I have always wanted to write a historical fiction about my family’s history. My family came from a mysterious mountain village in Yunyang, a small town by the Yangtze River Three Gorges. Remarkable stories have been passed down for generations, and many of them feature strong female leads. They have inspired me since childhood, and I hope to share their inspiration with the world.

  I did not grow up in Yunyang. I went to school in Guangzhou, a southern Cantonese city, but people there would not consider me a “real Cantonese”. I wasn’t born there, I didn’t speak Cantonese, and I had a weird accent. What was worse, from time to time, my hometown dialect from Yunyang would slip out, and I would instantly see confused expressions on my schoolmates faces before they start laughing.

  “Where do I actually come from” was a question I kept asking myself for years. Eventually, I mastered Mandarin amidst the ridicule of my schoolmates, learned Cantonese, learned English, and more. However, the more languages I learn, the less I know where I belong.

  The first time my parents took me to Yunyang was in 2008, when I was 7 years old. We crossed a creek on a path of stones, walked past a rice field fragrant in the summer breeze, and followed a small trail leading up a mountain. At the end of that trail stood a brick house, with soft curls of smoke rising from the kitchen chimney.

  “That’s my parents’ home,” my father said, “It is also my home, and your home. ”

  So Yunyang might be where I come from.

  I vividly remember that summer till this day. My grandparents spoiled me with delicious home-made food and gave me such warm smiles that melted my heart. My cousins took me to the rooftop covered with drying corn, and we laid down to gaze at the Milky Way. We caught crabs from mountain streams in the bamboo forest, picked lotus pods fresh from the lotus pond, piled the harvested potatoes into a little hill, and picked sweet sorghum sticks from the field to use as imaginary swords, pretending to fight like ancient warriors.

  When I left, I stepped across that same mountain creek. A small town lies on the other side, and we will leave for Guangzhou from there. I left behind the scent of the fragrant rice, and felt the rustling sound of bamboo leaves fading away. The creek seemed to separate the fairy world and the reality, and when I crossed it, I could no longer stay in the beautiful mountain dream any more.

  “Next year, please take me back here again.” I said.

  “We promise.” my parents said with a smile.

  I went back to Yunyang in 2009. This time, I had a new task. The summer homework my English teacher gave was to draw a family tree. When the new semester starts, we would present it in English to the class. The excitement when we received the homework was enormous. In China, it is not uncommon that families formally record their family trees and history in booklets, stone inscriptions, and even in ancestor shrines. Cantonese people put special emphasis on family culture heritage, and I had seen various ancestor shrines across the city. Many classmates started showing off what their family had – books, ancestor altars, and more.

  I went home and asked my father what we had. He said proudly, “Go tell your classmates that our Yu family also has a family tree book. It is renewed and published every 10 years. The book contains over 300 years of our family history.”

  That family tree book fascinated me so much that I kept counting down the days every day until summer break. When summer finally came, my parents again took me back to Yunyang, and I ran up the mountain into the brick house to greet my grandparents. The first thing I asked them was to show me the precious family tree book.

  They handed me a book thicker than I imagined. It says “Yu Family’s Lineage and History” on the cover. I started reading from the last page backwards, and quickly found my father’s name. However, there was not a single name under his name.

  “Where did my name go?” I asked, “Is the book outdated?”

  “No,” my relatives answered, “It was renewed last year.”

  “Did the editors forget to add my name because I went to school in the south, and they didn’t know me?”

  “They know you. They get informed whenever a child is born.” my relatives explained, “It’s because you are a girl, and a daughter’s name is never allowed on the family tree. That is the tradition.”

  “But I…”

  “If your father had a son, his name would be on here.” My relatives continued to say, “Why don’t you go and tell your father to have a son?”

  I was on the verge of tears, and asked in disappointment, “How do I get my name on here?”

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  My relatives bent down and comforted me in a soft voice, “Don’t worry, when you grow up and get married, your name will appear in your husband’s family tree.”

  That made me so upset, I started crying. However, all the elders around me started laughing. No girls who grew up in the village would question so much, and they genuinely found my questions amusing. Eight-year-old me encountered gender discrimination for the first time in my life. This poor child had no idea that she would face endless gender discrimination later in life and witness countless women enduring the same.

  Although I have the last name Yu, the Yu family never formally recognized my existence. My name was erased despite me doing nothing wrong. Yet some other people, who did nothing at all, can have their names remembered for generations.

  That summer, the lotus pond was still fragrant, the sun rays still streamed down the bamboo leaves. Nothing seemed to have changed, but my emotions towards the mountain village changed completely. I still ran barefoot with my cousins across the mountains, but the summer sun, so warm in my memories, stung me like thorns on my skin.

