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While travelling alone, I wasn't sure what my purpose was. I spent a lot of time in Airbnbs doing my freelance work. I had a research gig combing through recent media portrayals of China in the US to create a summary for an academic institution. I trawled through white papers describing Chinese student spies and ominous articles predicting a second cold war – abstract, alarming concepts that seemed far removed from the gentle patter of my family WeChat. The articles I read seemed to have no connection to the ordinary lives going on around me.
獨自旅行時我不確定自己的目的是什么。我花了很多時間在Airbnbs做自由職業者。我曾做過一項研究工作，梳理美國媒體最近對中國的描述，為一家學術機構撰寫摘要。我翻看了描述中國學生間諜的白皮書和預測第二次冷戰的不祥文章——這些抽象的、令人震驚的概念似乎和我家族微信群里的溫和模式相距甚遠，我讀的文章似乎和我周圍的日常生活沒有什么聯系。
In the evenings I stayed in my room and read manga. I had hardly anyone to see. Most of the time I was on my own.
晚上我呆在房間里看漫畫，我找不到什么人陪我，大部分時間里我都是一個人。
A year after my interviews, I did see my yeye one more time. Over Christmas 2019, I found myself in China again. This time, my parents, brother, and I were paying a quick family visit before returning to the US. yeye's dementia was worse. I asked after his novels, but still didn't get my hands on any. My nainai ate at a new hotpot restaurant with us in Hefei. In Shanghai, I dyed my hair blue. Three months after we returned home, the US locked down for the pandemic.
距離那次采訪一年后，我又一次看到了爺爺。2019年的圣誕節，我又來到了中國。這一次，我的父母、哥哥和我在回美國之前短暫地走了一次親戚。爺爺的癡呆更嚴重了。我詢問了他的小說，但還是一本都沒有拿到。奶奶和我們在合肥的一家新開的火鍋店里吃飯。我在上海把頭發染成了藍色。我們在回到家三個月后，美國因疫情進行了封鎖。
"還是想哭," my father said in the WeChat group after my grandfather's memorial was over. ("Still want to cry.")
“還是想哭，”爺爺的追悼會結束后父親在微信群里說。
Also: "這是人生." ("This is human life.")
還有：“這就是人生。”
In a eulogy written after my grandfather's death, my aunt wrote: "Father, you always wished for one of us to become a great writer. Your granddaughter is at this moment working towards that goal." When I read it, my first reaction was resentment, that they would use my dreams of being a writer to appease my grandfather's spirit. That after his death, the pressure on me would only increase. The pressure to honour his memory, and my grandmother's.
在我爺爺去世后寫的悼詞中，姑姑寫道：“父親，你一直希望我們中有一個能成為偉大的作家。你的孫女此刻正朝著這個目標努力。”當我讀到這里的時候我的第一反應是怨恨，他們在用我當作家的夢想來安撫爺爺的靈魂。他死后我的壓力只會增加，緬懷爺爺和奶奶的記憶的壓力。
