Language: Chinese (Mandarin)
Writer's Background: I grew up in a Chinese-speaking household with my parents and my grandparents.
In 2016, my family and I visited Shanghai, China, which is my parents’ hometown and where my maternal grandparents, my Waigong (外公 Grandpa) and Waipo (外婆 Grandma), live. Before we returned to the United States, my sister and I wrote a list of rules for them in our simple Chinese on a sheet of Hello Kitty notebook paper, which we taped to their dresser. I later adapted it to a poem of five rules in more eloquent English. I hope both—the scribbles in the language of my heritage and the typed words in my native language—convey the same heartfelt feelings I have for my grandparents.
外公外婆一定要做的事情
宝宝贝贝
互相照顾，健康
给外公买自行车
每天走路（锻炼）
吃有营养的食物
每个月至少有一次在好饭店里吃
用微信或者Yahoo Mail跟我们联系（每星期至少一次）
每个月至少又一次出去玩（广场、买商品等）
外公一定要参加一个合唱队（外婆要帮他找，也要一定要他去）
外公：换新手机 → 找人帮你把微信在手机上弄好
外婆：在妈妈给的新手机上发微信
外公：只 (1) 能每天抽一根烟
每两三天打牌
X 陈其扬 刘人媚
The Things Grandpa and Grandma Must Do
BaoBao & BeiBei (2)
Take care of each other, be healthy
Buy Grandpa a bike
Walk everyday (exercise)
Eat nutritious foods
Eat at a good restaurant at least once a month
Use WeChat (3) or Yahoo Mail to contact us (at least once a week)
Go out for fun at least once a month (the square (4), buy goods, etc.)
Grandpa must participate in a choir (Grandma must help him find one, and also make him go)
Grandpa: switch to a new phone → find someone to help you fix WeChat on your phone
Grandma: Use WeChat on the new phone Mommy gave you
Grandpa: can only smoke one cigarette every day
Play cards every two or three days
X Chen QiYang (Quincy Chen) Liu Renmei (Mary Liu)
(1) error - we originally used 直, not只
(2) endearing nicknames; together, BaoBei 宝贝 means “treasure”
(3) WeChat 微信: the most powerful mobile app in China
(4) the People’s Square 人民广场: a large city hub in Shanghai
Five Rules (For My Grandparents)
One,
Grandpa, buy a bicycle.
You told us, someone stole yours a year ago,
yet you never bought another one, a last pair
of wings, wings in a city you've spent a lifetime with,
one you've seen
spring from seeds in the soil
to sprawling metropolis forests.
Two,
Grandma, put on shoes with less concrete-worn soles,
maybe, a shirt unfaded from its hand washes,
and go to eat, at a restaurant in one of those
decadent commercial malls you brought us to.
The one where you said, you'd give us everything there,
all ten stories of it,
if we'd return your smile.
Three,
visit the city, see the Oriental Pearl Tower
or the Shanghai Museum, the museum of your hometown that
you'd only been to once, with us.
Maybe, buy a honey bubble tea on a side street shop instead
of saving your combined salaries for
half a year, to tuck into red envelopes,
reduced to a stack of crisp Franklins, given with
your nonchalant smiles, hopeful eyes brimming
with well-wishes, for our education, our lives beyond yours.
Four,
again, for Grandpa to follow,
only smoke one cigarette, one
instead of the three or five or twenty you inhale, I know
behind the sliding door, when you wait for our dinner to cook, I know
just before we flew away, the months right after we left you, last time
your spirit rose in puffs of gray
instead of settling in your chest.
Five,
play card games, every two or three days
like when we’d play zhen shang you, dealing countless hands
your wrinkled, tanned fingers flipping pristine white kings and queens,
(Because the last set of royalty we were devoted to
yellowed, rotted three years on your shelves, untouched)
instead of crooning farewell, gao bie, good-bye,
every day alongside the dusty piano keys,
instead of watching infomercials on the expensive television
next to our childhood trophies, framed photos of us together,
as you wait for our visit next year, or not.
Please, take care of each other's wearied bones
so you won’t bear regret, discovering how it feels
to only rest one set of chopsticks on the table,
the other buried in the drawer.
Hu is a high school junior from Livingston, NJ.
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