Eric Liu is an educator, lecturer, and author of Guiding Lights (2004), a book about mentorship. In this selection from The Accidental Asian (1998), he describes a childhood visit to Chinatown in New York City.

1

Another family outing, one of our occasional excursions to the city. It was a Saturday. I was twelve. I remember only vaguely what we did during the day — Fifth Avenue, perhaps, the museums, Central Park, Carnegie Hall. But I recall with precision going to Chinatown as night fell.

2

We parked on a side street, a dim, winding way cluttered with Chinese placards° and congested with slumbering Buicks and Chevys. The license plates — NEW YORK, EMPIRE STATE — seemed incongruous here, foreign. We walked a few blocks to East Broadway. Soon we were wading through thick crowds on the sidewalk, passing through belts of aroma: sweat and breath, old perfume, spareribs. It was late autumn and chilly enough to numb my cheeks, but the bustle all around gave the place an electric warmth. Though it was evening, the scene was lit like a stage, thanks to the aluminum lamps hanging from every produce stand. Peddlers lined the street, selling steamed buns and chicken feet and imitation Gucci bags. Some shoppers moved along slowly. Others stopped at each stall, inspecting the greens, negotiating the price of fish, talking loudly. I strained to make sense of the chopped-off twangs of Cantonese coming from every direction, but there were more tones than I knew: my ear was inadequate; nothing was intelligible.

3

This was the first time I had been in Chinatown after dark. Mom held Andrea’s hand as we walked and asked me to stay close. People bumped us, brushed past, as if we were invisible. I felt on guard, alert. I craned my neck as we walked past a kiosk° carrying a Chinese edition of Playboy. I glanced sidelong at the teenage ruffians on the corner. They affected an air of menace with their smokes and leather jackets, but their feathery almost-mustaches and overpermed hair made them look a bit ridiculous. Nevertheless, I kept my distance. I kept an eye on the sidewalk, too, so that I wouldn’t soil my shoes in the streams of putrid° water that trickled down from the alleyways and into the parapet° of trash bags piled up on the curb.

4

I remember going into two stores that night. One was the Far Eastern Bookstore. It was on the second floor of an old building. As we entered, the sounds of the street fell away. The room was spare and fluorescent. It looked like an earnest community library, crowded with rows of chest-high shelves. In the narrow aisles between shelves, patrons sat cross-legged on the floor, reading intently. If they spoke at all it was in a murmur. Mom and Dad each found an absorbing book. They read standing up. My sister and I, meanwhile, wandered restlessly through the stacks, scanning the spines for stray English words or Chinese phrases we might recognize. I ended up in children’s books and leafed through an illustrated story about the three tigers. I couldn’t read it. Before long, I was tugging on Dad’s coat to take us somewhere else.

5

The other shop, a market called Golden Gate, I liked much more. It was noisy. The shoppers swarmed about in a frenzy. On the ground level was an emporium° of Chinese nonperishables: dried mushrooms, spiced beef, seaweed, shredded pork. Open crates of hoisin sauce° and sesame chili paste. Sweets, like milky White Rabbit chews, coconut candies, rolls of sour “haw flakes.” Bags of Chinese peanuts, watermelon seeds. Down a narrow flight of stairs was a storehouse of rice cookers, ivory chopsticks, crockery, woks that hung from the wall. My mother carefully picked out a set of rice bowls and serving platters. I followed her to the long checkout line, carrying a basket full of groceries we wouldn’t find in Poughkeepsie. I watched with wonder as the cashier tallied up totals with an abacus.

6

We had come to this store, and to Chinatown itself, to replenish our supply of things Chinese: food and wares, and something else as well. We had ventured here from the colorless outer suburbs to touch the source, to dip into a pool of undiluted Chineseness. It was easier for my parents, of course, since they could decode the signs and communicate. But even I, whose bond to his ancestral culture had frayed down to the inner cord of appetite — even I could feel somehow fortified by a trip to Chinatown.

7

Yet we knew that we couldn’t stay long — and that we didn’t really want to. We were Chinese, but we were still outsiders. When any peddler addressed us in Cantonese, that became obvious enough. They seemed so familiar and so different, these Chinatown Chinese. Like a reflection distorted just so. Their faces were another brand of Chinese, rougher-hewn. I was fascinated by them. I liked being connected to them. But was it because of what we shared — or what we did not? I began that night to distinguish between my world and theirs.

8

It was that night, too, as we were making our way down East Broadway, that out of the blur of Chinese faces emerged one that we knew. It was Po-Po’s° face. We saw her just an instant before she saw us. There was surprise in her eyes, then hurt, when she peered up from her parka. Everyone hugged and smiled, but this was embarrassing. Mom began to explain: we’d been uptown, had come to Chinatown on a whim, hadn’t wanted to barge in on her unannounced. Po-Po nodded. We made some small talk. But the realization that her daily routine was our tourist’s jaunt,° that there was more than just a hundred miles between us, consumed the backs of our minds like a flame to paper. We lingered for a minute, standing still as the human current flowed past, and then we went our separate ways.

9

Afterward, during the endless drive home, we didn’t talk about bumping into Po-Po. We didn’t talk about much of anything. I looked intently through the window as we drove out of Chinatown and sped up the FDR Drive, then over the bridge. Manhattan turned into the Bronx, the Bronx into Yonkers, and the seams of the parkway clicked along in soothing intervals as we cruised northward to Dutchess County. I slipped into a deep, open-mouthed slumber, not awakening until we were back in Merrywood, our development, our own safe enclave. I remember the comforting sensation of being home: the sky was clear and starry, the lawn a moon-bathed carpet. We pulled into our smooth blacktop driveway. Silence. It was late, perhaps later than I’d ever stayed up. Still, before I went to bed, I made myself take a shower.

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