What is “Homecoming”?
I reflect on a month well spent in Beijing (including a family trip to Japan), my first time back since pre-pandemic. [For context, I spent about half of my childhood there and am used to visiting 1–2x a year as an adult.]
I
Homecoming is the feeling of ease and familiarity as soon as I step onto the Air China flight. It’s seeing the airport’s comedic turtle shape and being rushed into various lines to scan various codes. It’s getting in baba’s car, driving the same road home which I took every day from school, landing in the apartment I half grew up in, seeing mama’s cat drawings, drinking freshly brewed tea just for me, taking in the furniture alterations, feeling the lack of our cat’s presence. It’s being hauled to 木樨地¹ the day after arriving, greeting everyone — an assortment of family who have been there the whole time, family who hasn’t been there in nearly 4 years just like me, and of course a random foreigner (this time a close family friend from Germany). It’s eating and lounging and catching up and sitting next to xx and thinking that maybe she’s queer too (I don’t think so but it was fun to ponder).
Homecoming is going to 高蓝² and stumbling into a tea shop where the tea lady offered to give us free tea and lessons, (which we then took, of course), but also making comments like “Oh you live in America, aren’t there lots of gay people there?” It’s seeing a smattering of family friends including movie people, business people, and the friend I used to bully on the way to school who’s a fully grown and wonderful adult now. It’s remembering how important these connections are to me, that they form me, and that it makes sense that I’ve felt their absence and inaccessibility. It’s really noticing the void they’ve left over the last years, realizing, again, that I hadn’t been quite complete.
Homecoming is hauling ass to the suburbs for my other uncle’s 85th birthday, meeting xx at her art gallery and petting cats, getting distracted by the beautifully weird stores at 798, buying souvenirs for friends, confiding a bit in xx and feeling so happy that we’re developing an adult relationship just the two of us. We’ve shared a whole lot between us too, for example when we were younger I used to yell at her to let the gummy bears melt in her mouth instead of biting off their heads because it was more “humane” to swallow them whole, and biting them would hurt them, not like melting would. We also had an 阿姨³ that threatened to throw me out the window if I didn’t take a nap, which I never did. It’s having the lady who runs the cat store tell us that we didn’t look alike because I look like a 老外⁴ while she is a local, and upon hearing that we are the same mix she commented no way, I am too dark skinned — but maybe if I brought an umbrella outside to avoid sun, I could be beautiful just like my cousin.⁵
Homecoming is feeling the class divisions and knowing which class I’m part of here, which is distinct from how I feel in the US because money is different, yes, but social connections are what matter. I can feel that my family is supported by this society, even though it’s been shit in the last years to us as well, but that overall we are rooted here, with extensive networks and people who’ve got our backs; and my parents are at ease, they are at home, I can feel it, the absence of a constant background state of anxiety and distrust in an “America” that theoretically is “safer” and “freer.” I feel the assumptions that formed in my mind about Beijing, about China, about the people around me, simultaneously shatter and crystallize — re-realizing that, of course, as I always say, “It’s better than you think, and it’s also worse than you think.”
Homecoming is remembering that Chinese cities are brilliant at forgetting, and I’ve always known this but I see it with my own eyes with no remnants of COVID around me, knowing factually that many things happened, yet experiencing as though nothing has happened at all.
Homecoming is having lots of phone calls scheduled with friends in the Bay to hold me as I drop back into my childhood, to feel more myself when dipping too heavily into inner child mode. It’s trying to receive calls from San Quentin in China for some environmental justice work I am part of — what a nightmare if you want to talk about censorship layers, and a different world if you’ve ever seen one. It’s 刘阿姨⁶ telling me I should’ve become the CEO of my last startup, that of all her friends and relatives’ kids I’m the one she thinks will become CEO of something, her comments coupled by a random no-occasion red envelope of money. It’s reconnecting with familiar faces from EA China, really enjoying the community energy and the vegan pizza from Gung Ho, a place my friends and I used to make fun of when we were 12 years old for having the slogan “12 inches of hot satisfaction.”
Homecoming is struggling to square my depth of involvement in queer and sex-positive scenes in the “Western” world in our “Western” hedonist ways with our “Western” identity labels, with the hard-to-describe 乖⁷/appeasing/communal minded attitude I automatically code-switch into without even thinking about it, feeling the ease of it enter me, and yet, feeling the missing as well. It’s learning to lean more fully into certain aspects of myself while remaining confident that the other parts are still there, that they don’t just disappear after not being active for a week, or even in this case, 3.5 years. It’s having these thoughts fester but not directed anywhere, because these spaces are hard to find without being in the know, but I went on Feeld and saw >0 people there and was kind of thrilled about that, but of course they are all foreigners, but of course I am also a foreigner.
