The Ones Who Always Loved Me, and What Keeps Me Going

I have always been loved; it's just that, having grown so used to it, I often forget to feel it.

Over Spring Festival, idling in the main hall of the house in the countryside, I kept taking hawthorn flakes from the fruit tray. Grandpa saw me eating them and said, "You like hawthorn? Hawthorn strips are good too, and good for the digestion — I'll buy you some to take to Shenzhen." It was nothing I'd done on purpose, but Grandpa noticed and kept it in mind for a long time. After the New Year, every time we went back to the countryside for dinner, he would make a detour to the corner shop to buy me hawthorn strips; but they had sold out over the holiday, so he waited, and waited, and checked every time.

Today is 20 February, and tomorrow, the 21st, I leave for Shenzhen. I told them tonight was my last visit to the countryside; I would be off to Shenzhen at noon tomorrow. Before dinner Grandpa went out to the shop once more, saying he'd get me hawthorn strips, and once more came back without any — still out of stock. I said never mind, they're easy to find in Shenzhen, there's no need to go out of your way. But it was never a question of need. The point was never the hawthorn strips; it just took me a long time to see it.

That evening, after Pilates, as I was about to shower, Grandpa called: he had bought the hawthorn strips, and I should wait for him downstairs at our flat in town. All at once I was overwhelmed. In that moment all of my family's love and care took a form I could hold, and a feeling I can't put into words hit me hard. Without stopping to dry my hair I hurried to the gate of the estate to meet him. There was a railing between us; he said, don't come round, I'll pass them over. I took the hawthorn strips, swung a leg over the railing and hugged him. Grandpa laughed, delighted, and told the guard, confident and proud, in Teochew: "This is the grandson I love most — the cleverest of them all!"

Many days before, at dinner, with the table full of fish and meat, Grandpa kept piling fish into my bowl and teased me: "When you grow up, will there still be this much good food for Grandpa? Nothing fancy — just this would do." I said there would, for sure, and I'd buy you all lots of good things you've never even seen.

For a while I had been rather lost; I was getting much less done, in life and in my studies. I kept thinking I needed a drive, a goal I could throw myself into wholeheartedly. In my last year of high school, borrowing from Trump and Einstein, I took a "sense of mission" very seriously — creating value for the world: everyone is born with a mission, to create value for the world and make it a little different because they existed. An auntie of mine who went to Peking University had told me the same thing in my first year of high school.

Now, bringing my gaze back to the people around me — my family, my partner, those who love me and whom I love — I want to work to protect them and to make them a little happier. Isn't that a more practical, and a deeper, drive?

It need not be far away; it can be close at hand. That is where I can see my reasons to keep going, and my lighthouse.

And that, too, is pure and good.