I“Catchment Homes and Chinatown: The Distance Between Two Starting Lines”
I
On a gray April day, as the airplane door opened, a gust of cold, crisp air rushed in. I held tightly to my mother’s hand, my steps hesitant but tinged with quiet hope. I was fourteen that year. I had just transferred out of a top middle school in Fuzhou, not even having the chance to say goodbye to my deskmate, before my father’s visa papers brought us to Canada.
The Vancouver sky was gray, like a dream that hadn’t yet woken up. The airport signs and announcements were in English—language I didn’t understand. The only thing I could hold onto was the warmth of my mother’s palm and the unnatural smile on my father’s face—the same man who once strode through Fuzhou with confidence, now working as a dishwasher in Chinatown.
We rented a one-bedroom apartment near acquaintances, on the edge of Chinatown. The hallways were worn, the elevator plastered with notices in Cantonese and simplified Chinese. Outside our window stood old brick walls, flickering neon lights, and faded ads for dim sum. I didn’t dare go out alone. At night, we often heard shouting from downstairs.
The environment was always noisy. At night, it was sirens; at dawn, garbage trucks roaring past. Strangers yelled in the dark, and homeless men pushed shopping carts beneath our window, the wheels scraping loudly against concrete. Even during the day, I didn’t feel safe going out alone.
Across the street lived a clean and orderly Chinese family. Their daughter was a top student in my class; her father was a teacher. Their curtains glowed with warm light every night, a soft reminder of a life we once had—or perhaps never truly had.
Back in Fuzhou, our neighbor had also been a teacher. He taught at a well-known local high school and played badminton with my father on weekends, often bringing over a bag of fresh olives. That neighborhood was quiet and dignified, where neighbors greeted each other with polite nods, and life moved in calm, upward rhythms.
But in this Vancouver apartment building, our neighbors were often ex-convicts, alcoholics, or elderly people surviving on welfare. The hallways smelled of smoke and instant noodles. Some banged on walls at night; others shouted in the early morning. I lived in constant unease. Even the slightest sound outside our door could send my heart racing.
Fear hung in the air like fog. The language barrier, the chaotic surroundings, the stark shift in social status—all of it was painfully clear. Without my parents beside me, I might have mentally collapsed. I felt like I was walking a tightrope, barely balancing between terror and numbness, pretending everything was okay.
My world used to be filled with doctors, teachers, and company bosses. Now, it was the poor, scavengers, and silent landlords. The world hadn’t changed—my place in it had dropped.
I still remembered our bright five-bedroom catchment home in Fuzhou, near a museum and a top school. Every morning, the school gate bustled with uniformed children and tired-looking parents. My backpack held medals, and the walls of our home were lined with trophies. My father would always say: “Just a few more years—you’ll get into a top university.”
II
In our Chinatown apartment, there was no desk. I did my homework on a small kitchen table. Beside me were the sounds of my mother washing vegetables and my father’s occasional cough. They never argued, but a heavy silence stood between us, walling us off into our own worlds.
At school, I was the quietest one in the ESL class. My classmates talked about celebrities, parties, and Netflix. I couldn’t even finish an English book smoothly. I knew my grammar was all wrong, but I didn’t speak up, didn’t ask, didn’t seek help. I just kept my head down, writing each letter slowly into my workbook.
One evening after school, I saw my father crouching outside a supermarket, flipping through discount flyers. He wore a cap, head bowed, phone in one hand—on the screen was a loan calculator.
Standing on the street corner, I thought of the study room in Fuzhou, where sunlight filtered through the blinds, and of the quiet, focused girl I once was. In that moment, I understood: that catchment house wasn’t just a place to live—it was a promise. A promise that you could rise.
But here, this Chinatown apartment was merely a shelter. A place without a starting line. A place where you had to pave your own road from scratch.
Eventually, my father left. Financial pressure soon followed. To save on rent, we moved to an even shabbier place, closer to where the homeless gathered. At sixteen, I started working at McDonald’s to help ease the family burden—cashier, server, whatever they needed.
The sense of dislocation made me feel emotionally drained, but I kept my head down and worked. Standing at the dish pit, scrubbing dirty plates, I finally began to understand what it must have felt like for my father—a man who once led dozens of employees—to endure that silent humiliation in a foreign kitchen.
Fear and depression spread slowly—quiet, but inescapable. I often returned home late at night, walking past homeless encampments, through broken alleys, to our small, damp, musty-smelling apartment. Meanwhile, the girl across the street was picked up by her parents every day at 5 p.m.—never having to see the night.
III
Years later, we moved out of Chinatown. I got into college and became the first in my family to attend a post-secondary school in Canada.
But I never forgot that spring. I never forgot the nights spent with my father looking up housing prices, the sound of my mother’s footsteps returning home at dawn, or that evening I cried silently in the kitchen corner—while old Cantonese songs drifted through the walls.
I began writing stories. Stories about my father’s hunched back at the sink. About the catchment home we sold. About the girl by the apartment window, using a dictionary to get through a single English novel, word by word.
I wrote this line:
“I stepped away from the class passport my parents gave me—and in the corner of a foreign land, slowly learned to build my own bridge.”
