Where in China am I from?

 

I don't know my grandmother's name in Chinese, no one has ever told me. I don't know where my grandparents lived before they left China, why or how they got to Taiwan, what their life was like before, what family or friends they had that were cut out from their lives, people they they would never see or speak to again. 

I know my mother was born in 1948 in Taipei, one year before Mao Tzsetung declared the creation of the People's Republic of China. I know that she had an older sister who'd died before she was born, that she was close to her father.

Trauma that is never acknowledged, pulled apart and dismantled gets inherited and passed down to the next generation. Coping mechanisms, communication patterns, etc. are modeled by parents for children to absorb, children who then become parents, who model the same behaviors to their children, and the cycle goes on.

To break a cycle of trauma is to enact a revolution. It is a refusal to perpetuate pain, loss, and the reenacting of history in the passing on from one generation to the next. But first, the patterns must be made aware, and for that to happen, one person has to look within and open up.

I do not know my grandmother's name, but I know that she gave me mine - 李 莊莊, pronounced in English, "Li Zhuang Zhuang". It means "little village". The repetition is diminutive, connoting affection and endearment. I learned recently that it can also connote the concepts of being "solemn", "dignified" and "stately". 

Is it ironic that I do not know the name of the village from where my grandparents left, or that the concept of a village evokes a community (or family), with an intricate web of threads connecting many people to each other? Is it tragic or just necessary, that my family on both sides has become fragmented into a set of disconnected individuals, islands unto themselves? 

To break a cycle of trauma is to enact a revolution and at this point, I can see no other way.