Floating Among It All

A Life of Science: A Series by New Scientists

Navigating the intricate network of Chinese family and tradition while forging bonds with a vibrant new community.

  

In muggy heat, my parents and I hunt through 上環 / Sheung Wan for shiitake. The entrance of each dried seafood store is guarded by faux marble pillars, making me feel like we’re stepping into miniature alternate dimensions. Lazy, fat cats yawn on glass countertops, guarding cabinets stuffed full of dried tangerine peel, angora root, and sea cucumbers. Kittens cavort on shelves, enticing tourists to come in out of the monsoon rains and browse. On winding 永樂街 / Wok Ying / Dried Seafood Street, there are many such stores clustered together. Not knowing much about shiitake quality other than “the most expensive are supposed to be grown in pieces of wood” and “they should be fragrant,” we wander through stores at random.

My father haggles half-heartedly with the shopkeepers. It’s not much use. There’s something distinctly American about our little trio, and the shopkeepers have priced accordingly the bag of dried shiitake that my father’s clutching. It might be his Columbia windbreaker and backpack, my mother’s proclivity for smiling at strangers, my too-straight teeth and tanner skin, my slower Cantonese, or the way my parents use ’80s slang but don’t recognize more recent terms. All these little details signal that we don’t quite belong. We’re masquerading: my parents as faithful citizens who have never left, and I as someone with any birthright to be here. Or perhaps I’m being harsh to detract from the desperate feeling that I’ve lost something that has never really been mine.

Several aunties have asked us to bring the highest quality shiitake we can find back home. All we know is that these will be called dried 花菇 / faa guu / flower mushrooms, though we have no information to shield us from scams. These aunties are aunts not by way of blood but through the shared experiences of migrating from Hong Kong or Guangdong to San Francisco. Through the tenuous instinct of enclave reinforced by shared resources and expertise.

Bringing food from homeland to home, or vice versa, is a tradition I and many other members of the diaspora have many years of practice in. Stuffing cans of smoked Blue Diamond almonds and Costco packages of whole pistachios and Ghirardelli chocolates into suitcases and flying them to Hong Kong at my relatives’ behest. Finding Korean eyeliners and Japanese sunscreens and potato chips flavored like sweet cheese or coconut chicken soup and bringing them back to San Francisco. My cousin once ran through the Taipei airport on a half-hour layover to find a package of sun cakes because he’d remembered that I like them.

We’re not just tourists smuggling souvenirs home. We bring back the creature comforts promised by the American dream—see, we left for a reason. We bring back remnants, keys, snatches of memories that sustain and tantalize—see, we left but we cannot forget.

Though as a child of America who only ever lives in Hong Kong for weeks, with long years that stretch into developmental stages between visits, I certainly feel like a tourist in this bustling city that I once called my second home.

Mushrooms have little to no caloric value, and yet many mushrooms are sought after as delicacies, prized by cultures around the world—matsutake in Japan, truffles in France, chanterelles in Nordic countries, heung gu and reiki in China. Many Eastern doctors tout mushrooms for health as they provide protein, B vitamins, zinc, and copper. More culinarily important, they provide flavor.

When I crave food that reminds me of home, food that my parents and grandmothers made to remind themselves of a Hong Kong which remains intact only in their memories, I most often use dried shiitake. Not the 花菇 / faa guu variety of shiitake smuggled for and by my aunties, but vacuum-sealed packages of their cheaper 冬菇 / dong guu cousins. Even dried, the little cracked caps are fragrant. A handful of 冬菇 quickly rehydrated, minced, and mixed, floating whole, and steamed in curved slices punches up the flavor of each dish they sing with. Quick brothy soups, steamed meatloafs, dumplings, knife-cut noodles. Each dish only requires a few dried mushrooms to absorb and harmonize the flavors around them, to sing in their own right.

Like tiny fungi forming symbiotic relationships with plant roots, immigrant communities thrive in America with the support of sprawling mutual aid networks, invisible unless you know what to look for.

