Hot and noisy
On Monday, I learned about the Chinese photographer Wang Fuchun, who just passed away earlier this month. Wang was best known for his photographs of Chinese trains and their passengers during the 80s and 90s, the period in which my parents immigrated to the United States.
The photos are just as my parents had described it to me: There was hardly any space, and even if you did get a seat it would be hard and uncomfortable. This man seems to have discovered a way to rest his feet, despite not having a seat. You take what comforts you can.
You’d be even luckier to have a bed. Sleeping on the floor was common. Here is a family relaxing together on the floor directly next to the bathroom. One child sleeps peacefully against the bathroom door, and the other child is contentedly resting in his father’s arms. Meanwhile, a man smokes a cigarette in the foreground — the commotion and the crowd is always there.
I remember visiting China as a child in the 90s and there being no streetlights near my grandfather’s house. I remember riding on the back rack of my uncle’s bike in the absolute pitch black of the night. On long distance trains, my family would put me in the comfortable and spacious first class cabins, thinking of me as a fragile American who couldn’t handle the cramped, loud, chaotic quarters of the rest of the train. Naturally, I’ve always romanticized that forbidden experience portrayed in Wang’s photography. 热闹, rè nao, hot and noisy — perhaps uncomfortable, but full of excitement and life.
In 2018, I flew into Shanghai Pudong airport and took the train to Suzhou. My grandmother, still imagining that the train would be like the trains in these photos, was terrified that I’d get robbed or scammed. But they were nothing like that. They’re super clean, super modern, 180mph bullet trains, far nicer than anything in America, which has at this point seemingly no hope of developing anything remotely comparable in terms of public infrastructure.
Visiting the supermarket was just as impressive. The selection of produce exceeded the selection in any US supermarket tenfold. There were also more exotic, absurd flavors of potato chips than you could possibly imagine. Cream soda flavored chips? Cucumber flavored chips? Numbing spicy hot pot flavored chips? Yeah, you got it.
I wonder how my parents felt when they first came to America in the 80s, I wonder if they felt impressed by the highways and streetlights and wide supermarket aisles. Saving up to buy that house in the suburbs, with all the space they could ever want, but none of the bustling energy of home, for better and for worse. The quiet with which my father could do his work without the constant disturbance and uncertainty of social unrest. The loneliness and isolation that crushed my mother. I think about how I didn’t make it any easier, I think about the grief that I gave them when I looked down on them as a teenager for not understanding me, my culture, the American point of view that I so arrogantly knew to be superior.
We imagine the United States as the shining promised land of the world. Immigrants are supposed to just be thankful to have the freedom and stability that this country claims to provide. It’s never so simple. While we long for a more beautiful future, we also long for the beautiful past.
I would like to ask my parents: Was it worth it? But I know it’s not the right question to ask. You can never really go back. Even if you do go back, it won’t be the same. Nothing stays the same. You can only ever move forwards, no matter where you are.