Early this summer I returned to Fuzhou, China. How to describe it… it felt like a traditional Chinese custom where we agreed to host a wedding reception in our name, that was really more for our parents and family than for us. A gathering more than a year in the making, my parents had been excited and nervous from the very beginning. My wife’s side of the family was making the trip from friendly Taiwan. As for me, I arrived, physically and emotionally fragile, after spending a couple of days rolling through Singapore in a wheelchair and the last 6 months battling an ongoing foot injury. And while I was genuinely happy to see my parents, brothers, grandparents, and relatives again, as soon as we set foot in the door, I immediately sensed the stress, pressure, and tension hanging in the air.

Over the next few days, I was met by a confluence of familiar yet strange new feelings. Returning to the place I grew up, surrounded by grandparents, grandaunts, granduncles, aunts, and uncles —many of whom still remember me best as the little boy who left years ago—was disorienting. Everything was just as it was, yet I was now seeing it all as an adult. With greater awareness of myself and understanding of the ways childhood has shaped me, so much about my family, our culture, and my upbringing started to come to light.

Since I was a kid I’ve been hypervigilant of those around me. Whether natural or developed, I have a close attunement to people’s moods, intentions, and feelings. I can discern with accuracy what people are trying to say behind a jumble of words, notice shifts in demeanor, or catch a flicker of one’s expression. I’m good at reading the room. Now I see that this was more an adaptation than a natural gift. In my family, and largely perhaps in the parts of Chinese culture that shaped us, directness and self-expression were never encouraged. We were all raised and taught to play our roles. 

I felt torn between contrasting emotions. On one hand, there is so much I love about my culture. Watching my grandmother and her five siblings continue caring for one another in old age moved me deeply. Seeing multiple generations gather around one table and observing our ingrained instinct to take care of the young and honor our elders. These traditions that have survived centuries, if not millennia, of unimaginable change… The shared understanding that family comes first. There’s much beauty in this closeness that I never want to lose.

Yet at the same time, I felt sad. What was unspoken and less obvious to me growing up was now all laid bare. The diminishing of the self. The choked back tears, low sighs, and cold shoulders. Family members quietly guessing what one another want instead of asking. Worrying about image, appearance, and how it might reflect on the entire family. Disappointment that nobody expresses but everyone feels. Grandma’s expression of child-like hurt. The same look I’ve seen on my dad’s face. The same face I’m certain I’ve made myself. The same withdrawal. The same silence. All unable to express ourselves. Grown adults behaving like children.

Perhaps the hardest part was seeing my parents through this new lens. Flipping through black-and-white photos of them as kids, I saw them for the small children they once were. They were raised in a time defined by scarcity and survival. Their parents worked tirelessly to provide the bare necessities, hardly able to offer any emotional care. As a kid, my dad told me how at the age of 9 or 10, my grandpa would tell him he needed to start behaving like an adult (he’d lecture us with this same sentiment). They were forced to bottle everything up and grow up so fast. I imagined my father learning that failure simply wasn’t an option. I imagined my mother learning that being a good daughter, wife, and eventually mother meant putting everyone else’s needs ahead of her own.

So much of who my parents became and how they raised us seemed to have been driven by fear. Fear that their children might struggle. Fear of judgment from their friends and family. Fear that one mistake could undo years of sacrifice. I have gained so much compassion for my parents’ experiences as people, yet it was difficult to accept that their fear dictated my own childhood. These realizations have led to conversations with my parents I never imagined having, and I’m very grateful they’ve been receptive.

I’m not sure how much of this belongs to my own family, to the older generations, or to the Confucian values that shape Chinese culture and society. These forces are at work when I read everyone else’s emotions instead of acknowledging my own, in my deep fear of disappointing the people I love, and in my inner voice telling me I need to be a good son. This trip showed me just how much of my family still lives inside me.

I fought to hide my tears as I recognized these patterns in myself while hearing my dad describe how he never felt like he was enough to his own parents. Every time I anticipated someone’s disappointment before they spoke, every time I swallowed up my own discomfort to keep the peace, I realized I was behaving exactly as I’d been taught to. Throughout this entire trip I’d been reliving my own childhood as an adult. It felt silly yet so staggeringly important at the same time.

