For a long time, I had contradictory feelings about the place that I was born in, Wenzhou. I liked her. I could say that the time I had in Wenzhou was the simplest and happiest in my life. For all the joyful memories she brought me, I wanted to stay with her forever. Meanwhile, I disliked her. After our family moved to Guangzhou, every time I went back to Wenzhou, I could sense that neither did she welcome me nor did she like me. For all the embarrassment she brought me, I wanted to escape from her, far away, and never come back, for good. The source of my pain is the language, the dialect of Wenzhou. All these years, due to my relatives’ words and my pride, I had put so much emphasis on the ability to speak the dialect, as if it was the only way to certify that I belong to this community, neglecting the more valuable memory and love. After all these struggles and loneliness, it now appears to me that language, truly, is not that determinative and conclusive.

I was born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, a small city in eastern China. Ever since I had consciousness of myself, I knew I belonged to this heavenly place. People chat and laugh like they have known one another for a life time, even though they may have just met. The secret channel for this is our dialect. Growing up in this big community, I could speak the language fluently. At that time, the role of language in my understanding was just a tool for communication, and I never thought that this “tool” would bring me such trouble.

It all started with the promotion of speaking Mandarin. I don’t know when exactly it started, but this idea just suddenly became pervasive. Parents started to teach their children Mandarin and schools prohibited students from speaking their dialects. Although after school, I could still speak the dialect, Mandarin occupied most of my time. Later, one of the most important turning points in my life occurred: we were moving to Guangzhou. Here, people spoke Cantonese and the only language I could speak and got to speak was Mandarin. Busy constructing their empire, my parents seldom had time to talk to me, and, for the purpose of me getting used to the life here, we usually communicated in Mandarin. Days and days went by, without the opportunity of speaking the dialect of Wenzhou out loud, even though I did not notice, I kind of just lost it.

Several years later, I returned to Wenzhou for Spring Festival. It was already dark when I arrived, rainy and cold. I tightened my coat, looking forward to embracing this place again. As I looked out of the window, being washed by the rain, the buildings and gardens clearly presented themselves. Compared to the rapid adoption of modernized architecture in Guangzhou, it had not changed much really. The only change was actually me. Even though I thought that everything was going on quite well, that one night, this self-suggestive image collapsed.
It was a regular evening and we were having dinner in a restaurant. The smell of alcohol permeated the air. Almost everyone was drinking. After the meal, we started to chat about random things. Somehow, the topic switched to me.

“I heard that you study English at school,” one of my uncles asked, “Is it easy?”

“Eh, I don’t think so, really. There are so many rules and words to memorize.”

“Ah! I have wanted to ask several times. It is just so strange that whenever we talk to you, you respond in Mandarin. And your accent sounds like someone from the North!” My cousin said, with confusion in his eyes.

“Well, I guess I am just used to speaking in Mandarin and normally I don’t have…”

“That’s the problem! You need to speak our language more! You are a Wenzhou person. How come you are not speaking the dialect!” My uncle became excited. His face was red, probably due to alcohol, waving his hand all around, like a child seeking attention. “Why does English matter so much, anyway? If you can speak the Wenzhou dialect, you can travel most places in the world freely! We do business everywhere! Your uncle is in Italy; your aunt is in Spain; and your other aunt is in California; your father’s classmate is in France. If you want to go to England I can call my son…” the list continued to grow. Every country listed made him prouder, as if he had conquered all those places, presenting the superiority of our dialect to all over the world. “And you know you can get extra discounts in shops of Wenzhou people. Once I travelled to Paris, I met a Wenzhou person selling souvenirs nearby The Eiffel Tower, you know, the very famous and beautiful and tall tower. I talked with him for a while about Paris and the local scenery, and he gave me 40% off.”

“Xiadiena, Xiadiena.” I responded in the dialect, hopefully stopping his further description about his adventure of “Discounts in Foreign-land”. It was the first time I spoke the dialect of Wenzhou after a long period of time. It sounded so weird. “Xiadiena, Xiadiena.” I tried again, but it still sounded strange.