To be truthful, that trip back to Hong Kong was far from idyllic. Though the scenery was beautiful and it was a blessing to see aging relatives that I hadn’t been able to visit since well before the pandemic, my parents and I fought viciously every day for three weeks. Sea salt wafted heavily through the air as if trying to distract us from our petty squabbles. The orchid and banyan trees towered above us, enveloping us in their fragrant shade as if shielding us from ourselves.

In fact, that trip was the longest time I’d spent with my parents since I’d moved out for college at 17. After moving to Arizona for my creative writing MFA, 700 miles away from home, I had convinced myself that my parents and I could coexist in the same space without trying to kill each other. It was the typical wish of a child of immigrants, my ultimate blind spot: the desire to belong not only to Hong Kong, but to a family that fits together.

Instead, this is how it goes. My dad and mom needle one another constantly, bringing to mind drag queens reading their competitors to filth on Rupaul’s Drag Race; these petty insults quickly devolve into screaming matches. I forget all the boundary-setting skills I’ve learned in therapy. It’s like I’m living my teenage life again, running interference, refereeing, picking sides, cajoling, begging, crying, joining in the insults with all the cunty cruelty I’ve tried so hard to grow away from. Eventually I retreat into long text conversations with my girlfriend, who I’m also fighting with nearly every day, and completely ignore anything they say.

Midway through the trip, my mother and I take a day for ourselves. She tells me that my father infuriates her so much that she’d leave him in a heartbeat, leave the house and their joint bank accounts so she doesn’t kill him or herself. I’ve heard this for a decade and nothing’s happened, so I just nod. Then she tells me, apropos of nothing, that she’s bisexual. I haven’t heard this before, so after banning any talk about my father, we tentatively circle around my relationship problems and stories about her exes from 50 years ago. We come back to the hotel in a little unit which intentionally excludes my father. This is another pattern we’ve lived over and over again: two against one never lasts, no matter who’s in the alliance.

My father retaliates by refusing to walk or talk with us. Instead he silently follows us down the street, always a few steps behind, a sullen dog tagging at our heels. His tantrum lasts until he explodes, as it always does. This time he nearly gets arrested by four subway station agents because he refuses to leave or stop shouting until he gets a refund for a $2 ride. While he paces back and forth between the turnstiles like a feral animal in a cage and my mother tries to calm him down, the station agents and I type desperately into Google Translate, trying to find meaning together.

Hidden below ground, mushroom “roots” or hyphae—from the Greek web or to weave,thin branchlike structures—feather through substrate and soil. Collectively known as mycelium—from the Greek more than one—these structures can stretch out for hundreds of miles, across rolling hills, intertwining with forests. Branching and twining through substrate, they grow longer by reaching forward, forming lacy networks. They wrap around and weave through plant roots. They lend plants nutrients in return for a share of the carbon harvest. They interknit and connect together, joining the roots of individual plants to one another through sprawling underground networks.

It’s not a new concept—everything in nature depends on many other beings for survival, even when it’s not apparent to the naked eye—but it’s still a truth we can learn from. I’ve learned much of how to live from the network of my family, imperfect as it is, blood-related and chosen. I’ve learned how to survive from groups of immigrants who hold fast together. Who edits resumes or practices interview questions for the green card and barters bakery bread for pharmaceutical references or helps with taxes. Sprawling networks connected by the tenuous need to survive. More than that, to thrive.

 

Ectomycorrhizal relationships, meaning the mutually beneficial relationship between fungi and the roots of a plant—ecto coming from the Greek word for outside, myco from fungal, and rhiza from root—are important to the survival of many species of woody plants and trees. Ectomycorrhizal fungi decompose biomass in the soil enveloping the roots of plants, making nutrients more accessible. The fungi receive increased amounts of carbon and carbohydrates formed by photosynthesis, while the plants receive increased amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus. With this symbiotic support, root growth occurs at a much faster rate, stretching far and deep into the surrounding soil.

