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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.
独自旅行时我不确定自己的目的是什么。我花了很多时间在Airbnbs做自由职业者。我曾做过一项研究工作，梳理美国媒体最近对中国的描述，为一家学术机构撰写摘要。我翻看了描述中国学生间谍的白皮书和预测第二次冷战的不祥文章——这些抽象的、令人震惊的概念似乎和我家族微信群里的温和模式相距甚远，我读的文章似乎和我周围的日常生活没有什么联系。
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.
晚上我呆在房间里看漫画，我找不到什么人陪我，大部分时间里我都是一个人。
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.
距离那次采访一年后，我又一次看到了爷爷。2019年的圣诞节，我又来到了中国。这一次，我的父母、哥哥和我在回美国之前短暂地走了一次亲戚。爷爷的痴呆更严重了。我询问了他的小说，但还是一本都没有拿到。奶奶和我们在合肥的一家新开的火锅店里吃饭。我在上海把头发染成了蓝色。我们在回到家三个月后，美国因疫情进行了封锁。
"还是想哭," my father said in the WeChat group after my grandfather's memorial was over. ("Still want to cry.")
“还是想哭，”爷爷的追悼会结束后父亲在微信群里说。
Also: "这是人生." ("This is human life.")
还有：“这就是人生。”
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.
在我爷爷去世后写的悼词中，姑姑写道：“父亲，你一直希望我们中有一个能成为伟大的作家。你的孙女此刻正朝着这个目标努力。”当我读到这里的时候我的第一反应是怨恨，他们在用我当作家的梦想来安抚爷爷的灵魂。他死后我的压力只会增加，缅怀爷爷和奶奶的记忆的压力。
