She would go to the seaside, watching waves and picking up shells–that’s what my dad always remembers about her. Her eyes skimmed across the flat, ridged treasures in her hands and drifted toward the ocean and the horizon in the distance. “Your grandparents live over there,” my grandma’s parents once told her while pointing north, in the direction of Meizhou. 

So many generations have come from there. My great-grandparents, their daughter, my father, and now me. We share the same culture, and the ripples of its impact have made their way down our family.

My grandma was a Hakka Han–a member of a minority group of nomadic Chinese people. Despite the discrimination of her culture throughout the continent, she had a relatively peaceful childhood. Born on the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, beneath a full moon and surrounded by lightly sweet cakes, she brought joy to her family and their ethnic enclave in Semarang. 

Her parents named her LiZhu, meaning the most beautiful pearl. The name reminded them of the full moon of the festival, which was as full as the roundest pearl in the ocean. As a minority couple, her parents were worried about impending situations. My grandma was often at home, sheltered from the horrors of the outside world. But no pearl can be hidden forever, and as she grew up, she learned the true nature of being a Hakka Han.

Hakka Hans are Han Chinese, who migrated to southern China from other Chinese provinces. Because there were already native Chinese living there, many conflicts emerged. These conflicts drove them out of China, and they headed for other regions, including Southeast Asia, the Americas, and Europe but still ended up being resented by locals. Due to this, they were called “the Jews of China.”

They were constantly called “visiting families,” not citizens, because of their nomadism. But due to this constant movement, they often lived on mountainsides; the locals had already taken the flat and fertile land. Throughout the centuries, their only goals were to avoid wars and oppression and to seek peace and prosperity. Yet, they were displaced, discriminated against, and despised in both China and their receiving countries. Although my grandma didn’t experience this discrimination and nomadism in her early life in Indonesia, it all changed when she went to visit her grandparents.

It was almost her grandpa’s 60th birthday, and LiZhu had spent the previous few days preparing for the trip to southeastern China. LiZhu’s mom, knowing she would be gone for months, sat next to the dim candlelight late at night, for many nights, her hands moving a needle intricately through silk. When my grandma woke up in the middle of the night, she looked across the room at the window and saw the silhouette of her mom projected by the light. 

As the bright sunlight slowly shined through the window each morning, her mom was still there next to the window, her tired eyes still following the movement of her hands. Every night my grandma would see her, sewing the dress, occasionally touching her pregnant belly.

Until the last stitch was sewn and the last thread was cut.

The day LiZhu was leaving she said goodbye to her mom. Then my grandma traveled through the water, to Meizhou, with her 10-year-old brother. The ship slowly inched away from the dock and into the ocean blue. Following the ship, LiZhu’s mom walked to the tip of the dock. She stood there, waving goodbye to her 2 kids, watching the ship sail further and further until it disappeared from the horizon. 

Hundreds of strangers and her brother surrounded her, seeing nothing but the emptiness of the sea, nothing but the dark blue water. For 15 days.

During the day, she looked south, where she spent her first 6 years, and gazed as she traveled to the unknown ahead. Staring at the ceiling, listening to the sound of waves in the night, feeling lost. One foggy morning, she climbed up to the deck, and out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a bird, all by itself with its head drooped. It weakly inched away when seeing my grandma, scared, as its wings fluttered uselessly when it tried to fly. Feeling lonely and helpless, she saw herself in the bird’s eyes. 

Every meal, she would save some food in her pocket, even if she was still hungry, so she could feed the bird. She watched as the bird became more confident, letting her touch and smooth out its feathers. The ship sailed across the empty blue waters, while the bird grew healthier and stronger, eating the food from her palms. And as the ship slowed, getting ready to dock, her new companion flew away, circling her, wings flapping strongly, ready to start a life somewhere new. 

On the day of her grandpa’s birthday banquet, in her grandpa’s round earth house surrounded by plum blossoms, with all the food she only ate on Chinese New Year, all of her cousins wore their new clothes and sat next to their parents. She and her brother sat alone at the end of the table. She touched the embroidered flowers on her silk dress as if her mom was next to them, feeling the most at home since she left her hometown.

