As I walked along the blue carpet, my eyes settled upon the plaque with the name Ms. Shofner inscribed on it. I took a deep breath as I opened the heavy blue door separating me from my first grade classroom. The strong smell of coffee hit me instantly, I looked around at the faces of my fellow students. Immediately something seemed off, they were blank and unreadable and all seemed to be fixated on something, as I walked to my seat I realized that that thing they were staring at was me. As I looked out at the blank faces I also noticed something strange, none of them looked like me. As I nervously settled in my seat, my teacher got up from her desk exclaiming, “Class please join me in welcoming our new student George”. “He recently moved to Kansas from Shanghai, I think it was, right George?” she turned to me and I confirmed by giving her a slight nod. Even though it wasn’t the full story, I didn’t feel comfortable explaining myself. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and as I turned, I met the gaze of the student sitting next to me, his eyes inspecting me as if I had shown up from another planet. He whispered in my ear, “If you’re from China, do you even speak English?” I wanted to tell him that I was born here in America, that I had only gone to Shanghai for 2 years due to my dad’s work. I wanted to tell him that I could speak English perfectly fine, that I was just like him and all the other kids around us. But all I could muster up was, “Yes I do speak English”. Later, as the rest of the kids streamed out of the classroom towards the fields for recess, I slipped by them towards the bathroom. I washed my hands and face even though they weren’t dirty, I looked up and stared in the mirror, the person who looked back at me didn’t necessarily look any different than usual, but he looked confused and lost, wondering why others saw him differently. Outside I saw a group of boys tossing around a strangely shaped pointy brown ball and tackling each other to the ground. “Man these people are crazy, where even am I?” I thought to myself. Nevertheless, in the coming weeks I found myself at my school’s football games. I spent my weekends in the YMCA playing basketball with some of my classmates, hoping to prove that I could play sports just as well as them. Even so, when I found out my family and I were moving elsewhere to New York, I didn’t feel any pain in leaving. I might have lived in Kansas, but deep down I knew Kansas wasn’t my real home, and it wasn’t where I belonged.

The year was 2019 and I was just 10 years old when I found out my grandpa had passed away. When my dad had brought my sister and I into his room to deliver the news I was speechless, but I wasn’t crying. All I had to say was “Are you serious?” It was a dumb

question, of course he was serious, but I was confused. Soon that confusion turned into guilt and then anger. Why were my only memories with my grandpa spending time with him on the hospital bed? I tried to conjure up memories as a young child spent in his home in Hong Kong. I knew those memories existed somewhere, but as I tried to grab ahold of them they slipped through my fingers like running water. Come to think of it, I’d never even been able to speak with him. Living in Hong Kong, he only spoke Cantonese, the only way we could even communicate was through my mom, she would always teach me how to greet him with simple Cantonese phrases, but the words were never really mine. I thought back to my last moments with him almost a year before in the hospital. I’d held his hand and met his gaze, listening to the steady hum of medical equipment. Although no words were exchanged I knew that he was listening, he seemed to understand my thoughts as if he saw a piece of himself in the young boy sitting beside him. The day of the funeral, his body was placed behind a layer of glass and a picture of him. When I went up to his body, I saw that his body was covered from the neck down, but I could see his face. He looked calm, as if he was at peace in his sleep. But as I stared at him I couldn’t help but feel guilty, like I was in the wrong. In front of me laid the man that had paved the way for my family, the countless

sacrifices he endured had allowed me to live the life I was now living. Yet I knew so little about him. I looked around the room and found the faces of my supposed family members, faces I’d never seen before, faces that might as well have been strangers. One by one they knelt down on the white marble floor burning incense while bowing and speaking prayers. I wanted nothing more than to be able to join in the honoring of my grandfather but I did not know any of the words.

When we took his body to the crematorium, I asked my mom why we had to burn his body and why his remains would be reduced to ashes. All she responded with was “That’s the way things are done here”. “Here” wasn’t my place, not the language, not the rituals, not even the grief. I didn’t understand why they had to burn his body, I didn’t understand why that was just part of the culture, I didn’t understand any of the people around me, and they didn’t understand me. I’d realized that in my search and chase for acceptance in America, I’d suppressed and forgotten my true roots. My identity had been labeled as Chinese American, but it didn’t seem right. How could I be Chinese when I didn’t even understand the language and culture of my own family? How could I be American when I didn’t even look or act anything like the kids around me? For years I struggled with this newfound perspective, looking in the mirror I didn’t even know who the person looking back at me was. I felt like I didn’t have a sense of identity, nor a true home–a place where I could feel a sense of belonging, whether it was the U.S., China, or Hong Kong, I felt like an outsider, like someone looking in.

This past summer I spent a few weeks in China, this time without my parents. As I was having my documents processed on the border between mainland China and Hong Kong, I noticed a little kid standing off to the side, in his face he was visibly distressed. When the officer had given me my documents back and allowed me to proceed, it felt like instinct to approach the kid and ask him what was wrong. He pointed behind him and I saw a man being taken into a room by a couple of officers in uniform. That’s my dad, he told me. I was worried for him, but now I knew it was my responsibility to keep him calm. I told him not to worry and we began talking. He told me about his love for soccer and his excitement to visit Hong Kong. When I told him I was from America, he mentioned how he’d seen pictures and how the tall buildings in New York City amazed him. I asked if he would ever want to go, and he shook his head, remembering his father’s warnings about how dangerous the U.S. was. He told me he heard that people were shot everyday and that they pushed each other into subways. I told him it wasn’t true, but I understood because he’d only listened to stories he’d heard and formed his perspective based on that. He seemed curious asking if I ever felt singled out being a Chinese American. I decided to tell him about my struggles with my identity of not being able to truly find myself. When he began to respond, the officer yelled for him to come, as they escorted his dad to another room presumably for further questioning. He turned to me and thanked me for helping him and for sharing my story. I would never see him again, and I could only hope that he would be okay. But his words stuck with me, such a simple conversation had uncovered what I had been missing. In my effort to become someone I was not, I’d lost who I truly was. He’d made me realize that although I felt so uncomfortable with not being able to fit my identity neatly into a box labeled “Chinese” or “American”, that ambiguity was actually my strength. I’d always thought that this part of me prevented me from obtaining a sense of belonging and was a blockade for connection with my peers and family, yet suddenly it was this same in-betweenness about my identity that had allowed me to connect with the young boy. Suddenly my role seemed to crystallize. I didn’t have to be just a lost sailboat floating in the middle of an ocean, I could be a bridge–not belonging to one side or another, but being built up from both sides and holding the two cultures together. In that sense I had found my belonging and importantly comfort and acceptance in my true self.