Huaniao Market

We wander in the streets of Chengdu, long after the last light has gone.

It doesn’t stay. It is never meant to stay. The market lives inside you when you’re young; as the hot summer sun spills upon the last streak of twilight, it remains in your mind for so long. You return to it when you get older, when the cool winter wind beats against your skin, all that remains is a shimmering mirage, leaving you with silence and sorrow. Today, August 21st, a Sunday of clearing skies and rain-soaked streets and humid alleyways, it stopped, and my summer was gone.

That morning began quietly, almost like any other summer morning in Chengdu. At seven, my grandparents and I walked to the noodle shop at the corner of the street, steam clouding the windows while the city stirred away. Then, we followed the crowds towards the Huaniao Market.

The moment I crossed the river and stepped through its gates, the rest of the world disappeared. There was only the pale mist of dawn, the wet scent of vegetables, and fading silhouettes of my grandparents ahead of me. As we moved deeper inside, the market slowly unfolded: Flowers and vegetables, kittens and puppies, cages of birds, buckets of fish, steam rising from breakfast stalls… Everything in the world seemed to gather there. Sichuan dialects rose and fell through the damp morning air.

In that city of endless rain, I have never forgotten you.

As we walked through crowded aisles, my grandparents would occasionally stop to greet old relatives. They would smile, exchange greetings, and schedule their next reunion.

Beside the market stood a tiny tea shop where my grandpa and his friends gathered every day. Grandpa would always come, buy a cup of tea, and chat with his friends for a whole day. I once asked him what they were talking about for this long, and he said “Chuiniu”, a Chinese saying for bragging. People were also playing mahjong inside. “Gang!” someone shouted. Four matching tiles. Three other players groaned as coins exchanged hands. Outside, the market continued.

There were spicy potatoes across the aisle. I waved to the vendor, and she waved back, waving through wrinkles, through time. It had always been the same vendor I had been buying from over the years. I watched as she handed us a steaming bowl of golden strips of potatoes, coated with soy sauce and vinegar, and sprinkled with green onion and cilantro. As I took the first bite, the numbness of Sichuan peppercorn exploded on my tongue. I couldn’t help taking the second bite, the third bite…

It would never end. Sometimes, I believed Time itself had stopped there. School would never come, summer would never end, and I would never grow up.

Then suddenly, it was over. Farmers folded their tarps. Vendors pushed away their carts. Within minutes, the market emptied itself, as though it had never existed at all. Plastic bags fluttered through the wind. Water stains darkened the concrete where buckets of fish had once stood only moments earlier. Empty, as if the entire morning had just been a lucid dream.

What left me troubled, is freedom filled with struggles.

Every time we leave Chengdu, I would wave through tear-streaked windows, not knowing when I could come back again, not knowing what would be gone before I return. Flower petals wilt. Streetlights flicker one by one. It was never meant to stay. It was never meant to stay because just like the market, my childhood was gone in the blink of an eye.

Summer has ended, and I am now awake. Perhaps one day, beneath a skyline washed in green and gold, I will be forever striving for the untouchable American dream. Someday I will return, yet I know when I come back, I’m no longer going to be the same, and it’s no longer the same people, same Chengdu.

Time had already crossed the river to Huaniao before me.

We used to long to grow up, to pursue the happy life we want. One day, we realize the days we long for the most are the ones already furthest away from us, washed away by the tide of Time. I guess part of me would remain there forever, in Huaniao beside the river, in the smell of vegetables and chili oil, in my childhood, beneath the fading lights of the city of Chengdu.

(The piece above is a stylistic imitation of The Green Fields of the Mind by A. Bartlett Giamatti)