My injury forced me to confront these deeply rooted cultural dynamics. Throughout the wedding reception, more than anything, I felt like I was letting everyone down by not playing my part. Unable to stand to greet people. Unable to hide my pain behind a convincing smile. I was simply… unable. I constantly worried that I was reflecting poorly on my family, my community, my people. That I was undoing all the painstaking work my mother had put in to perfect the event for our family and guests from Taiwan. That I was the one blemish that nobody could ignore.

I felt an overwhelming sense of shame and judgment. I felt a loss of self-agency being told by everyone what’s best for me. Being demanded to stand up to show respect when I couldn’t. Being scolded, being told how I’m burdening my wife, being told that it was unacceptable to be in this condition at such a young age. Quietly, I nodded and acknowledged. Without realizing, I’d become a child again, unable to assert myself. I was no longer living up to the “good child” version of me that everyone recognized me as. It was stifling.

After the wedding festivities ended, we headed to Shanghai, and my grandfather arranged for me to visit an elderly “martial healer” in Huzhou, a two-hour trip west. This man wasn’t a trained physician. His authority came in the form of deep familial trust and street credibility. By the time we arrived, I could already feel the weight of everyone’s expectations. My grandfather believed this man was going to help me, and my mother, for some reason, respected him immensely. The room itself carried an almost ceremonial atmosphere.

Over the next hour, the old man manipulated my feet, pressed painfully on different areas, rubbed herbal ointments across my skin, cranked my feet like a chiropractor, and then, out of nowhere, he told me to stand, walk, and jump. Every last nerve resisted. I hadn’t walked independently for months and I knew for certain this was going to worsen my injury. Yet to my full surprise, surrounded by family, authority, and their expectations, I stood up very gingerly. I paused. Shifted around a bit. Took a deep breath. Gulped back my fear, and then put one foot in front of the next. I began walking for the first time in five months.

After a nice meal packed with Jiangnan specialties that my mother paid for and countless symbolic rounds of toasts (me filling his glass with Chinese beer), the healer smugly charged us an unreasonable fee, claiming to have identified and healed thirteen “broken ligaments.” He’d come up with this bizarre number by pressing on arbitrary points on my feet with his fingers as hard as he could. The rate he decided on a whim? 600 RMB per ligament. I mostly felt manipulated and angry, yet I couldn’t deny what had happened. He may not have healed my body, but he gave me an invaluable wake-up call (I guess he did heal my body then, through my mind). I finally saw that I’m so much stronger than I think I am.

A few days later, when the time came to leave, I climbed into the back of a black BYD sedan and headed to the airport. The faint smell of cigarettes lingered in the upholstery. As I peered outside the window, the familiar parks, buildings, and street signs of Qibao drifted by. Memories of my middle school years and childhood visits to my grandparents’ home flooded in.

I pictured my grandpa biking along these same streets early in the morning to buy us breakfast (oh, to wake up to the smell of freshly fried youtiao). Playing ping pong with my grandma (she was really quite impressive and agile then!) I thought of my parents and my brothers, who we’d just said goodbye to… of the love and care they poured into me this trip, and throughout my whole life. The bittersweetness struck me to the core. I began to cry. They were tears of nostalgia. Tears of joy. Tears of gratitude.

The next few days, the faces and expressions of my parents, grandparents, grandaunts, and relatives floated through my mind. Their aggressive words of care mixed with criticism echoed in my head. Although the criticism still hurt to hear, I could now sense the fear beneath it. My grandpa wasn’t trying to control me. It was painful for him to see me like this, and all he wanted was to help me get better. My mom wasn’t worried about appearances for appearances’ sake. She was trying, in the best way she knew, to show the world that her family was okay.

The discomfort, stress, and difficult conversations I had this trip revealed much about who I am and who we are as a family. But at the end of the day, it was a reminder that I am loved. My family has never expressed it in clear ways. But I now see the shapes and forms our love takes on. Whether it be blunt criticism, unsolicited advice, relentless worrying, or the sacrifices so complete they go unnoticed, beneath it all is love. Boundless love.

My family’s roots are tightly intertwined and firmly grounded. And I now understand that becoming my own person doesn’t mean cutting out these parts of me. Instead, it means preserving its beauty while learning to lay down the shame, fear, and silence carried by my parents, their parents, and countless generations before me. We have quietly, exhaustingly carried this weight for far too long. If one day I’m lucky enough to have children of my own, my greatest hope is that they’ll inherit our love without quite so much of our fear.