My mother and I arrived in the San Francisco Airport alone and hesitant. I fiercely gripped my mother’s hand with my small and plump fingers after enduring nine hours of breathing recycled airplane air. My surroundings were filled with sights new to my mother and me. Wondrous sights, but foreign and intimidating sight as well. My mother’s hands gripped me just as tightly. My father who had arrived in this strange and foreign new land years prior and was supposed to greet us at the airport, was nowhere to be seen.
My mother led me slowly in search of her husband, wandering the busy scene in the midst of everyone, but at the same time seemed to belong with no one. This was the first thing I remember once I arrived in the United States of America. I’m twelve years older than when I first arrived, filled with sights and experiences anew, but at times feel like I’m still that young child, clinging to my mother’s warm hands in a place so strange.
My mother was born in the 1960s in the slums of Longjing. Her father was a teacher by day and a strict disciplinarian by night; a hard man, yet a man who only wanted the best for his children. As a result, my mother diligently followed her father’s demands that she make them proud and excelled in her studies and succeeded in getting accepted to a prestigious Chinese university.
My father was born in the 1960s as well in the Yunnan province. Like my mother, he also was raised in a lower class background with strict parents. His mother a film developer and his father a store manager, he grew up with their expectations that he would become someone they could speak of with pride. The oldest in his family of four, he set the standards and constantly raised them by striving for higher and higher goals. He was accepted to the Chinese equivalent of Harvard University.
My mother led me quicker now, as she grew worried over the lack of my father’s arrival. I could only imagine the thoughts that raced through her head as she frantically searched for him. I cried that I was tired and wanted to stop walking. The passersby stared at me as I hollered at my mother in a foreign tongue.
They met in Beijing when they were both in college at a party hosted by a mutual friend. They hit it off great and were married on June 26, 1989. June 26, coincidentally, is also the exact date of my birth. So whether by chance or by fate, on their third anniversary, I was brought forth into this world. A rosy and healthy baby that was eager to laugh, I quickly became the center of attention for my aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
I grew up in my hometown of Longjing, a small—by Chinese standards—city in northeastern China. I spent my youth falling into cavernous mud pits, sneaking into the hen cages in search of newly hatched baby chicks, and breaking my uncle’s expensive fishing rods. When I was three, my father received a job in the United States for a computer chip manufacturing company located in the Silicon Valley. He flew there promptly in search of an opportunity to enrich the lives of his family. My mother and I waited two years for him to settle down before following him.
My mother’s eyes scanned over the crowd. Her grip on my hand felt like iron now. We were without communication with my father as neither her nor my father possessed a cell phone. She hadn’t brought much money with her. Barely enough to cover a first day’s meal and certainly lacking to pay for a night’s stay in a nearby hotel. Panicking, she wanted to ask someone, anyone, for help, but her inability to speak English prevented her from seeking assistance. Then, as my mother’s hopes sunk lowly into the ground and her face grew pale, a clear and loud voice rang behind us in a language both of us recognized.
I remember crying and wailing the day I was to get onto the plane that would lead me to my new life. Too young to understand the full implications of my departure, the only thoughts that raced through my head were ones that wept over the loss of familiar faces and friends. Consoled finally by my mother with a piece of candy in a colorful wrapper, I finally let myself be lead onto the plane unaware of the new challenges and excitements that lay ahead of me. This was the beginning of my new life.
My father was behind us, hollering our names as he jumped and waved his hands over his head. My mother’s blood rushed back into her face and she gave a small smile as she glanced at me, as if to say that she knew the whole time that everything would be fine. And at that moment, as we raced towards the man both of us loved, I believe that for the first time in my life, everything was fine. The Shan family had arrived in America.
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