Homecoming is missing all of my childhood friends whose absence is palpable. It’s not really knowing what the cool spots are anymore or where to hang out. It’s attempting to pay for the bus with WeChat but being told I needed Alipay but I don’t have Alipay because I don’t have a Chinese bank account, but then someone else said it was a different feature on WeChat but I couldn’t figure it out in time and they let me get off without paying the 2 yuan, which is like 0.28 dollars, because I obviously wasn’t doing it on purpose. It’s city bikes not scanning properly because of bad data and my lack of Chinese phone number verification, everything needing multiple degrees of verification, proving that you are Chinese, so maybe I am not Chinese. It’s feeling disconnected from the city, floating above it in a car, being shepherded from plan to plan, never staying outside for too long lest we burn in the 40 degree heat.
Homecoming is feeling like perhaps the city is not “mine” after all…until I biked through some 胡同s⁸ and bought my own 燕京 beer, interacted with people my own age, went on a date and chatted openly about kink and ENM things that I hadn’t spoken aloud thus far. It’s thinking, What does it even mean for a place to be “mine”?
II
Homecoming is going to Japan but feeling like I’m in China still — traveling with my Chinese family, being brought around by Chinese drivers that they hired, meeting baba’s Chinese-Japanese friends. It’s walking along the narrow alleys and taking in skyline views and feeling like I could be in Shanghai. It’s street food and convenience and everyone is so 周到⁹, seeing the obvious influence of Confucianism in their culture, the Buddhist temples which mama says feel like ancient China, with a semblance of common roots but much better preserved.
Homecoming is ever-so-slightly exploring Asia’s spicier side with a failed shibari date and a successful night of queer performance art. It’s being so happy to see elements of Japanese culture I was learning about combined with the queer culture I had already been familiar with, thinking I’d be even more 感动¹⁰ if it were Chinese instead, then wondering what the equivalent(s) might be in China, or if they exist and where I can find it (spoiler: they do, and I did). It’s walking around Osaka’s gayborhood and stumbling upon a 4-story sex store with things that made me gasp, despite thinking that nothing could shock me about this world anymore.
Homecoming is noticing and identifying familiar childhood patterns, like suppressing my emotions for the sake of family comfort, such as ways of thinking about angst and romance that I associate with a younger version of myself. It’s having a completely distinct internal experience that is vastly separate from the external experience of smalltalk with family and family friends, casual tourism, and floating through cities as a temporary visitor. It’s writing 6500 words of thought/emotion splurge in 1 hour while looking at Tokyo, listening to a random Spotify playlist called “Tokyo vibes”, even though I don’t know what Tokyo vibes even are.
Homecoming is also hanging out with the Chinese super rich who have taken over corners of Hokkaido, in a new development complex full of people’s 2nd and 3rd and 4th homes, that houses my dad’s friends and Jack Ma and, for that week, my mother with COVID. It’s attempting, again, to understand their lifestyles and mentality, knowing it’s connected with personal and political histories, knowing they are one and the same when it comes to that generation of Chinese people. It’s having my dad speak about his 批斗会¹¹, then reading a fictionalized version in Three Body Problem right after, except with aliens.
Homecoming is making the decision to return to Beijing solo while my parents quarantine, despite being very torn by a filial pious sense of duty. It’s realizing that while this city has been such a constant throughout my life, I’d never spent any time alone there, really, so can I truly say I *know* it? It’s being excited about what this small era will bring, curious to see how Beijing has grown with me as Berlin has, if it has, and what we will make of this together. (As it turns out, a lot).
III
Homecoming is nostalgia, but homecoming can also be growth and the integration of new discoveries. It can be feeling angsty about a lack of close emotional connections in the city and then reflecting that community can always be found and created. It can be calling my best friend from the airport and feeling heard about how much I had been holding internally, with no one around with enough context to process a lot of it. It can be simple acts like grocery shopping and cooking for myself feeling like liberating “agency” moments, when done in my childhood home where others typically decide what is eaten (and I’m spoiled by this convenience).
Homecoming can be watching the queer ultimatum as loudly and proudly as I want, with no questions or interruptions. It can be going to a queer party solo and LOVING it, having such a blast and feeling so happy and lucky to have gotten connected to this group of local drag queens. It can be dancing a LOT, being so moved by many of the performances which blended my own culture with queerness and integrated so many things that I love and until now have felt disparate. It can be feeling the seeds of the community I can build here and meeting people I would love to follow up with, being invited to more things, and beginning even in this one night to see how I would make my life here now.
Homecoming can be assuming the head of the household role for once, being the only one there to give instructions to the people coming over to fix our AC, while my parents are coordinating with me and them via voice messages on WeChat. It can be making plans with family members independent of my parents, going to a cat museum with xx and showing her videos of the drag performances I saw the prior night, 真的好感动¹², swimming at this health club my dad finessed a 2 week membership for me at, biking long distances across the city because the weather is now somewhat manageable, feeling the traffic around me and remembering that I’m at my calmest amidst this level of city chaos.