Those unseen connections are another of nature’s lessons from which we can learn. Like tiny fungi forming symbiotic relationships with plant roots, immigrant communities thrive in America with the support of sprawling mutual aid networks, invisible unless you know what to look for. A tapestry with its shuttle flying back and forth on the loom, weaving an unspoken standard of care. One of my uncles delivers leftover bread from his bakery job; another auntie mends and tailors clothes in her spare time at her laundromat; this uncle does everyone’s taxes every April; that auntie calls hospitals to demand itemized medical bills and negotiate the cost; these cousins babysit and edit college applications, resumes, emails; yard tools, cribs, toys, and bags of children’s clothes are passed on and on and on.

A month after I move to Tucson, I see a post on Lex, a queer app deliberately stylized like the Craigslist missed connections section for the manufactured retro vibe. Someone is hosting a queer potluck on Sunday evening and all are welcome. “What the hell,” I think. “It’s not like I have any friends here yet.” And so I bake some apple coffee cake, dress cute, and make my way over. To my surprise, the event is only three blocks away from my house.  At least 15 queers mill about awkwardly making small talk. The indie playlist of host Juliet twines around the string lights floating above our heads. I leave with an empty loaf pan, a fuller heart, and an invitation to next month’s gathering.

That first year, Juliet hosts a potluck nearly every month. I’m quickly plugged into the greater Tucson queer & mutual aid scene. Eventually the people I meet at Juliet’s potlucks become protest buddies, clothing swap hosts, game night stalwarts, Curb Alert comrades, hotpot invitees. Friends. AJ and I host dumpling wrapping parties for Lunar New Year and teach half of the attendees how to fold the dumplings into neat little parcels. We save seats for one another at city hall meetings. A group of us make infographic flyers for Palestine and learn how to wheatpaste them onto lampposts downtown. Juliet and I hold hands in a line with other students and community members outside the Palestine campus encampment while the University of Arizona campus police press forward and fire pepper balls indiscriminately into the crowd.

Some of my friends have moved out of Tucson all across the country: New Jersey, Vermont, San Diego, Los Angeles. Rather than severing, the filaments that connect us strengthen, flexing and stretching across thousands of miles. We keep open-door policies, ironclad promises of warm beds, homes to visit. I root deeper into Tucson, the desert no longer suffocating, its sunsets and nighttime galaxies enveloping me. I miss home, my communities in the Bay Area. But these potlucks become part of the sprawling network of friendship and love that connects me to my chosen family.

The possibilities for root disruption spool endlessly on, too familiar and too many to name for those living in diaspora.

Ectomycorrhizal systems are quite sensitive. Pine trees are particularly dependent on soil with compatible ectomycorrhizal fungi that provide access to nutrients, giving them a better chance of surviving and thriving. Once their roots are inoculated with fungi from their native habitats, sensitive trees’ growth drastically slows if transplanted into soil without those same fungi. So how do we adapt once we’ve been transplanted? We thrive when we’re surrounded by the familiar,  the vestiges of the home that nurtured us. And if we can’t physically be enveloped by a sense of home, the people around us hold home for us.

Yet if we don’t have hyphae, how do we connect to our roots? What do we do if we have strained relationships with our family? If we are adopted? If our parents’ roots to culture and community are tenuous, too? The possibilities for root disruption spool endlessly on, too familiar and too many to name for those living in diaspora. How do we access our cultural traditions, make sense of our identities, navigate immigration and assimilation? How do we adapt to new situations while holding on to what works for us?

The times when I couldn’t speak to my family for months on end without fighting made it clear just how quickly I could lose easy access to my culture. Over the years, the causes changed, but the burning fallout remained the same: we fought over my queerness, their stuttering marriage, my limited Cantonese vocabulary, my decision to move to Arizona for graduate school, on and on. What changed wasn’t my parents miraculously understanding what it’s like to be the first person in a family line to grow up in America, or my sudden ability to understand how painful it was for them to leave home and feel their ways of living slipping out of their grasp. It has been a painfully slow process of acceptance on both our parts. Even now my family and I fight, albeit much less than before. The difference is that these fights feel less painful because I have other systems of support to nourish me, to absorb that burnout.

