Hometown

Hometown always brings me mixed feelings. It is a place I spent 24 years, but for almost half of the time I couldn’t wait to leave, to see "the outside world". Now, from the outside world 6,500 miles away, every time I go back, I can’t help feeling relieved that I only come to visit. That sounds cold-hearted. It’s more cold-hearted to say I feel more connected to a city where I only worked for less than four years, than to my birthplace, where my old ma and pa live, and where I forged the strongest friendship with three friends since I was 19.

I blame the economic boom, which has flattened the house I grew up in, widened the shaded lane where I used to shop fabrics from street vendors, and moved my high school out of the city to the “high-tech development district” where it used to be corn fields. So hometown has become just the town of homes of the people I love. My parents live in a building that didn’t even exist when I left the town. The only thing in their apartment that can bring back my teenager memory is the sticker on a chest door.

Walking on the street to the farmer’s market with Dad, I found I was looking at everything through a tourist’s eyes. That felt strange. Apparently the women Dad was buying eggs from thought I looked strange too. She asked me why I took pictures of her egg baskets. I told her I was just waiting for my Dad to pick eggs. She was glad I was not from the Administration Bureau of Business and Commerce to check her license.