by Shenzhan/申展
On the very last day of January, 2021, I was walking towards Bier and Cheese on Broadway in Astoria, Queens, one of my favorite places for lunch these days. Like everyone else here, the restaurant built a shed in the street. Completely enclosed, it has sliding doors, open windows with screens for ventilation, heating lamps and twinkle lights. In my book, all signal “safe enough”.
Like a good citizen, I was walking in the street, wearing a mask and thinking to myself,
“Isn’t it brilliant that human eyes are made not to get foggy?”
I was so annoyed that my glasses constantly are fogged by my own masked breath these days. And I was genuinely happy for a few seconds with this thought in mind.
2021 started with a wave of shocking events, which I do not need to repeat; little promising news on vaccine proceeding; and even less good development between the U.S.-China relations.
My friends and families in China keep floating the idea for me to leave New York for good. Life in China has been back to normal mostly. There are breakouts of new coronavirus cases here and there, but they are immediately under control by strict contact tracing and quarantines. In my hometown, a small-sized city nestled among the hilly mountains of southwest China, where my parents live, there hasn’t been a single new case for a long time. My mom told me on Wechat, an app like Whatsapp, that she went out with relatives for a hotpot dinner just before the new year. Watching what’s going on in the U.S. through Chinese media, one can only imagine concerns for my safety keep mounting, and a sense of pride in what China has achieved.
“But I feel I am not done with New York.” I told a good friend in Chengdu recently. Chengdu is actually my favorite city, known for the giant panda, a leisure lifestyle, great Sichuan food, and over 1,500 years of history and culture. I am almost certain I would return to Chengdu.
If I ever decide to do so.
To me, it’s an interesting question about identity, a sense of affiliation and attachment. It is more about my relationship with the city of New York, than simply staying in the U.S., which is not entirely determined by citizenship, where families are, nor career.
Here I am, sitting in the apartment I have resided since 2008 in Astoria, New York. By 10 am on a Saturday of 2021, I have already uploaded my morning running record to Strava, reading 3.05 miles at an average speed of 11 minutes / mile. I spoke with a friend and former college classmate in Macau through Wechat video. I was planning to ride to the city and get a pair of winter cycling shoes (which I did) and perhaps visit The Whitney Museum of American Art for the first time since March (which I didn’t. I ended up biking to Times Square to feel the traffic and watch people in masks!). A typical weekend during the pandemic for me.
Without a doubt, I am a beneficiary of the internationalization: a girl from a small place in southwest China got her footing in a big city like New York. My mother and my stepfather, both retired school teachers, without an advanced degree and never studied abroad, managed to support me along this journey until I became financially independent. When I first came to New York, the biggest concern for me was to secure enough scholarship to cover the hefty tuition for the next school year. I thought I couldn’t stay in New York, and did get on a plane to Beijing the day after the Commencement, only to find myself coming back to the city when the first chance appeared, after one year in China.
In Pretend It’s A City, Fran Lebowitz says, “No one can afford to live in New York City. And yet, eight million people do.” It’s always too expensive, too noisy, too messy, too much. But I find myself still here after twenty years. However, over the years, I have felt the concept of internationalization being increasingly challenged in the U.S., Europe, and back in China. In March 2020, it was suddenly put to an unprecedented test by the pandemic, a test that is still unfolding and no one knows what “being international” will look like in years, or, even in months. For one thing, the schedules of international flights between the U.S. and China are currently updated on a monthly basis. Approved flights can be abruptly overhauled if new positive coronavirus cases are tested.
Questions from China on why I still stay in the U.S. are rising: from what people may read and watch in China, America appears unsafe with an uncontrollable pandemic, hostile to China with rising discrimination against Chinese in this country. Its political image as the ideal of democracy is tarnished as the world has observed the four years of the Trump Presidency, the chaos of the presidential election, and was definitely shaken by the insurrection on January 6. Its leading economic power, if already threatened by China before the pandemic, now seems further slipping away, with more uncertainties casted by the pandemic that has dragged for too long. The perception may be too simplistic, possibly inaccurate and short sighted, but when I now think of returning to China for a business trip, or a home visit, like I did so often each year in the past decade, I found myself wondering: is it possible that I might be denied re-entry to the U.S.? It happened to many Chinese when the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882. History taught me.
Like many Chinese students seeking education and life in the U.S., I came to New York almost two decades ago for a future that was full of excitement, but not without uncertainties and risks. Nothing was promised at the time. Though I was not fleeing China as if it was impossible for me to stay there. I also did not leave China thinking it was a backward country that should look up to the U.S. in every aspect. I was, like any young people with immense curiosity, making the choice to explore the unknown in New York. I guess I was merely leaving my homeland to push the limits of myself, and the world, all made possible by the internationalization. For a long time, New York was, and still is, part of an unfinished experience, so unique to myself and dear to my heart, yet distant in many other ways. It never quite feels home, but also hard to leave.
January 31, 2021
Astoria, New York