I never understood my father’s habit of going back to his hometown of Xingning every year.

Blessed to have a life filled to the brim with memorable childhood experiences, there is one that echoes through my head even today. When juxtaposed with Xingning, my current residence of Foshan replaces mountains and coal piles with bustling streets and towering skyscrapers. Because my family returns to Xingning every Annual Spring Festival, my childhood-self regrettably loathed these trips. Yet, even with my displeasure voiced, my father was undeterred. He piled our family into his car, and drove us in a hurry to the town. With the Annual Spring Festival often lining up with our visits, my father’s cheerful demeanor and giddiness saturated what was a miserable trip for myself. Constant smiles, local fried snacks, and wooden caricatures couldn’t replace the week of computer access or my sophisticated robots I lost. Without my luxuries and comfort, I truly felt the weight of my dependency on material goods to bring happiness.

On one of these countless drab treks towards Xingning, I found myself perusing an article profiling a Chinese-American Family. In the article the family was depicted making dumplings and attending a traditional Chinese festival. The daughter (who grew up in America) found herself confused by her family’s fidelity to their customs. In her eyes, her parent’s excitement towards events, such as a Chinese person appearing on a TV show and dumpling ceremonies, confounded her. The only thing the daughter identified with living in America was the opportunity for leisure, and in turn, the superiority of living in a developed country. With the daughter unable to see beyond the privilege American citizens possessed, this piece left a lasting and deep impression on me. In a moment of rare self-reflection, I saw my father’s story and my story. My inability to understand my father’s decision to return annually to his hometown perfectly encapsulated the little girl’s incomprehension of her parents’ preservation of Chinese customs. Instead, we both came to view affluence and economic development as our only standards for evaluating happiness.

From the earlier years of my life, I evaluated happiness as subjective entity. It wasn’t until my late teen years, and hundreds of kilometers later in Guangzhou, that I grasped its true meaning. Presented with a new set of challenges and aspirations at my new school, I found myself in a glamorous and academically competitive environment. As the academic stress accumulated, the need to go home became less apparent. When combined with my newly fueled desire to focus on studies, Guangzhou’s forest of shopping malls, dazzling nightlife, and convenient transportation surprised me. As the seasons changed and term after term passed by, I progressively became aware of the constant activities around me, but felt even more distant.  Armed with a jaded view of my routine life in Guangzhou, I often ate alone at the apartment, worked alone and studied alone. Instead of the noisy commotion I expected, my mother’s chatter drifted away and arguments with my father disappeared. No amount of personal connections or superior affluence in Guangzhou could make up for the fact that I still didn’t feel quite home.

Fast forwarding to present day Guangzhou, I find that my ideology of home has further evolved. During the continual hours spent alone, I slowly have honed a sense of belonging. Buried deep in the recesses of my mind, I sit at my desk in my apartment and begin to understand my father’s feelings and desire to reconnect with his past. Gradually, our annual Xingning migrations evolved into a rite of passage, with these trips to his little town accumulating meaning. Being able to empathize with my father now, I no longer see the keys of happiness in my luxuries. No longer shackled by a desire for material goods and luxuries, happiness finds me where I call home.