Strong Beautiful Haunted

          I hear the word ‘death’ and I cry, for no reason, and I hear the word ‘mother’ and I cry, maybe for more of a reason, and I hear the words ‘tears’ and ‘graves’ and ‘love’, and then I know the reason so well it keeps me up till the dawn turns yellow, trying to sleep but crying and crying, my nose red and my head filled with things that threaten to tear it apart; and I think, reading past these stories that seems to hide secrets I can’t fathom, all Chinese can’t be this haunted, can they, with these stories of neglect, sadness, things so bottomless and deep, worse than taboo – more horrible than our petty Western problems of greed and politics, what to eat for dinner, how to waste our time improving our minds while our parents cheer for us from home and applaud our indecision. 

          These are obedient, tormented daughters chased by the ghosts of their mothers and the hidden expectations of their people; they are born without metal, yin, hard and controlling – or born without wooden spines, yang, strong and flexible, and always with the ghosts, the ever-present ghosts of women who shamed their ancestors, hanging over their heads waiting to snatch them from their sleep.  They live their lives by something unseeable; they are the soul of something great… I read the words that remind me of myths and fables, told in the short – staccato – broken English of those who understand the world in a different way, and I think of the moon cakes.  I think of the dragons and paper lions, the grandfathers and ancestors and their stories, the things they gave up, the things they died to protect and the despair and the pride that make them so mysterious, the things that are ugly about them, the things that make them gold statues on pedestals in other people’s heads but unclear like murky water in mine, so far beyond me that even a hundred years of age couldn’t tell me what their secrets are or what they mean.

          They are in me but foreign, in me but unknown, part of me yet I know them like strangers, know them only as old faces with lines and golden clothing… I want to see, for once, the things other people see, and believe the things that make them lihai – so strong, so beautiful, so haunted.