Homecoming can be spontaneous plans made an hour before showing up, meeting up with a friend from thesis research and discussing politics more “off the record” than we could before, him whipping out his tablet and reading multiple paragraphs of critical theory from Han Byung-Chul, who he’s obsessed with, that we then analyzed whilst sitting on this rooftop bar until midnight. It can be hangouts that have a longer and more flow-y time expectation than what I commonly experience in the US, people being generally down, and me also feeling open to the beauty that occurs and emerges when space is given to it.
Homecoming can be having coffee with the queer organizer friend who told me about all these parties and having the coffee turn into lunch which turns into co-working at a cafe which turns into a tarot reading and before we know it’s been 6 hours. It’s discussing, in mostly mandarin but a bit of Chinglish, our own stories and relationships to gender/sexuality and family, queer conceptions of space and time, playing the role of “community access point,” Chinese queer and underground communities and organizing, academic experiences across cultural contexts, being mixed and having identity crises over our own ethnicities, current or recent complicated romantic-esque situations we’ve been in, and so many things that I can’t quite translate or write down but are captured by the moment we were in together, the space-time we created that transcended space and time.
Homecoming can be realizing that maybe I can find queer communities in China after all, that I would already know where to begin, and that there are ways to get around it being taboo or controlled. It can be watching this new friend write an event description to be posted on WeChat about an LGBTQ+ event that couldn’t be called that too overtly but was phrased delicately so that those who know will know, obviously, that it is what it is. It can be feeling like I could really not only fit in here, but help make spaces like this happen. It can be imagining the possibility of a wholly new relationship with this place as a queer adult, that has so much significance to me for “other” reasons.
Homecoming can be feeling honestly overwhelmed that I was able to create a snippet of a life I could actually live sustainably in this city, because if I can have all the things about it that bring me so much comfort culturally and to my inner child, AND the spaces and communities that make me feel authentic as an adult, then why would I ever leave? It can be feeling so deeply “correct” here in a way that I never have in North America, recognizing with slight melancholy that the place I’ve spent most of my adult life has no relevance to me actually, to my ancestry and lineage, to the work that I was brought into this world to do. (Of course I am questioning all of my life choices again now).
IV
At the end of the day, though, homecoming is simply…coming home?
It’s goading baba into continuing into the next episode of the stupid show about time travel we’ve been watching together, preparing the fruits and 小吃¹³ for us to enjoy together in these evening moments we cherish so dearly. It’s jokingly naming mama’s new tea pet “Karl” (after Marx of course), and saying hello to him every morning and afternoon when we have tea together, a ritual we’ve developed over time, like clockwork. It’s traveling across town to visit mama’s college friend and her super cute new granddaughter; and seeing 舅舅¹⁴ all settled in my grandparents’ old apartment on campus, with amazing food access and community all around. It’s rainy days at home and summer nights at 海底捞¹⁵. It’s our pre-flight routine of going to the Burger King at the Beijing Capital Airport before any one of us departs. It’s getting on the plane thinking about recent spicy adventures — which apparently are also possible in China — on the way to see my childhood bestie in Taiwan. It’s daydreaming, already, about returning.
Homecoming is recognizing once again that there is something so special about existing in Beijing, feeling the land upon which it rests, feeling my roots beneath me and my ancestors around me. It’s the uniqueness of actually noticing the ground (compared to my regular state of floating above it, as perhaps any goer between worlds can relate to); noticing that no matter how much I am perceived as a foreigner, that this is my home and I’m “allowed” to claim it, whatever that means.
Maybe homecoming is simply that I love it here and I want to live here and I can’t leave, but I also know that I will leave, then come back, then leave and come back again. I guess it’s only appropriate that the sole word for “goodbye” in Chinese is 再见 — again, see; see you again.
[1] This is my uncle’s place on Beijing’s West side (we are on the East side), a common gathering place for my extended family.
[2] Building owned by a family friend where we have an office space rented (and heavily subsidized), which has served as an office for my mom and dad’s respective businesses back in the day, and now is mostly a storage/display space for my late grandmother’s photos, camera equipment, and 20k+ negatives.
[3] This word means both “respectful greeting for a woman in the generation above” and “maid” — in this case it’s the latter, and she was also our caretaker and babysitter.
[4] Colloquial term for “foreigner”
[5] Direct comments like this about appearance are common in (Northern) China, and not necessarily perceived as rude or inappropriate.
[6] An old friend of my dad’s who’s built a very successful real estate empire.
[7] Playful term for something like “obedient”
[8] Hutongs are old-Beijing style housing that’s mainly been torn down and/or gentrified into storefronts.
[9] Meaning “thoughtful” in a service-y sort of way.
[10] Meaning “touched”
[11] Meaning “struggle session” during the Cultural Revolution — look it up.
[12] Translates to “I really was so touched”
[13] Cute phrase for “snacks”, directly translated to “little eats”
[14] Means “uncle” but in particular “mother’s brother”
[15] Famous hotpot chain that’s open 24/7, a frequent destination post-clubbing
