Nai Nai’s Guest

Every winter break I would visit my grandmother’s house. A 5-hour plane ride, one bumpy taxi drive and an overnight sleeper train trip later, we would arrive at Xiangyang, a third-tier city in China.

I was raised by my grandmother, whom we called Nai Nai, till I was ten before she returned back to China. Since then, we would alternate between visiting China and her staying in Singapore for a few months. As I grew taller, the trips to Xiangyang became inversely shorter and more sporadic.

Last year, my family had embarked on a trip to China, leaving me trapped behind by a flurry of final week assignments. However, soon after returning, my mother announced another trip to China.

“Your grandma is getting old,” she said.

Despite redeeming the chance to visit my grandmother, a slow sense of dread crept up on me. There was nothing to do in Xiangyang. I spent a good half of my days wrapped up in bed as a human burrito, because the heater was limited to nighttime use and the other half walking through empty malls populated only by its staff, making it my mission to find the best bubble tea in town.

Xiangyang had no clubs only bars, no roller-skating rinks just parks with mediocre scenery. It was apparent that Xiangyang was a city for the young and the old but there was no place for me. A place where children grew up and flocked to big cities to pursue their Chinese dreams, and elderly settled down for retirement.

The city felt familiar yet foreign. I recognized the vegetable sellers by the streets and the dialect that I understood but could not speak. Still, something was amiss.

I missed my grandma dearly, yet I was tongue-tied when we talked, feigning a language barrier when it was my brain that was in a knot. What do you say to someone you missed all the time but haven’t spoken to in two years?

On my last days in Xiangyang, I give my final attempt at an elevator pitch to Nai Nai about coming back to Singapore. She could take a plane to Wuhan if the long bus or train rides are too taxing on her. Then a plane straight from the airport and she would be on her merry way to Singapore.

She dismissed the idea immediately. “That’s too expensive and nobody likes to have an old lady on the flight (insinuating that she might drop dead in the middle of the flight therefore be a nuisance to flight staff).”

I could not wrap my head around it. Does she not miss me at all? Why does she hate the idea of staying in Singapore so much?

As my steady stream of bubble tea shops has run out, I decide to tail my grandmother in her daily routine. She brings me to the stock market, where she settles down on her permanent station but not before her seatmates embrace her and ask when the next time they should have lunch.

Then, the elderly university she has been attending to learn calligraphy. She had done her homework on an intricately designed calligraphy paper with cranes framing its borders and it gets praise by the teacher and her classmates. My grandaunt points out the banner featuring Nai Nai’s work displayed at the assembly grounds of the school compounds.

“Your Nai Nai is a star student,” she tells me, “She was selected to go for competitions, but she wasn’t interested.”

I finally understood why Nai Nai did not want to come to Singapore. Xiangyang is her home and I’m just a guest.