“That sound is not gonna get you a discount. You sound like those outsiders who try to learn the dialect to understand what we are talking about. That is just so stupid. I mean, you can’ t learn this dialect, we are born with it. Well, unfortunately, I see that you lost it.” My cousin shrugged with a deliberate sad face. I knew that he had always been mean and I had mastered in countering his attack. But this one? You lost the treasure that you were born with? Well, suddenly I was speechless. Truly, I had always put myself as a one hundred percent Wenzhou person and now even my accent sounds like that of an outsider. I regretted speaking that shameful phrase and showing up this stupid dinner. I stopped talking and pressed on my phone screen, pretending to be busy. Their conversation continued.

“My father said that during World War II, the dialect was used as secret code because the Japanese could not understand a single word! Hahahahahahah…”

“Ah, yes. And I remember…”

“…”

That awful evening altered my view and smashed my pride. Although when looking back, no one actually treated me differently, I just felt terrible about not belonging to this place. Maybe it is just that when you see yourself differently, you start to feel that other people see you in this way as well. I tried to take back what was mine, practicing speaking by listening to the video recordings from our family’s group chat on WeChat. Did that work? I didn’t really know. Ever since then, I was frightened of speaking the dialect. I chose to lock my tongue up and let the perfect Mandarin protect me.

Moreover, with the growing familiarity of Wenzhou, whenever my friends learned that I am a Wenzhou person, they would say, “Oh, I know Wenzhou people are super rich and they had the super strange and crazy dialect. Can you speak some?” This constant request threw salt on my wound and continued reminded me of the fact that I could not even count from 1 to 10 in my dialect, yes, my own dialect. Yet, the real issue that made me feel isolated is that, for my relatives, it is okay for my little sister and brother to be incapable of speaking the dialect. “They don’t actually live here, it is normal, you know.” But for me, it is not that simple. I was stranded by the threshold of being a Wenzhou person and a non-Wenzhou person, lacking the courage to step backward yet losing the key to move forward. Placed under that condition, I got more and more upset about going back to Wenzhou or even talking about Wenzhou.

Years went by with me holding the unpleasant feeling, however, last year, my view altered back. One morning, I accompanied my mum to pick up some dresses. Not wanting to feel her intimacy with the dialect, I insisted on staying outside and waiting for her. After a while with the battery of my phone dead, I left the place and wandered around. Surprisingly, I was in the housing estate that we used to live in, and I had never come back since our apartment was sold. Looking around, the place hadn’t changed much, seeming relatively old. There were children on the street, giggling and running. Walking by the park, I could remember the fun I had with my friends playing seesaw; walking by the gate, I recalled that one evening I was forced to stand outside the door as a punishment, then I ran away and was caught at there; walking by building Unit 2, I was reminded of the kind old lady with a shiny smile who always gave me candies; by apartment 202, I could still hum the music that came out of guzheng played by the girl living next door…Memory struck me. I never felt this close to this place — the place I thought I did not belong to.

In that cold winter morning with festive red decorating the city, all of a sudden, I knew that, all these years, the only thing that convinced me that I did not belong here was simply the fact that I could not speak the language. I valued this language so much that I unintentionally blocked everything else. But, the loneliness I felt once before, I know it does not haunt me alone. Within these years of economic development, large amounts of the population moved out of their hometown, along with their children, seeking job opportunities and better lives. There will be “victims” in this migration, who lose the ability to speak their dialect and thus feel that they can not fit in their original communities. Maybe it is because the dialect of Wenzhou is so enigmatic and I just cannot pronounce it well or because I was being too emotional about this belonging stuff. But I believe there will be some times, perhaps at a family gathering, you cannot understand what your relatives are talking about and no one can really feel the loneliness you experience. Then, you may have frustration, depression or even anger as I did. But, hey, listen to me, language really doesn’t mean that much. It should not hold a power big enough to control your emotions. Even though I may never be able to speak Cantonese or the dialect of Wenzhou, I still know that these two places are my home. And the reason my parents prefer the small apartment in Wenzhou to the large house in Guangzhou is not that they can speak the dialect but their memory of this place captures them. So, maybe it’s time to lower down your language gate and let memory and feeling decide where you belong.