Back to the Future

BACK TO THE FUTURE

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back (Chinese proverb)

Beijing,1946-1948: As in any civil war, the last few years of the Chinese civil war were a combination of desperation, violence, chaos, and near-constant fighting with the most unnerving enemy of all: towering uncertainty.

While political and field battles raged across the country clashing out the ideals of a fading Nationalist government against a surging and ultimately victorious Communist party, in a small non-descript alley amid Beijing’s maze of hutongs, one family made their way into yet another home. Another home, another city, another new place to stay in search of safety and peace while trying to ensure some degree of normalcy.

Led by a powerfully determined matriarch, several Chang children dutifully organized themselves into the neighborhood known today as Hou Hai. Named “Back Seas” due to the lovely location just north of and thus behind the Forbidden City, this leafy area was home to swimming lakes where people brought their old wooden bird cages and enjoyed the ancient marble and stone bridges that gracefully arched across the narrow streams connecting the lakes. Indeed, it is said that even today one can tell where old vanished bridges once stood based on the location of the tallest willow trees that relied on the moving water streams. Or so say the old people who still call the area home.

Beijing,2015: The younger people there, however, only know of these ancient trees and bridges through stories. With an envious lake front view, most of these old hutong alleys have become cozy hangouts for bars, fancy restaurants and Starbucks coffee shops. But if one ventures deeper back into the alley maze, there is a very special little house with an even more special number: No 52. It was here that my father, our much beloved patriarch, spent what would be a final few years of his life in China.

The house of course is not the most special part. Like many traditional hutong houses, it is low lying, somewhat dark, and according to neighbors and people on the street, prone to mold and dampness like all other houses in the alley. The side entrance remains the main door, while the front area has been subdivided into a commercial space selling yet another menu of nameless cocktails.

But once Pop Chang stands in  front of that side door, something very special happens. The years fade away, as does the random second floor addition and roof-top garden that has sprung up on top of the house (residential regulations be damned!) Instead of the current year of 2015 and the honk and beep of traffic, I hear basically nothing but my own thoughts of the years and life that lay ahead for my father. Of how he would eventually sail from Shanghai to Taiwan, make his way to Washington State and Minnesota before landing in New York to then meet and marry a woman from Germany.  Of how he would play such a foundational role in shaping my life and that of my brother in ways that he could never have imagined when scampering over those long-lost bridges of HouHai.

And of how unbelievably mystical it is to see him, more than 50 years later, walk up to that same door with his family around him. And to know that all is well.