A mosaic of vibrant magnets covered my family’s off-white refrigerator. My eyes traced the mural from the I ❤ NYC sticker in the top-right corner of the door, down to the Honolulu postcard, and past the handle to family photos in Beijing, evoking memories that felt like fairy tales. As a kid, I believed our fridge could save these moments like leftover dumplings—vessels of cherished times. Amid the magnetized collage, a red calendar hung as the centerpiece. Chinese zodiac animals, intricately painted in gold, encircled the years, but the months and days followed the familiar linearity of the Gregorian system. Above each creature, a Chinese proverb was inscribed; beside it, my mother had written our family members’ names with their zodiac symbols. I circled my eyes around the horoscope and landed on 1963.
1963, Shǒu zhū dài tù (Watching a tree, awaiting a Rabbit)
My grandma was a musician who—to pass the long, cold winters—played a cello-like instrument. Snakeskin wrapped around the front of a resonator that rested on her leg while a long bamboo shaft stuck out to hold the tuning pegs. She pushed and pulled her bow through the strings of the instrument, which I later discovered is called the erhu. For years, I watched her play for our family during every Chinese New Year’s party, seeing her joints free of pain as she swayed like a breeze with the music. For years, I watched the grandparents as they sat listening thoughtfully while the kids softly whispered. And when she was done, I’d ask if I could try. No matter how much I begged, she would frown slightly and say, “It’s too fragile for you,” her voice flat, her hand resting protectively on the case. There was always something in her eyes, a flicker of suspicion as if I’d break it just by touching it.
New Year’s 2011, the Year of the Rabbit. I fell asleep on the living room couch to the sound of karaoke singing and the sizzling of the kitchen pan. It was only after all the guests had already left and the house was asleep that I awoke to the darkness that cast against the bright red and yellow decorations of the house. Sluggishly, I pulled myself through the hallway and up the stairs, half-dreaming about playing the erhu that lay outside my grandma’s room in a leather and velvet case. I felt the bow in my hands as I gripped the neck of the instrument. I felt the vibration of the body as I drew the implement across the strings. But suddenly, it disappeared from my grasp, and I felt the soft comfort of my bed sheets around me.
I awoke to the sound of distressed breaths through the hallways. My eyes jolted open, and I jumped from my bed, rushing downstairs to see what was wrong. I turned the corner and laid my eyes on a horrific scene: the case was opened, the snakeskin torn apart, the bamboo shaft split through the center, and the tuning pegs strewn across the floor. My grandma, whose bob cut shrouded her face in darkness, turned toward me, and her eyes met mine. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and pleaded with myself to wake up.
I never did.
1988, Wàng zǐ chéng lóng (To wish your son becomes a Dragon)
As a child, I’d always assumed my uncle’s constant curiosity about my life in America was grounded in a genuine interest in me. My father moved to America for college using money donated by distant relatives, hoping he’d one day repay their investment. Ever since then, my Uncle Li has been keeping up with letters and calls from China every Saturday at 6:30 in the evening. They follow a repetitive formula; he first asks us how we are and what we did during the week: “Oh, you guys went to a barbecue? What’s that like?” Then, he mentions a fact about America he heard on the news: “CCTV said some American jobs allow you to just work at home! Here, I’ve got to work on my feet all day.” His ideas about the US were entirely rooted in these conversations; one time, he misinterpreted my description of American school buses, calling them “the free national public transportation system.”
Despite knowing him via phone conversation for so long, I had never met him in person. During my seventh-grade Lunar New Year, I finally got the chance to visit him in the freezing city of Harbin. Uncle Li invited our extended family into his apartment for dinner one night, and while my parents had stayed inside to help prepare, we encountered each other in a long corridor just outside the kitchen. He greeted me with a loose handshake and stated, “It’s been a long time. How about we catch up?” Opening the side door, he pushed me out onto his dimly lit apartment balcony. My body swayed uneasily with the harsh winds, yet he sat steadily on a lone rocking chair facing away from me and toward the city skyline. Reaching into the back pocket of his jeans, he pulled out a Marlboro cigarette.
He chuckled, almost to himself, “Isn’t it wild how different the US is from here?”
“Yeah,” I murmured, unsure if he wanted an answer or was just thinking out loud. “I mean, the cities are a lot bigger and stuff,”
“Sure, but it’s more than that—it’s the traditions, the environment, the atmosphere. Doesn’t it feel so…foreign to you?” He turned to look at me, his eyes tracing over my figure. His gaze lingered, scrutinizing my deeply tanned skin and colorful clothes—a silent proclamation: You’re not one of us.
Through the door, I could hear the familiar hum of joyful Mandarin conversations and the hissing of a pan cooking dishes that have no names in English. “I guess,” I said, “but we have this where I live, too.”
