爸爸, 爸, dad,
Dedicated To: 爸？爸爸？dad?
Which do I call you? It has been a while since I have called you anything. It has been a while since you’ve told me Chinese folktales and played me 孙悟空 on Saturdays, taken me out to get movies and popcorn, went to the park and fed ducks, talked to me in your native language, since I’ve talked to you in my first language. It has been a while since we’ve been together: not our bodies, but our hearts. Perhaps, this story you hold and have been willing to tell me, this story I can write and record, is a way for us to listen and remember each other again. Perhaps, I will be able to relearn your name.
Top to Bottom, Left to Right: Dad’s Father, Dad’s Mother, Dad, Dad’s Grandmother
Top to Bottom: Mother, Dad, Me
爸爸，is it difficult growing up alone?
I know your parents work terribly hard at school and in the hospital. You can only see them when it's dark outside: before 7 A.M. or after 10 P.M. But I suppose that is the culture of professionals these days: that work is more important than childcare, that childcare is not work. You say the issue that is always at stake is who will take care of you. Well, it seems you take care of yourself. I know you take the bus by yourself everyday as a six year old. The next couple of years, you’ll even send your five years younger sister to daycare and walk home to save bus fare money (8 cents) everyday. As an elementary schooler, you’ll read the newspapers on those walks, keeping yourself company with the evolving news of the socialist transformation and the early People’s Republic of China. But you’re not all alone either, there are people who will cook and feed you: your dad’s colleagues at the hospital and your neighbors. It’s a kind of mutual care you might not be able to find when you grow older.
You’ll survive. You’ll be okay. That’s what you’ll tell me.
爸爸，everyone says elementary school is the easiest time of school, but aren’t kids so mean sometimes?
Transferring schools is hard, especially when it is a boarding school. Isn’t it a bit ironic that while it is your father’s connections with the people in the bureau of education that have allowed you to transfer to this elite elementary school, it is also your father’s position that gets you bullied. Apparently, him being a college-educated doctor and your family being upper-middle class is not dignified enough.
I can imagine that having classmates who are the children of governors and high-ranking officials would be hard.
Although you say you are “eventually respected” with your success in sports and academics (congratulations on your high marks on compositions and wins in long and high jump competitions), is respect is love nor warmth? Is it enough to be respected?
It is good that you are taking advantage of the school’s resources: its library and access to books. But even more are those newspapers you read from front page to back: republished articles from the New York Times and U.S. News and World Report. I know that is something you will be thankful for when you are older.
The talk of elite middle schools to apply and enroll in might sound stressful, but I will tell you that it is not something you or your classmates will have to worry about.
New York Times
Newspapers
Left: Feb. 22 1965
“Malcolm X”
Right: March 15, 1965
“THE NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW; Strife”
爸爸，are you excited?
I’m sure you have heard of 毛泽东’s 文化大革命. In English, we call it the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, or the cultural revolution for short, and for many, 1966 is quite a significant year to remember.
It makes sense that it is significant for you right now too, everyone being happy. School cancellation is always something we cheer at, even if it often foreshadows disaster. And it makes sense, no more fourth grade means no more treading to school in the rain and the cold, no more bullying, no more feeling the need to show your worth to your classmates.
But I must tell you that this happiness is something that will fade. For it is not only a few classes you will miss, but rather all of your education until high school. In your life, you will never attend fifth, sixth, seventh, or eighth grade…
If your dad is still going to the hospital for work, I’m sure you still don’t see him often. Are you at least happy spending more time with your mom, even if it is because her position as a school administrator was paused. What do you think of the 大
字报 (da zi bao), or political essays she takes you to read at Nankai University? Are you tired of it now after going everyday for several months?
爸爸，does school really exist now?
It seems like school is now a placeholder word for a setting to read Mao. Before, you were bullied because of your father’s “low” position as a medical doctor, now your teachers are talking behind your back about your mother’s wealthy side of the family.