髮菜 / faat choy, also known as terrestrial cyanobacterium, is crucial to Lunar New Year dinners in Cantonese culture, because its common name is a homophone for the phrase “strike it rich.” When boiled in soups and hotpot broths, this land-dwelling algae floats in the water like long, flowing black strands of hair, lending a salty chewiness to a dish. My family and I eat 髮菜 every year for our Lunar New Year hotpot, little boiled bundles tangled around our chopsticks. But 髮菜 is environmentally destructive to the Mongolian steppes where it’s harvested. For even one Lunar New Year dinner’s worth of 髮菜, about 1,250 square feet of land or one-sixth of a football field must be dug up, causing extreme desertification and soil erosion. Lack of vegetation and the absence of roots cause sand to blow over the communities living around those harvesting areas, disrupting daily life. 

In fact, the consequences of farming 髮菜 has been so detrimental that its sale and harvesting have been banned in mainland China for 20 years. The Hong Kong government declared that it would stop serving 髮菜 at official government dinners in order to encourage consumers to find alternatives for their New Year celebrations. More and more scientists and chefs are advocating for the innovation and creation of more environmentally friendly traditions. One such suggestion is to include stir-fried 生菜 / saang choy / lettuce at the table instead, since the common name for lettuce is a homophone for the Cantonese phrase “creating prosperity.”

Yet 髮菜 still holds cultural significance. In turn there remains high demand for it, especially in Hong Kong and abroad, where importation and sale is not yet banned. Overconsumption of 髮菜 is still a significant issue.

As I’ve tried to figure out who I am in relation to the world. I’ve gone through different stages of relating to my parents, and the immigrant community I come from. I’ve written off my family as having nothing to teach me, denouncing their advice as completely irrelevant to my second-generation experience. I’ve tried to venerate their suffering as sacred, blaming myself for not living up to their idea of a good Chinese daughter. Now I’m trying to make sense of what their lived experience can teach me in the context of diaspora. Their stretching roots, though they germinated in different soil, sustained and nourished me. What could easily be written off as dysfunction was once survival instinct, forged for a reason.

The day my parents and I spent hunting for shiitake was a refuge from all our fighting. The rain, cats, and jars of mysterious dried goods served as witness to our tentative truce. We were united by the need to provide for our family. To show my auntie that we care. This instinct is deeply rooted in Chinese values—prioritize community and the filial responsibility to care for your family over your own insignificant dramas.

I’m not arguing that traditional values are the ultimate way we should live our lives. I’ve seen how an emphasis on the collective causes family members to repress their wounds until they come out in weird, passive-aggressive resentments. But these caring instincts can serve me well, if I hold them with respect to the cultures that have shaped me, American and Chinese. The mutual aid that my parents practice feeds into the mutual aid that my friends practice. The deliberate actions of community care enacted by my families, both blood and chosen, teach me to look outwards at the people around me.

 

Almost a year ago, I hosted a Lunar New Year hotpot for the first time. I’d just moved to Tucson. Six months in, not knowing anyone in Tucson well enough, I sent wavering invitations out, yearning for some semblance of connection. I rehydrated the shiitake my parents had sent me from Hong Kong, their nutty fragrance perfuming my apartment. Amanda brought the watercress and fish balls, and I laid out the thin rolls of pork and lamb. We sat around attempting small talk. For most of the night, there was only the sound of bubbling broth and chewing. But we had eaten together. Communal eating: the remedy to diasporic loneliness.

As I write this, Lunar New Year quickly approaches again. This year, my roots have branched out, thickened, reciprocity strengthening connection. My friends and I have plenty of practice hosting hotpot nights now, dumpling wrapping parties, karaoke, and communally cooked soup & movie nights besides. I have all the meat and aromatics. Kevin and AJ will bring the dumplings, Aria the tofu, Amanda the watercress, Juliet the dried tofu sticks, and Geramee and Leah whatever vegetable I’ve realized last minute I’ve run out of. Everyone else will bring their must-have ingredients, too. Shrimp, fish balls, fish tofu, cabbage, ramen and udon and vermicelli. And floating among it all, rescued and rehydrated from my aunties’ overstuffed care packages, the glistening, wrinkly caps of shiitake.