Living Room in No Home
Yuning Li
The wanderer is missing you from the outlands
My dear mama
I have wandered everywhere
But there is no home
Winter wind comes with snowflakes
Blowing my tears down
Walk and walk and walk
How many years have I been walking?
The Spring grass is budding
Another spring and summer comes
— Liúlàng Ge (The Wanderer Song)
You rarely see such a park full of people, especially on a freezing cold morning in December.
They come to the park almost every day, regardless of the weather. Some take the subway, others just ride hour-long bikes, from Brooklyn all the way to this site on the corner of Mulberry Street and Baxter Street. In the steamy sweltering summer days, they come before the temperature heats up, with a pair of sunglasses and a hat. On snowy and rainy days, they show up on time, holding an umbrella and wearing their Uniqlo parkas. When they can’t stand the harsh wind anymore, they stamp their feet, even jump from time to time to keep themselves warm, but still stay.
The cold is not good for these elderly people. Their ages grow with the crumbled exterior of buildings in Chinatown. Some of them will lean to the left as they step forward with the right leg and repeat this on the next step unconsciously, like a bell. They say, however, that Columbus Park is their living room, where it is worth spending time. This gathering place is always full of guests — maybe not guests, but hosts, and still guests in many ways.
“Where else can I go?” When I asked, one man in his forties threw the question back to me. “I don’t know streets outside.”
“Hai-ya, hai-ya,” (Right, right), others agreed.
They stay at the park almost all day long, although nothing here resembles a place of tranquility. You cannot see much vegetation, because cement from the street has invaded the landscape. The ground is almost all paved, providing maximum space for the crowd. Sometimes the park is packed with so many people that the babble of voices even annoys you a little bit. One of the most distinguishing marks of Columbus Park is the air, which — you can feel it once you step in — is always heavy. Too many people smoke here. Chinese grandpas don’t like Marlboro; the Huanghelou brand is the one that shows dignity. They don’t smoke luxury brands either, they just can’t get rid of the habit they developed at a very young age.
I feel I am not in America in the park. Elders with yellow skin and black eyes speak a dialectic you cannot understand. If people have ever traveled to China, they could tell that the climate in the park is what these old people call home. They came to this country when they were young, legitimately or illegitimately, to make a better living. Decades ago, they arrived with language barriers, and a Chinese lifestyle. The result: they ended up in Chinatown’s restaurants and garment factories, working from 8 am to 7 pm, for very little pay, less than the minimum wage. They rented a tenement apartment in Chinatown, got married and raised children in a home where people on the same floor need to share the only toilet. When they got home wearily from work each night, the younger ones were already asleep. Hoping the next generation could get a better education than theirs, they began to save every penny, just as back in China, and husbands smoked a lot. Another habit they keep is throwing away the butts carelessly on the ground, then quickly lighting up another one. Cigarette butts are welcomed in the park, along with many other Chinese habits — playing traditional instruments like the Erhu, playing Chinese chess, and even gambling a little bit.
“They worked too hard when they were young,” a middle-aged young man explained, while still casting his eyes around as a sentry of this place. He came to the States 15 years ago and is one of the younger ones at the park. “It was after retirement that they started to enjoy some leisure time for the first time in their life.” It was strange that he didn’t join the game, nor watch it. All he did was walk around, wearing a big leather backpack. When people called him, he always grumbled, mocking those “poor” old men, but still he went to them. When you stay in the park long enough and convince him you’re not from the NYPD, he will tell you that he has been paid to take care of the extra portable gambling tables, but just a tiny amount, just enough to make him not leave. “Those people lived a frugal life for too long,” he kept muttering. “They are all Grandets! (A note to the editor: He was speaking of Felix Grandet, who was depicted as a miser by Honoré de Balzac in his Eugénie Grandet.) They don’t put big money in the game. I only charge twenty for each table, and as long as they don’t stop playing, I have to stay with those poor.”
These men left their homes back in China to come to this country; and now, in the same way, their children have left Chinatown for a better living. “My son went to Virginia and opened two restaurants there, and both my daughters have married far away,” said Cheng Ting, who is 88 years old. “They don’t come back very often.” Cheng sings Mandarin and Cantonese songs at the park. He sings Liúlàng Ge, a wanderer’s song to his mother, and Where Is My Way, My Chinese Heart, and The Never-setting Sun Rises Over the Prairie.
The same story happened to many people at the park. “That’s not strange,” said the relatively younger man. “You cannot expect an intimate parents-children relationship if the parent always came home after their children had slept.” Chinese people don’t like to mention their family bitterness in public. When I asked them about their children, they didn’t say much, just ended with the exact same sentence — “Forget it.”
They grow old alone, and aging reminds them of those painful immigration experiences and stories from the past. “You know, things are different right now,” said Chan, 68, who declined to give his full name out of caution. He has lived his whole adult life in Chinatown. Working at a garment factory in Midtown, Chan only comes to the park at weekends, always sitting at the bench alone for a while. “We cannot make a fortune anymore,” Chan mumbled.
It was late in the afternoon and the light was dim, so he decided to wheel his rattling cart to go home. You can tell from the creaking sound that he must have bought this cart long ago. In the cart, a small speaker was playing classic Cantonese songs from the 1970s and 1980s.
People began to gather around the sculpture of Sun Yat-sen, which was added to the center of the park just before the pandemic. It was completely dark now, and they lit their own lanterns to keep playing.
But Chan was leaving. He has lost much of his energy in the past decades, and the pandemic now made him feel vulnerable in the evening. “This place is not safe anymore,” he told me, or just stressed the fact to himself once again. “You know, there were a lot of attacks against Asian old people.”
Before he had wended his way home, I asked him a last question. “Do you want to go back to China again?”
“How can,” Chan smiled bitterly. “My children are here, and so is my home. It is impossible for me to start all over again at this age.”
“You are such a young girl,” he said, looking at me as he slowly stood up from the bench. “Go home before the sunset. Take care of yourself.”
(All the interviews were conducted in Mandarin and organized by Yuning Li.)
