The past few years I haven’t felt like myself creatively so I made it a goal to write more. I’m so excited that a personal essay I wrote and submitted made it into August’s issue of The Sun. I love this magazine because it helps me when I’m dissociating by making me feel more human lol. It’s a monthly ad-free magazine with black and white photography, poems, personal essay, etc.
Anyway, each month they have a “Readers Write” section with a one word prompt. This month’s prompt was “fuel.” My personal essay is online on The Sun‘s website but also in print.
Here’s my unabridged version before it got edited down for space. 😉
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I heard the phrase “jiayou” for the first time after my parents sent me back to China to live with my aunt when I was 9. My aunt brought me to her company’s team building event. Before I saw what was going on in the gymnasium, I heard the chants of, “Jiayou! Jiayou! Jiayou!” Her colleagues were playing a game of tug-o-war.
Even though Mandarin Chinese was my first language, my vocabulary diminished after moving to California as a preschooler and chiefly consuming Nickelodeon cartoons. I learned English by watching Looney Tunes and Ren & Stimpy, made friends at school in English, and reserved Mandarin for home. Home felt mostly silent and solitary—often the result of struggling immigrant families when both parents worked double shifts to make ends meet. When I was sent back to live in China, I felt the language whiplash again—I realized that I no longer formed thoughts in Mandarin anymore and my vocabulary was limited to whatever I needed to win an argument with my parents.
The Google Translate result for the phrase “jiayou” is utterly underwhelming. It spits out “come on” when the literal translation of the Chinese words 加油 means “add fuel.” Back in the 90s, of course, Google Translate didn’t exist so I asked my aunt why her coworkers were shouting “add fuel/oil” when there was no vehicle or cookware present. They were tugging a rope; surely the addition of slippery oil would be counterproductive? It made no sense—just like the alternate universe I felt I had been plopped in when my parents sent me back to China away from everything I knew.
“It’s a cheer of encouragement,” my aunt chuckled out a bemused explanation.
I don’t remember which of her teammates won the tug-of-war but standing on the squeaky gymnasium floor in a foreign country that should’ve felt like home, the chants gave me hope. I felt like that cheer was for the little girl stuck between two cultures.
Keep going. You can make it. Jiayou.
By the Wei 