Each day after the banquet, my grandma looked forward to seeing her parents again more and more. But what was supposed to be a few months turned into 40 years. 40 years until she saw her parents again.

It was 1937, the Japanese invaded, and LiZhu had no choice but to stay where she was in China as World War II raged across Asia. The Japanese had taken over many southeastern Asian countries, including her hometown in Indonesia. The sea route to Indonesia was cut, and my grandma and her parents lived apart, unable to visit each other. Both she and her parents were in war-stricken countries: villages were burned, cities were ruined, people were massacred.

Just as all the brutality seemed to wane when World War II ended, the existing Chinese Civil War reignited. Violence surged as the communists and nationalists fought for power and control in China. My grandma was still stuck in China, still unable to go home. And after the communists won, China was closed off from the outside world–not unlike when COVID recently closed the US and China. Both times, borders suddenly sliced my family apart.

During this period of isolationism, LiZhu lived on the mountaintop with her grandparents. She would often spend her days sitting right outside the little house, staring into the distance. With no close neighbors and every family living far away from one another, adequate healthcare was an issue. When she got really sick, her grandparents couldn’t afford to hire a doctor to treat her. Afraid her sickness would spread to her brother and cousins, her grandparents cleaned an empty pig pen, laid down dry hay to make a bed, and let her stay there. She laid on her makeshift bed, staring at the rice porridge and water left by her grandparents, sitting 6 inches from her. Every day, her grandma watched LiZhu get weaker and skinnier, letting out a deep breath before replacing the untouched porridge with a new bowl. One day, her grandma came in with the silk dress, placing it lightly on LiZhu’s frail body. That night, feverish, weak, and lonely, she dreamed about seeing her mom sewing a silk dress, the candlelight projecting her silhouette onto the window. Her loving arms hugged her, her distant voice, telling LiZhu to be strong and that she’d see her soon. She woke up, crying. Using the back of her hand, she wiped her tears, realizing that she couldn’t give up now. She picked up the spoon and scooped the porridge slowly into her mouth. Every day, she regained some of her strength until she was healthy again.

Not able to go home to Indonesia to see her parents, my grandma knew that her only choice was to start a new life in China. For many years, she wasn’t able to go to school since her grandparents prioritized her brother’s education, and they didn’t have enough money for her. She tried everything to gain knowledge: begging her brother and cousins to teach her, wandering near school, and overhearing teachers’ lessons. She could go to school now that women’s social status had improved. With this new opportunity, like many people during the beginning of the communist regime, my grandma had positive thoughts toward the new government. Although she was the oldest in her class and was made fun of by younger students, she didn’t let that discourage her. 

After years of hard work, she pursued her dream of becoming a nurse, despite the disapproval of her grandparents. They thought it was shameful for girls like her, young and single, to touch the bodies of men. Their words made her question her decision, but she wanted to do this for herself. Going against Confucian principles, she opened a new chapter of her life.

After finishing school, LiZhu met another Hakka Han, my grandpa. He, just like her, came to China to his grandparents’ house when he was young while his parents stayed across the ocean in Malaysia. Connecting through their experience of being separated from their parents at a young age, they began to get closer. They married and moved together to Beijing, mostly for work. My grandma, named her first baby Wei, meaning almighty power, as she was born the same year China developed its first atomic bomb. She felt pride in her own country, and she believed that the communists had saved China from corruption. Or at least for a while.

This feeling of pride soon faded into a feeling of shame. With the Chinese Communist Party motivating citizens to hate and fight each other, people with family overseas were discriminated against, untrusted, and thought to be spies. My grandparents, both having family overseas, were forced to hide their family ties, and once again, had to move. They settled in Nanjing, a city in which nobody knew about their past. 

