I was giving a final exam this morning and entertaining myself by reading newspapers online from the computer in the classroom. I got to a story about the recent Sichuan earthquake and how so many parents who lost children in this disaster lost their only children. The story showed images of fathers grieving for their lost daughters, tenderly and heartbreakingly. Of course, in any tragedy, when a parent loses a child, it’s hard to bear, but this one–well, it just struck me so much harder. I felt this emotion well up in me, and I had to stop reading the story. It’s true that Mavis was born near Sichuan province, and it’s true that I have a friend in Chengdu. But it was something bigger, too–the deep love of the parents for their children, their daughters, something the West so readily wants to assume is somehow absent from the Chinese ethos when they see our formerly orphan daughters. It made me sad for them; it made me sad, tentatively, for Mavis’ birth family. Although in this case, the situations don’t really connect, it made me think again about how I have benefited, indirectly of course, from the one-child policy that has so deeply hurt so many other people. I just felt so sad and useless.
I know it’s cheesy, but it’s true that part of my heart really will always live in that area, no matter how distant it is to me, or how full of mystery. I wish sometimes I could see Mavis’ hometown so clearly, with such empathy, like I did today, instead of always with the multiplying questions and confusion that surround her story. Today, at least, something translated. I just wish it weren’t something so very sad.
