By ARIEL CHU
Taipei, Taiwan, December 2020
The three of us—Frances, Jay, and I—live in this rain-slick city, concrete buildings stained with runoff. At night, the streets stretch like black pools, glossy with reflected traffic lights. We stumble around half-closed night markets with our snapped umbrellas and damp socks. Our pockets weighted with bruised change, we eat charred oyster mushrooms crusted with cumin and rose salt, waiting out the rain under fluorescent storefront awnings.
By PATRICIA LIU
Yunnan Province, China
Paper is thin. In the beginning, still billows in the wind, still petal-like, still grounded in this world
of living. The incense is the only material that translates the viscera to mist. Early, the fog has not yet
lifted, and we move through the white drip as if through total darkness. Fish lost in the deep under-
water. It is easy for water to find home in our bodies. How wonderful it is to think my father’s
dead father a translation of our living selves, the water in-between my cells, the same water of
ghosts. Of women and Buddha, of lotus flower and palace, of lion. See the shine of fire, even
now. See the smoke, encapsulated by the fog. My father tells stories of the state’s inexorable beckoning,
the brothers, and the sisters, too, sent to the countryside. What they remember most is the truck
and the dust, the broad shoulders of horse, that first night and its stars, the mass exodus of dragonflies
following the monsoons—but no, exodus is uniquely a human endeavor. My father cannot bring
himself to anger; he knows it is shame that is the ugliest language. Somewhere, I have lost my place
in the life-wheel, and the only words I know in Chinese are our names. Jiayu is rain. Jialei is rosebud.
Only years later do I learn that Jiayu means jade. Only years later do I long for pure, unadulterated
fortune over the ritual of early rain. Somehow, turn face to sky. Here. In memory, to burn is to revere.
Grand Bay, Alabama
I remember I was talking to a colleague in the break area of a 2017 translation conference when a tall, snowy-haired man came up to us. (I say “remember,” but my memory is hazy. We are told to forget these sorts of incidents.) The interaction went something like this: The man walked toward us and, without preamble, planted himself before me to ask if I knew a noted translator from Japanese. The translator is Asian-American, like me. (Or—maybe there was a preamble; maybe he asked us our names first.) I felt my smile gelatinize on my face. No, I said. I had never met that translator.
Kamala Harris is a dougla.
Without italics, you might be tempted to think that’s a typo or just bad copyediting; that I mean to say she “is married to a douglas.” But, on the off chance you are of West Indian heritage, you know exactly what I mean. You know dougla is a real word and you know it means the new Vice President of the United States of America is half-Indian and half-black.
By ADRIENNE SU
When the exhibit went up at Peachtree Center,
the Chinese of Atlanta flocked downtown.
Jews had been in Henan so close to forever,
they weren’t seen as foreign. And we had found
an exhibit on China that wasn’t old vases.
Jews were Chinese in more ways than food.
Migration was not always out of the places
our families had fled; it had once been to.
Our pantries were “ethnic” not just for the shrimp chips
and wood ears, but as well for the matzah.
Maybe, when asked, Do you celebrate Christmas?,
we were not being checked for Zen or the Buddha.
We didn’t say it in so many words.
The line between Asia and Europe had blurred.
Honolulu
I walk to the park
drummers sit in a circle under a white tent
they have drifted this far way on pacific waves
long feathers tucked behind their ears
they sweat in soft fringed hides
their faces lean and dark
By VAL WANG
“John jumped.”
I had no idea what the short sentence meant, only that it came from the Bible and when I said it, all the other campers in my Bible study group laughed and I was off the hook for answering any more questions about God, Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, none of which I knew anything about.
A statuette of the Virgin Mary stood guard as my mother and I sipped from glasses of wine cooler on our living room floor. We’d propped our front door open to let in the breeze, leaving only a flimsy screen between our shelter and the world outside. Every once in a while, we’d hear our neighbor calling for her wayward son or the laugh track of a sitcom playing too loudly in the next house over. We’d echo it with giggles of our own, seated on faux mink blankets from the Philippines laid over ceramic tile.
By KAREN KAO
The first time I went to China was in 1984. I didn’t need a map. You could only travel in groups back then with a government handler to navigate the way and guide thoughts. We travelled from Beijing to Xi’an in a decommissioned military airplane reserved for the exclusive use of Party leaders and foreign tourists. From Xi’An to Luoyang we took a train that required eight hours to cover a distance that now needs just half that.
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