Chapter 8: Seeing Stars

Yuan slowly walks out after finishing and paying for her coffee, still shaken up from the news of Guojun. Perhaps another day when she has more time, she’ll give him a call, and ask to meet up so they can talk. As Yuan looks up at the sky, the stars in the sky shyly hide behind the heavy, dominating cloud cover. It has been a long time since Yuan’s actually seen stars; the last time was when she visited the hometown of her great-grandparents in the countryside in Cuijiacun. There are no tall buildings, no night lights, no Dior, no trains or airplane flights. The countryside is quieter, peaceful, and simpler; of course, the trade for westernized amenities comes with a price. Because the ride from her home to her great-grandparents place was only 30 minutes, Yuan did not even notice the transformation of scenery. Yuan remembers looking outside the truck window; the cold, metallic atmosphere along the abiotic skyline of Jiujiang changed to living, breathing rice patties lining the grassy hills within a blink of an eye. The rivers of black asphalt in the city ran dry into narrow dirt capillaries. Things have since changed though; the urban sprawl of Jiujiang has invaded the natural landscape in Cuijiacun. Cuijiacun has become an urban enclave of Jiujiang, the farmer markets replaced with small store fronts, the old, more decrepit houses marked for demolition and reconstruction.

Yuan and her family haven’t gone back to Cuijiacun in more than 10 years. The westernization has affected her in two ways. On one side, Yuan would probably not even recognize the places that she saw as a little girl, as many districts were bulldozed and reconstructed to fit in with the ever-expanding urban machine. On a more personal level, the westernization has changed her family’s priorities since her great-grandparents’ and grandparents’ generations. The focus on filial piety, or xiaoshun, has been shifted; no longer is the focus on the previous generation, rather, it’s shifted to the younger generation. Yuan has maybe visited her ancestors on two occasions, but that was when she was young. After her father landed a travelling business position, it’s hard to ever find time to travel back to Cuijiacun as a family. Just within her family, her parents don’t seem to apply the concept of xiaoshun to her; they are content with maybe a phone call every 1 or 2 weeks saying that she’s still okay. They don’t require her to send money back; her father brings home enough so that she doesn’t need to worry about it. What will I do with my own children? And what about grandchildren? I’m not even sure how true xiaoshun is displayed. Yuan doesn’t know what to expect for her family’s future, let alone whether her children will be filial.