My heart should not be so troubled. It’s a beautiful morning. I am sitting on the porch with chirping birds, a soft breeze, and our dog beside me. By all outward appearances, I am the embodiment of a dream. Two dreams, really, one American and one Chinese.
As I’m writing in English, the American one will be more familiar to readers. Having been raised by a low-earning, immigrant single mother, I now live in a prestige neighborhood where many of my neighbors are, like Regina and me, doctors or lawyers.
As for the Chinese dream, it is the one dreamt by my grandparents. The one that speaks more to the living of a quiet, peaceful life, of guo-ing xiao ri zi, than of living a triumphant one.
Yet, as US-China relations decline amidst a global pandemic, and as the leaders of both superpowers try to suppress various rebellions against the knee of oppression under which so many of their citizens live, dreams have become nightmares. Trump gives succor to white supremacy, while Xi turns the screws of dictatorship. “White Power” is tweeted. Hong Kong is lost.
It seems telling that the most at-home (politically) I’ve felt in recent years–the most I feel I am among sane people–has been when I have been in communities struggling against either regime. Nowhere have I felt more strongly the shared conviction that all people have equal moral worth, and are entitled to lives of dignity, than among activists in the Chinese democracy and Black Lives Matter movements. And it seems telling that the chauvinistic and nationalistic regimes against which both movements are more or less directed are now engaged in a new cold war against each other.
Thankfully, the two other places close to my heart, Canada and Taiwan, offer rays of hope, if only in comparison with the two superpowers.
That’s it. That’s the post. Hopefully the rest of the year, and the rest of the century, are better.