It feels difficult to imagine developing your political views amidst the loud, blunt, billowing red of the cultural revolution in 1969. Have you noticed the red smoke blinding your eyes? You tell me you are one of the first of seven from your school enrolled as a red guard. Did you smell the red smoke before it entered your lungs? You tell me you heave as you complete the required manual labor of digging holes for shelter. Have you felt the red smoke circles around your heart, tugging tighter and tighter for a growing hopelessness in the authoritarian government you must love?
爸, school didn’t last very long, did it?
I hope the journey to the countryside was not too difficult. I’m sure work now is even harsher. Are you getting tired? Cooking meals with five or six other people for 200 teenage bodies before or after their day of work in the fields everyday must be exhausting.
I understand why breakfast shifts would be the worst. How do you manage to wake before the sun at 4 A.M.? To fetch water from the well in darkness with a big jar to balance on your shoulder? I hope your back aches from sleeping and living in the cold don’t get worse. I guess you’re really good at making dough now? 70 pounds to be exact.
Although the food everyone is eating sounds quite plain, but I guess it is good that everyone is eating enough. If more people means saltier food, but less people means greater portions, do you prefer it when there are more or less people eating? But soon (in six months), you’ll be thrown into another world of becoming a middle school teacher. The one year of high school you were able to attend with Deng Xiao Ping’s policies will mean you are one of the only people who have the knowledge to teach physics. And although teaching will eventually become an important part of your life, teaching students under the cultural revolution will only be a pain as you are told to expect and allow constant chaos and mischief.
爸，was the reason we read so many books and watched so many movies together because for so long you couldn’t?
When did you hear? Mao is dead. I hope you know the hopefulness you keep secret is shared among many of the other oppressed bodies under this regime.
When you attend his memorial, you’ll already be twenty one and deprived of years of education and experiences: since the start of the cultural revolution, you haven’t watched any movies or read any novels other than classics from the 18th century like 红楼梦 or newly released propaganda work. When you attend his memorial, you’ll think, “Wow, we have hope now.”
But there is red smoke that rolls out of your father’s tongue as he fears you will get in trouble. Although the hopefulness is shared, it is still to be hidden.
爸, what does it feel like to be one of the first people testing for college entrance exams after the cultural revolution?
How do you feel about your father choosing what school you’re attending again? Do you feel it is unfair that the general party secretary of the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics accepted you just because your father knows him personally? Do you feel any regret that you couldn’t go to the more prestigious Nankai University you got an acceptance letter from?
It sounds like most of your reading and learning hasn’t been from school. Rather, it feels like a continuation of what you’ve been reading since high school. Your high praise of John Locke’s writing of how the government should get the consent of the people seems to carry on your frustrations with Mao and the CCP. You say it’s too late to study English and acquire a good accent, but it seems like you are destined to be wrong.
Gate of Tianjin
University of Finance and Economics
(Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
爸,
Congratulations on the scholarship offers, I know you had never even imagined applying to universities in the United States before. Perhaps you can’t afford the expenses, but the universities can surely afford you as the first wave of Chinese students from the re-opening. Still, it is extremely impressive that you’ve been selected from such a competitive group of students.
It seems like you have enjoyed and learned more during your two years at 北外学生处, the Beijing Foreign Foreign Studies University, more than in Tianjin. The hands-on experience and lectures from authors like Allen Ginsberg surely do sound like an improvement. It is a bit odd that Tianjin University still has your documents and paperwork in their place.
Anyways, all the offers sound great, but do you have any that you are leaning toward? I have a feeling it is Princeton.
Beijing Foreign Studies University (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Dad, I have always mistaken privilege for ease, but I’ve realized our lives are far too nuanced for that simple equation.
What kept you going when the house department of Tianjin University did not agree to sign your paperwork to go to the U.S.? How did you deal with the disappointment after the first rejection? The tenth? The fortieth?
When did you decide to 走后 门 and bribe the office of Foreign Affairs with packs of thinly rolled papers in cardboard containers? What does it mean that the settings of our lives were determined by 335 sticks of cigarettes?
So if you went from Tianjin to Beijing by train within a day, then Beijing to Hong Kong by train within a couple of days, then stayed at your dad’s friends’ apartment in Hong Kong before boarding the plane in to fly to Anchorage, Alaska, then traveling by plane to New York, then taking the car from New York to Princeton… did the whole journey take you about six days? More? Less? Did it feel fast or slow?
