On a deserted freeway in Sonoma County, I pass a shelter-in-place billboard under a cloudy sky.
By Steven Gu
Today, April 9th, much of this country is under the “shelter-in-place order.” But what is a shelter? One might simply say, a place to stay. Others might say it is your home. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “shelter” means “having a place to live or stay, considered as a basic human need.” However, the other definition of “shelter” is a place that offers “protection from rain, danger, or attack.” The shelter-in-place order had me wonder if it is possible to have a “shelter” that fits the first definition, but completely violates the second definition. A place to stay but that does not necessarily shelter you from all your fears and dangers.
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2005 was the Year of the Rooster. The location is an apartment complex on the outskirts of the Chinese city Nanjing, home to ten dynasties, as well as the revolution that brought down the last kings and queens.
There is this dark garage under one of the apartments. One may be able to make out the details of the garage with the colorless white lights coming from the few exposed fluorescent light tube overhead. The walls were painted white, but with the passing of each year, the paint faded and got darker and darker. There were two drainage canals across the entire length of the garage. After every rain, the moldy smell from the drainage would fill up the entire garage.
I was born into one of the apartments above. My father and mother were still married back then. We lived on the fifth floor. My parents’ marriage was rushed, like many couples in China back then. Less for love than it was for the social norm and the expectation of passing on family blood. My parents could not have been more different. My father would disappear for weeks and leave the house to travel to Vietnam without telling his spouse or child, while my mother was so persistent and anxious, worked at the same job her entire life, and worried about every small thing, such as what I got on each homework assignment. Yes, the apartment is a place to live and protected me from the rain, but it never shielded me from my mom’s sobbing, my father’s door slam, the shouting voice, and the confusion of what I did wrong to upset the people I love. To me, my shelter was not the apartment but the dim garage and that moldy smell.
Whenever the moldy smell rises into my nose, I know I am about to get in the car and go away for a moment. Maybe it is just a trip to the grocery store or to spend a weekend with my grandparents. That garage was my shelter, a place away from the shouting and fighting.
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I don’t remember the day or the year, but I eventually left the apartment permanently. It was empty by then: No more family left. Tears have run dry. My dad had made up his mind. He soon married the woman he had been secretly seeing since the day I was born. I spent the rest of my childhood in many more apartments, some near school, some far away.
An unidentified woman looks down from the mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen, the “father of modern China,” in Nanjing.
Every year, I lived with different sides of my family. Although I always had a shelter away from the elements and somewhere to sleep at night, that dark garage with the moldy smell remains my true shelter, a place where I felt safe.
Eventually, I asked my parents if they would allow me to go study abroad. They said yes. So at the age of 13, I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport by myself and started a journey away from all the shouting and fighting.
Some years later, I was back in China for the summer. My mom and I were at the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (right), walking under the branches of the London plane trees planted by Sun Yat-Sen and Madame Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of current day China. I asked her what had happened to the apartment. I knew she had it remodeled and was going to move in soon.
“I decided I am going to sell it,” she said. “It’s too big of a place for me to live, especially that I am alone now.” I don’t know if it is the size of the apartment or the weight of all her dreams and memories that happened upstairs. Perhaps, the apartment was her shelter for many years and having me is what made her remain hopeful despite all the misfortune.
“Yeah, it is very big,” I said.
We continued to walk under the arms of the London plane trees.
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2020 is the Year of the Rat. I wrote this dispatch in the living room of my shelter in Santa Rosa, California. I am with my parents, Sacha and John, whom I first met as my host family nearly seven years ago. We fight sometimes, but perhaps this is the story for the next time. Yet, this is now my shelter, along with the smell from the moldy garage.
Barbossa: The world used to be a bigger place.
Jack Sparrow: World’s still the same. There’s just less in it.