Tangshan was ravaged by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake on July 28, 1976. An earthquake report written years later said that within minutes, “85% of the buildings collapsed or were rendered unusable, all services failed, and most highway and railway bridges collapsed or were seriously damaged” (Huixian et al.). An article in the Building Safety Journal described how, because the earthquake struck during the humid midsummer season, “survivors scrambled out into the open naked, covered only in dust and blood, to see the entire city levelled” (Lukasik). 

My grandparents lived through that earthquake, and I understand why no one ever talks about it. When I asked Grandma, she said my dad was turning one month old that day. Having refused to sleep all night, he kept my grandparents awake just in time for the first tremors to be felt, for them to rush out before anyone else, for them to find safety—only to hear later the news that Grandma’s eldest sister did not survive.

Thirty-one years later, I was born. Before immigrating to Canada with my parents, I spent the first year of my life in Jinchuanyuan, a small countryside village on the outskirts of Tangshan, about a two-hour drive east of Beijing. Unless you live in one of the few apartment buildings that jut out of the farmlands to form the village’s sparse skyline, you have no postal code—the mail is delivered to a single, rusted mailbox at the side of the road, a ten-minute drive on the dirt paths, through the cornfields, and past the corner stores.

Apart from a single location pin on the map, Google knows little else of my home village. Tucked away in a cluster of villages surrounded by farmland, Jinchuanyuan remains a secret only the locals can tell. On a map, it’s unclear where the village starts or ends. It resembles a poorly stitched patchwork quilt: dashed with forgotten railway tracks, intersected by gravel roads, and rudely cut off by a transnational train line.

We stay at Grandma’s every summer when we return to our village. There’s no direct train or bus to Jinchuanyuan, so every year, landing at the Beijing International Airport, we are forced to be a little more patient before we are home. The sun always manages to be setting when we land, our first day already ending. Sunset spills onto our laps through the car window as we watch the horizon dip the cornfields in honeycomb gold. 

Here, the telephone lines hang loosely in the distance, limp wires stretching out into the expanse, and the air is always warm. Every morning, I wake up to a vendor hawking his wares in the distance. The chicken coop in the backyard is usually silent, its tin roof dotted with the morning dew, when I follow Grandma outside to the tingzi. Mellow incense permeates the air as she starts to steep tea. The tinkling trickle of water against her collection of tea pets and her steady singing voice are the only things I hear as I let the notes of chrysanthemums, goji berries, and red dates stray into the dream of these mornings. 

In the evenings, the cicadas chirp loudly as Grandma passes out her handmade straw fans. She nags me to spray pungent herbal insect repellent to relieve the phantom itch of my mosquito bites. The air cools enough for everyone to gather near the koi pond outside for tea. Soon, my cousins will join us, and we will take our bicycles out from the shed my aunt built for us years ago, and we will ride our bikes in the falling dusk as we race each other through the empty dirt roads. Our voices will echo far into the cornfields as we avoid the bumps and craters we have known all summer. For now, I sit with a plate of sugar-sprinkled tomatoes in my lap as Grandma gets misty-eyed while repeating the same stories from when I was one, the last time we really lived together—about when I stuck stickers onto her bedroom door, or about my very first art piece, a plastic pink flower, which is still taped to her thermos.

On our last day, everyone gathers around our car as we finish loading the last of the suitcases, backpacks, and plastic bags of steamed corn picked for our flight out. Grandma hands me a thermos through the car window filled with the tea we were too rushed to have this morning. I want to ask her about her stiff leg. I want to ask her to tell me about my great-aunt again. I want to ask her if she will feel well enough to take the two-hour drive and see us to the airport.

But instead, I sit in silence.

As the car reaches the single rusted mailbox, the scent of chrysanthemum, goji berries, and red dates fills the back seat. The morning sun follows us through the tinted car window, its light spilling onto our laps as we gaze into the distance and take a last look at the fields.