Dad,
I’m sure you’re enjoying your first few days in the United States. Aren’t Princeton University’s stone dorms and golf courses quite impressive?
In the future, you’ll tell me of these feelings of disappointment you’re starting to develop: that America and democracy are not the perfect, heavenly solutions to all of our problems. You’ll meet a variety of “disappointing” professors, almost all who have an expectation for you to “return” to your country. Perhaps you don’t think it to be all that bad, but there is pain that eats at my heart. In fact, you probably still think you will have to go back to China, that your capabilities in language and academics are not to the standards of hire of U.S. universities. But you are mistaken.
You’ll be granted U.S. citizenship after protests in Tiananmen Square. The process is much faster than being hired and having your paperwork sponsored by an employer or university. But you’ll do that too: become hired by a university.
You’ll find yourself in the south, using statistical analysis to study sociology. Surrounded by North Carolina trees, you’ll find more and more Chinese immigrants who can offer company and conversation.
In the future, you’ll bring me to Princeton and we’ll visit the places you walk, sit, and eat right now.
Me at Princeton in 2021 (Featuring Another Stuffed Animal Dad Bought Me)
Dad and Me at Princeton in 2009
(Featuring a Stuffed Animal He Bought Me)
Dad, I feel like I could ask you a million more questions about your life and your feelings: some parts that confuse me, some parts that interest me, some parts I wonder why you skipped over?
After all these letters and hours of your thoughts, I wonder why the number of questions I have are only multiplying. Why don’t you speak Chinese to me anymore? Why do you support powerful people who promise their superiority over us? Why do you so willingly accept the dehumanizing sacrifices that are forced onto us?
I know you think there must be a price to pay in order for us to live in this country. I know you describe the xenophobia you’ve faced as “subtle”, “natural”, and “okay”. I know you blame China for not preparing you for the barriers you face in the west. I know the childhood and upbringing you experienced under the Chinese Communist Party has traumatized you from your skull to your veins.
But these questions are ones I will hold and ones I have been holding. They have been stacking upon one another, starting from my belly to my throat. And their weight has been aching: it is difficult to feel so out of reach from you, so far and distant.
Sometimes I wonder if our words even reach one another anymore.
(Left to Right): Patrick (my brother in-law), Merrybelle (my sister), Me, Dad
Guo Ming (Dad’s Sister)
Rye (my nephew)
爸爸, 谢谢。谢谢你给我讲了你的故事， 让我听了你的委屈和困难。爸爸， 我们可能不是像以前那么进了， 但是我知道我们还是彼此关心， 彼此听，彼此爱。不管我叫你什 么名字，你将永远会是我爱的一 个人，我将永远会是你的女儿。
Dad, Thank you. Thank you for letting me hear your story, letting me understand your sorrows and hardships. Dad, I know we might not be as close as before, but I know we still care for one another, listen to one another, and love one another. No matter what I call you, you will always be someone I love, and I will always be your daughter.
•
Aida Guo 国羽英
Me (In First Grade)
(Left to Right): Dad’s Mom, Dad (In First Grade), Dad’s Aunt
Image Credits: New York Times (Malcolm X): https://www.nytimes.com/1965/02/22/archives/malcolm-x.html
New York Times (THE NEWS OF THE WEEK IN REVIEW; Strife): nytimes.com/1965/03/14/archives/the-news-of-the-week-in-reviewstrife.html
Gate of Tianjin University of Finance and Economics: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommon s.wikimedia.org%2Fwiki%2FFile%3AGate_of_Tianjin_University_ of_Finance_and_Economics.JPG&psig=AOvVaw0m5XOWg7eYiY
7ymQwOVghe&ust=1670894121199000&source=images&cd=vfe &ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCKDOhuz08vsCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAN
Beijing Foreign Studies Institute: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipe dia.org%2Fwiki%2FBeijing_Foreign_Studies_University&psig=AO vVaw2010DohHU0Gb7P8Jtf8Wi1&ust=1670894227575000&sour ce=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCMionZ308vsCFQAAA
AAdAAAAABAE