While my grandma adjusted to a new life in Nanjing, she was unaware of the brutality going on in her hometown, where mass killings of Chinese-Indonesians were occurring. That was until her younger sister she had never met, LiYu, came as a refugee, fleeing the blood that was happening across the ocean. Even though this meant revealing her oversea family ties, she was willing to protect her, adding another family member into an already crowded and small home. While connecting with her sister, she learned everything: how the Hakka were hated and killed, how their stores were burned, how they had to change their last name to hide their identity, and how the Chinese language was banned. Immediately, her thoughts went to her parents. How are they doing? Are they still alive? Will they still remember me? 

However, she had to focus on herself, since she was pregnant with her second child. She named her Ying, meaning the return of jade, to honor LiYu, as Yu means jade. 

A few years later, around the time my grandma was pregnant with my dad, the family planning policy was starting to be enforced throughout China. Couples were encouraged to have fewer babies. The idea was that one was enough, two was just right, and three was too many. My dad was the third, and he was therefore deemed as “too many.” Her colleagues condemned her for not following the government's policy, urging her to abort the baby–even calling her into a “struggle session”, a meeting to humiliate and pressure her–but she still said no. She endured everything and was determined to have my dad. She named him Gang, meaning strength and perseverance. If she had yielded to those close to her, my dad wouldn’t have been born, and I wouldn’t be here.

After the Chinese Culture Revolution ended, LiZhu saw her parents again when they came to China to visit. The first time in 40 years. Her parents looked familiar and not familiar at the same time. Her mom still had those intricate sewing hands. But instead of wearing the traditional black or blue uniforms people in China wore, her parents dressed well. There were wrinkles on their foreheads, their backs no longer straight, and their hair slowly turning white. 

Their voices had a completely different accent. Everything they said sounded foreign to her. Her parents told her about her five younger siblings and many more nephews and nieces in Indonesia. 

The reunion was short, with family responsibilities calling them back home. While LiZhu was sad to see them living a completely different life, she was glad that they were still alive, living peacefully in Indonesia again.

All their years of sadness and separation had strengthened her.   

Everything my grandma had endured throughout her life led her to encourage my dad, the smartest of her children, to leave and seek better opportunities. When my dad was able to come to the United States, my grandma spent days helping him prepare for the trip. The day he left, my grandma stood there, outside the airport gate, watching him go through customs with a smile on her face.

But as soon as he was out of sight, she broke down crying. She knew that it would be years before she saw her son again.

She stood outside the busy, crowded Shanghai airport, waving at every departing plane taking off around the scheduled time of her son’s plane, hoping that on one of those planes, he waved back at her. 

Later on, when I was young, my grandma came to visit us in Houston. While on a morning stroll along the beach, she talked about seafood, the ocean, and her life back in China. The warm weather reminded her of her childhood home. The gulf reminded her of the sea of her youth.

“LinLin,” she’d call me excitedly, equating me with “a precious jade.” Giving me jade pendants and gold chains, she hoped they would bring me peace and good health. She’s happy to see her son living a peaceful life in better conditions. But she decided that she needed to go back to Nanjing–where she had lived with her husband as a young married couple. She said she was too old to be a Hakka Han any longer and needed to go back to where my grandpa and two aunts called home. 

She spent her life separated from the ones she loved, and she was too tired to fight for peace and opportunities.

When I turned 6, I went with my parents and 10-year-old brother to China to see her. That silk dress, the dress that my grandma’s mom had sewn for her by the light of the moon, was passed on to me. 

The faded dress seemed ugly and pointless at first, but gradually I saw the significance. It was a beautiful red silk dress embroidered with water lilies, the floating flowers wandering like Hakka Hans. By the time I understood this it didn’t fit me, but I finally had learned to appreciate the dress. To appreciate her.

My grandmother still calls from Nanjing. During the pandemic and as discrimination against Asians increased, we’d hear from her often. Sometimes, she would call us every day, her voice trembling over the phone as she told me to be safe. Memories of her past kept striking her, of her being discriminated against by people in her own country, of her spending decades fighting for a peaceful life. 

While she can no longer fight, I can. Like the Hakka Hans before me, I will.