening of two small openings at the front and back of the stove. Whenever I pulled and pushed the handle, the two openings would open one at a time, sucking air into the stove and heating up the fire. At age eleven, I did not understand air pressure, but I did know that too much wind would burst the noodles and too little wind would leave them undercooked. Pull. Push. Pull. Push. Arms went back and forth with the piston like an old yet steady pendulum. I usually waited for an hour before my grandparents returned from the wheat field or the orchard for breakfast.
Because of the large consumption of wood in cooking, I developed a habit of picking up small pieces of wood when I walked. I still remember a few times of disappointment when I instinctively picked up ragged twigs in the forest behind my high school, yet when I turned around, my grandparents were not there to take the twig from my hand and put it into the bamboo basket on their back. Those are the times when I knew I missed the Zhangcun buried deep in my childhood.
Recently the village has changed. New stoves are installed; bathrooms with a seat are set up. Getting rid of these inconveniences satisfies the townspeople. To me, though, these experiences shaped my identity. They taught me to be resilient, diligent, and careful about every detail in my life.
Just as my father was the first college student who boldly walked out of Zhangcun, I am the first person from Zhangcun who has taken a step outside the country to study abroad. After I was admitted to my high school in New York, the first thought in my mind before my departure was to go back to Zhangcun and tell my grandparents in person. As always before I left their house, they told me to take care of myself and slipped a few hundred yuan into my pocket, unaware that this time was different. I would be off to somewhere where the money they gave me means nothing. But no matter where I would be, I knew that Zhangcun would always be my roots.