“Am I even Korean anymore if there’s no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?” 

This is a question that musician and author, Michelle Zauner, asks in her bestselling memoir, “Crying in H Mart.” As she meditates on the complex grief of losing her mother, Zauner contemplates the connection she has with her heritage. For Zauner, growing up, the bridge to her Korean heritage was her mother, who would cook Korean foods for her and made her feel more connected to her culture. As she walks through the aisles of H Mart, the Asian grocery store she used to go to with her mother, she tells the reader: “I can hardly speak Korean, but in H Mart I feel like I’m fluent.”

As two Chinese American students, Zauner’s writing reminds us about our experiences with our own grandparents, having grown up in a separate generation from them. What is our connection to them? More importantly, how do we maintain that connection when they’re gone, especially when they represent some of the strongest ties to our heritage?

Esther: When I first started learning how to read and write my family’s heritage language, Mandarin Chinese, I was already 19 years old and a freshman at Bucknell. As I memorized countless characters and learned unfamiliar grammar, I started asking myself big questions. Why am I learning this language? How can I continue learning the language and being passionate about Chinese culture? Asking questions eventually led to me writing a poem called “Grandmother,” dedicated to my maternal grandmother (婆婆). With my grandparents and parents getting older and my extended family living on the other side of the world in China (meaning I only see them around once a year), an inevitable truth started to settle in: one day, all my loved ones will pass away. Reflecting upon this hard truth, I wrote these lines: 

“I learn her language because I don’t want to lose her —

I am scrambling, memorizing as fast as I can

each new word I learn feels like oxygen, gasps of O2 coming to my rescue

it’s an invisible thread, sewing her closer to me,

freeing me falsely from my pending grief

that one day, I won’t be able to say hello,

only goodbye.”

For most of my life, my family has been my bridge to my heritage. They’re the ones who speak Mandarin and Cantonese to me. They’ve shown me how to celebrate Chinese holidays, whether that’s eating mooncakes together to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon festival (中秋节) or eating “tang yuan” (汤圆) together on the 15th day of Chinese New Year (春节). After writing the poem, I talked with my mother and earnestly asked a question that I later wrote into a second draft of the poem: “after farewell, how will I ever speak a language so closely tied to my family?” 

With true motherly wisdom, she told me: “you’re right — one day, we will be gone.” I remember staring wide eyed at my mother, wanting to ask immediately “what do you mean?” before hearing her next sentence: “We may be your bridge right now, but one day, you’ll be the bridge — through you, our memory and culture lives on.” The words she said to me that night would later be the last stanza of the final poem: 

“One day,

when you speak the family tongue

to your offspring,

know that you preserve our love

and in these words,

you encapsulate our memory.”

As I write this, I recognize that I’m not alone. Reading Aaron’s articles in the Bucknellian has also given me a great sense of joy and reminded me that no journey is the same. Moreover, after writing an article about exploring heritage through the lens of food, the response I received from family, friends and strangers made me realize how important it is to keep writing about multicultural identity. 

As we (Aaron and Esther) close out the year, we think it’s important to remind ourselves to connect with our culture, and this can take many forms. Whether it’s through an object, a person or a place, remaining in touch with our culture is more important now than ever. As Zauner writes, “Maybe I was just terrified that I might be the closest thing she had to leaving a piece of herself behind.” In life, we will all eventually lose our loved ones and the bridges that they once provided to connect us to our culture, but for us, we hope to honor and love our family by becoming the bridge for those that come after us.

Aaron: When my grandmother passed away in 2020, I didn’t quite know how to grieve. In my head, there was no way that she could actually be gone. With so many amazing memories with her, there was a hole in my life that I couldn’t fill. On top of that, she passed away during a global pandemic, and only a handful of people (out of the hundreds that she knew) were able to bury her. 

I didn’t really cry when she passed, either. It was like I was in a wall of denial, and as I watched everyone around me grieve in a more “traditional” way, I couldn’t help but think that I should have grieved more. What was wrong with me? And why do I miss her more now, five years later? Is it because now I have a more clear picture of the profound impact she had on my life? Or is it because as I graduate college and enter a new chapter of my life, I have learned to appreciate every moment of my life as much as I can?

Or, maybe it’s my jade necklace. Two years ago, my father bought me and my brother matching jade necklaces for Christmas. In Chinese culture, jade has many meanings, like virtue, wisdom and compassion, all qualities that my grandmother exemplified. So now, as I wear my jade necklace every day, I feel similarly to how Zauner felt walking through the aisles of H Mart. I view it as a bridge that connects myself to not only my grandmother but to my Chinese culture at large. I now carry her memory with me every day. Every day, I remember the sacrifices that she made for me, and this informs every decision I make and the person I am now.

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