He glanced toward the kitchen, but then out toward the city again. “But it’s not the same. You wouldn’t get it. You’re only American.”
“Only American.” It hit me in a way I didn’t expect. I felt frustrated in a way I’d never felt before. Weren’t we closer than this? Didn’t he see me for anything more? His naive questions about America, while sweet in their simplicity, left me longing for him to understand me deeper. I yearned for him to recognize my Chinese identity, to see beyond the borders of nationality that seemed to define our conversations.
Yet, as I stood there, memories of my life in western Pennsylvania flooded my mind, each one a testament to the complexity of my identity. I recalled hiking through the trails in the Appalachian Mountains and sledding down the hills that surrounded our local park with my friends on winter days. I remembered the farmer’s market, where I’d buy peach jam to smear on my breakfast toast, and the Barnes & Noble, where I spent endless hours reading through the Geronimo Stilton series. I remembered how—when my parents wanted to get naturalized—I helped them study for the U.S.A. Citizenship Test. I thought about the school nights when I went through my family’s mail, slowly reading through each letter to confirm that we weren’t missing a payment since I was the only one confident in English.
Beneath the balcony, the Chinese cityscape bustled, a labyrinth of LEDs illuminating souvenir shops and street food vendors. I found myself searching for traces of familiarity, for echoes of the landscapes and experiences that shaped my identity. Yet, amidst the urban sprawl, I saw no sign of the farms, trails, hills, or bookstores that had become the backdrop of my life. Despite my resistance to my uncle’s two-dimensional impression of me as “The American,” I could not say what else I was. In that moment of uncertainty, I grappled with a question that had long lingered in the recesses of my mind: if my American upbringing does not define me, then what else could I possibly be?
2007, Yī lóng yī zhū (One a Dragon, one a Pig)
On my 14th birthday, my mother gifted me a guitar, possibly believing it would distract me enough that I would avoid destroying any more cherished family keepsakes. I remember taking it out of the trapezoidal cardboard box, admiring how the glossy black body contrasted with the gold of the metal tuning pegs. Enchanted by how the strings vibrated and how the cool varnish felt in my hands, I spent a week continuously watching YouTube videos with clickbaity titles like One Weird Trick to Master Guitar in 15 Minutes!
When I was eventually able to start learning my own songs, only the old American records on my friends’ 1950s vinyl turntables came to mind. I recalled the folk story of a lonely sailor in Shel Silverstein’s “The Mermaid” and the haunting imagery of the damp Appalachian coal mines in “Dark as a Dungeon” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. I practiced covers of these songs endlessly, closing my eyes and envisioning myself as a musical storyteller deep in the Smoky Mountains, or a traveler in the Alleghenies. But when I inevitably stopped and reopened my eyes, I was back in a room where, instead of lush hills surrounding me, plastic decorations hung in anticipation of my family’s New Year’s celebration in just a few hours. I put my guitar on its stand and went to help with preparations.
As the guests began arriving, I caught the aroma of onions and garlic from the kitchen wok, saw the red banners with the word Luck that framed each doorway, and heard the laughter of little kids drinking Ramune and adults playing Mahjong. But with all this celebration, I kept thinking of a time when grandparents would sit listening to a performance of an instrument that no longer existed—thinking of a time when long, bowed melodies filled silences in conversation. I kept thinking of how it was because of me.
Just as my grandma once did, I took a chair from the dining room and opened the case to my instrument. I rested the body on my thigh and adjusted my left hand around the neck. Despite the two different languages, two different cultures, and two different histories, I sang what I knew.
2023, Remember to buy plastic cups for all the guests.
I flipped to what I really wanted to see: January 22nd, Lunar New Year. On the side, my mom wrote me a note in rushed Chinese that said, Remember to buy plastic cups for all the guests. I can’t recall the last time she wrote one of these notes for me in Mandarin. Maybe it was after our trip from Harbin since I was forced to use Chinese to get around town. Or was it when she wanted to go to a local erhu performance, but I was too occupied with guitar lessons to come?
I went to the garage and steered my bike out of the concrete driveway. As I pedaled down the empty street, the cycling chain seemed to synchronize with the thoughts swirling in my mind. I stared at the wheels spinning in motion, traveling between the push of where they came from and the pull of where they were headed. The chain continued cycling. I thought of the calendar—where each passing week was slowly crossed off yet constantly updated with new plans. The chain continued cycling.
I am a spectrum where past and present intertwine. I am always linked to where I have been, yet forever moving forward.
William Chen is a high school senior in North Carolina and a 2025 YoungArts Winner in Nonfiction. His creative work—centered on revealing seemingly contradicting social identities—has been recognized by the National Council of Teachers of English and the Virginia B. Ball Creative Writing Scholarship Program, among others. He is currently drafting his debut memoir, which explores his upbringing between two religious faiths.
VAGABOND CITY 