What kind of ending could ever justify all this drifting?
The Spring Festival slipped by almost without notice, and now school is about to start again. Yet the feelings that clung to me during the holiday still haven’t gone away. I think I know where they come from.
For countless families in China, the New Year is supposed to mean reunion and celebration. In mine, it never really did. Ever since I was old enough to remember, there would always be at least one argument during the holiday. Sometimes it was small, sometimes explosive, depending on who was involved and how much standing they had in the extended family. I got used to it a long time ago.
Going back home after being away so long, returning to the little village I remembered from childhood, felt strange in its own way. The children I once ran around with have all grown up. Faces that had become blurry in my memory slowly came back into focus.
That is how the countryside is. You can barely be considered an adult before your parents start pushing you toward marriage and children. Seeing someone who used to be my age now holding a baby in their arms was jarring. We both froze for a second, then both turned our heads slightly and passed by in silent understanding.
At home, the conversation has become painfully simple: when are you getting married?
But I am only twenty-one. To me, this is still an age of possibility, a time when life should be wide open and worth chasing with all the recklessness I have. My mother and father keep telling me that I should find a boyfriend. My father jokes every time that if I were not still in school, the doorstep of our house would already be worn down by people coming to propose. I laugh loudly on the surface, but inside it feels like a cold, quiet rain.
I know how things work there. In the village, a girl is considered “valuable.” One of my aunts has been asking around about suitable girls for her son, preferably someone who never went to college, because her son did not go either, and that would make them a good match. Equal in status, equal in background. But what does a marriage like that really mean? I do not dare ask. These are village rules, part of an order that ordinary people are not meant to challenge.
In my parents’ eyes, marriage is the single greatest matter in a person’s life. You can live without enough food, without enough warm clothes, but you cannot live without a wife or husband. There is a man in the village already in his thirties who still is not married. For years people have talked about him as if his life were public property. I saw him again this year; I heard he is still alone. My cousin’s parents finally found him a woman last year who was considered a proper match. They are getting married this year. His father recently switched to a job that pays more and exhausts him more, saying only that a large sum of money will be needed this year. Everyone knows what for: bride price and the wedding itself.
I used to think, naively, that I could just keep living happily with my parents, the three of us safe and ordinary together. But my mother often says things like, “If you marry into someone else’s family and don’t know how to cook, then what will you do?” Whenever she says that, I feel lost. It is as though my parents settled long ago that I do not truly belong to the home where I grew up.
I sometimes wonder when I first understood this.
Was it back when our old family house in the village had just been built and there was a ceremony for the new home? They only called my younger brother to take part. I stood there while some older men nearby casually told me, “This house isn’t yours anyway.” I remember being alone inside a crowd of celebration, watching everyone else from the edge.
Or was it later, when my father knew perfectly well that I was already an adult, yet still spoke only to my brother about learning to drive once he came of age, and said the car would be for him to use? Every time, I wanted to say: I can learn too. I can drive too.
I was educated well. I have read many books. In those books I saw beautiful things—equality, freedom, dignity. After reading enough of them, I almost began to believe those things belonged to me too. The cruel irony is that I only saw that wider world because I was standing on my parents’ shoulders, seeing a life that children from families like mine were never really meant to imagine.
For a long time I held on to the hope that I could change everything. Childhood was beautiful that way. I used to dream that I would keep studying, that one day I would take my parents traveling everywhere. But growing up has shown me something harsher: I have been struggling in the mud all along. Without extraordinary academic credentials, without any talent impressive enough to put on display, even my future has become uncertain.
Lately my father has started to complain a little. Maybe he cannot understand why other people’s children go out to work at eighteen and start helping with the family’s burdens, while his daughter is still in school and, in his view, has achieved nothing. My younger brother, who went to vocational school, stopped attending classes long ago and has already started looking for work. My father often praises him in front of me, proud of how capable his son is.
And honestly, I am proud of him too.
He did not waste his time the way some others do. He knew his grades were not strong, so he started finding his own way forward. He is capable. He can work night shifts. He can stay optimistic in an environment like this. I admire that.
At the same time, I keep telling myself that one day I will find a job too. I still worry that I have not started helping my parents sooner. But I do not regret continuing my education. In an age when everything moves like a current too strong to stand against, I am deeply grateful that I still have some room to choose.