  When the new semester started and I went back to Guangzhou, my classmates started sharing fun things they did in their hometowns, subtly showing off at the same time. One kid said that her grandparents had a garden, and she had papayas fresh from the trees. Another kid said that his grandparents had chicken and ducks, and a garden full of flowers. I raised my voice above everyone else, and proudly announced that my grandparents had a range of mountains – all belonging to them, with fish ponds, livestocks, bamboo forests and mountain creeks. My classmates listened in awe.

  My happiness did not last long. It was English class, and the teacher invited us to present our family trees in front of the class. When my classmates pulled out booklets, printed papers, and even published books like “Yu Family’s Lineage and History”, I went silent. I couldn’t even put my disappointment into a single Chinese word, let alone anything in English. I brought nothing to the class that day, and was scolded by the teacher for not completing the summer homework. I wasn’t sad about being scolded, rather, I was genuinely sad that girls like me couldn’t be treated equally as boys, even by people in our extended families.

  I went home sad, and asked my mother, “You also came from Yunyang, is there a family tree on your side?”

  My mother didn’t answer my question directly, instead she said, “Everyone I know has left the village. They either moved downtown or to the south, like us.”

  “Why did you move to the south?” I asked.

  “My father, your grandfather, was a railroad worker, right? His railroad led from the mountains to the south, so we have lived here ever since.”

  “Now that the railroad is fully in operation, why don’t we move back there? We can even take the train.” I asked again.

  My mother didn;t say anything else. Perhaps the true family history was too much for an eight-year-old to bear.

  In middle school, someone I liked made fun of me in front of everyone, calling me an “ugly monster”. I went home and bursted into tears. My mom then said to me, “I understand how you feel, I was also laughed at by bullies in school, but now I don’t see them anymore. When you travel far, they will disappear.”

  She then pointed to a scar on her face, “Look at this scar on my face. My classmates also said it was ugly. Should that stop me from being confident and living a happy life? No, right?”

  “How did you get the scar?” I asked.

  “When I was a kid, the villagers back then didn’t like girls, and used to beat me up for random reasons. My parents had enough of that, so they decided to leave the village, take me with them, and live wherever the railroad goes.” My mother said in a calm tone, as if that was a story from another world.

  “So that is why you left the village, and went to school here in the south.” I said in thought.

  “Correct. Your grandparents also insisted that I go to university, however expensive it could be. Most villagers and railroad workers laughed at them and found it absurd, because according to them, a girl will become a wife, so money spent on a girl is money spent on her future husband.”

  “What did their daughter do, then?”

  “Most of them didn’t go to school and got married young, and those who worked became railroad workers.” My mother said, “That is a dangerous profession which my parents didn’t want me to get into. They wanted me to leave the railroad and see the bigger world for myself. They insisted that I go to school, and go to school in a place where I wouldn’t be beaten up.”

  So that is why I became a “new Cantonese”. My classmates mocking my accent is way easier to endure than the punches and kicks my mom suffered from the villagers.

  “Grandma and grandpa are really open-minded.” I said.

  “Because the tradition of getting girls educated has been passed down for generations – on our mothers’ side, of course.” My mother said.

  That year, my grandmother went back to her village in Yunyang. Her mother, my great grandmother, passed away at the age of 94. I never met her in-person, but my grandmother kept telling me her stories. My great grandmother used to be a landlord, and was a tough lady who lived a legendary life. She marched bravely from the old era into the new, and witnessed ups and downs of her family and her country.

  I used to treat those stories as folklore as a kid. In university, my history professor led an oral history project, which made me suddenly realize those stories’ actual worth. I then felt the urgent need to write them down before they fade away with the storytellers, so they can stay on paper, and travel into eternity.

  Therefore, I am writing this fiction.

  This fiction contains four parts, each telling a story of a generation.

  The first part, The Last Landlord, tells the story of my great grandmother, a landlord lady who led a legendary life through warfire, land reform and cultural revolution.

  The second part, From Yangtze to Lingnan, tells the story of my grandmother, a strong woman travelling out of the mountains for freedom, education, and gender equality.

  The third part, Mountains and Cities, tells the story of my mother, in-between-cultures, travelling back and forth for education, in and out of the mountains, battling cultural and socio-economic barriers being a first generation college student and a first generation city resident.

  The fourth part, The Four Seas, tells the story of myself, culturally confused, surviving bullying and childhood trauma, and travelling the world to break cultural stereotypes, advocating to stop all hate.

  I believe that stories can carry strength and hope, and light the way for people on their journeys.