The call of home
It was my first night in the United States. My landlord had yet to tidy up my room so I stayed in his study. Waking in the middle of the night, I took a random book from a shelf: Chinese in San Francisco.
The first sentences in the foreword led me into deep thought: when Irish, German and Mexican people arrived in America, they took it as home and became masters there. Chinese, on the other hand, tended to think they would return to China eventually - despite the fact that they and their descendents would work hard and live there all their lives. All they had in return was a sense of homelessness.
On a trip to Taiwan once, I talked to a friend about the recognition of identity. I mentioned that mainlanders reminded overseas Chinese that their ancestors came from China. He answered: 'We also remind ourselves that our ancestors fled China despite hardship and danger because they did not want to live there.'
These are the last two lines of the ancient Chinese poem Yellow Crane Tower:
'The sun is setting now, but where is my home?
I can only stare at the misty river with my sorrow.'
In the long cultural history of China, there have been countless poems about homesickness; sentimental ancient poets were always reciting poems about being homesick when they were far away. Such works suggest that Chinese people always have special feelings about their homeland and their return is an undeniable innate desire.
Chinese people today, even those who can leave and go home at will, are still caught between their new and old homes when they return from their workplaces during the Lunar New Year or see their relatives after migrating overseas.
I often cite two lines of a Su Dongpo poem to describe the experience of these Chinese literati in exile, because the lines so accurately encapsulate their situation. I asked Chinese history professor Perry Link to translate the lines:
'While the burdens of my homeland/Torture my mind
I might bury my bones/In these hills that I find.'
It's true, people can feel homesick for their homeland even if they have found shelter elsewhere. But patriotic education today has pretty much neglected the way the ancients also embraced deep feelings and had an open-minded attitude to the world.
For people in the West, too, home can evoke complex emotions. The late American Nobel Prize-winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, in his play Beyond the Horizon, compared his homeland and foreign places to reality and an ideal, in order to tell a touching life story.
This topic was repeated in the 2008 film Revolutionary Road, which explores the issue of whether to leave a small, boring suburban town to live the romantic dream of moving to Paris. The struggle over the decision leads to a family tragedy.
German philosopher Martin Heidegger said that 'language is the home of being'. This is much like the ancient Chinese saying: 'The land of our ancestors can be sold, but their wise words cannot', a phrase that has been a source of comfort for many people in exile.
This reminds me of an essay that I've recently reread, and has inspired me again, about Romanian-born German Herta Muller, who won a Nobel Prize in Literature. She said the Jewish-German poet Paul Celan had to face the cruel reality after the Holocaust that German was not only his mother tongue but also that of the Nazis who killed his mother. Muller also wrote Home is What is Spoken There, a title based on a quote by Spanish writer and politician Jorge Semprun that language is not your home, but what you say.
Semprun's words are significant in that they show up the propaganda dictators like to propagate: a home that does not allow you to say certain things is nevertheless home, and a homeland without freedom must still be loved. Dictators tend to exploit people's lingering love of their homeland and respect for their ancestors in order to conduct populist patriotic or 'party-loving' education. This is a problem that people who pursue democratic freedom must always take heed of.
The advent of the 23rd anniversary of the June 4 incident brought all this to mind because many of the activists in exile have, since the 20th anniversary of the tragedy, been calling for permission 'to return home' or 'put down roots'. I fully understand their homesickness after they have been forced to live in exile for more than 20 years. I also understand how much they have missed their loved ones after being apart so long. My heart ached when I learned that exiled journalist Liu Binyan's last wish was to return home. I felt great sadness when Chinese democratic pioneers such as Fang Lizhi and Wang Ruowang died in exile overseas.
Yet appealing to be allowed to 'return home' is problematic. Other than winning sympathy from some, it blurs the true value of 20 years of painstaking efforts by overseas democratic activists.
'Homesickness' is a complex concept, and overseas activists should not unthinkingly agree with a dictator's simplistic view of home. Their struggles are different from those who went to San Francisco to make a living, or those who went to Taiwan to rebuild homes. They are not aiming to return to the motherland at all cost, but to build another democratic country. Their calls should not be a sad appeal for permission to 'return home'. Instead, they should demand the freedom to return home, as is their right.
Chang Ping is a current affairs commentator writing on politics, society and culture. This commentary is translated from Chinese
