What's in A Name?

The woman called after I spent all day chasing up an old address in the west side of Beijing for a family member I’ve never met. Here’s the thing, she said, the man you’re looking for died of cancer two years ago. 

Oh, I see. 

How’s your grandmother?

She passed eight years ago. 

Oh. 

Stubbornly I spent the following day digging up yet another old address inside a Hutong near the Forbidden city - my grandmother’s sister. The number was #21 but there was only #17 and #27. The government employee at #27 told me they leveled the block “to prepare for something”. That was fifteen years ago. 

Sit, young lad, he said. Wait here. Call this number. It’s easy. Come back tomorrow and try again. 

I’ll be gone tomorrow. 

It’s hard when all you have is a thirty year old address. 

I am aware. 

It’s probably foolish of me spending most of my first visit in Mainland running after apartment numbers older than myself. But I needed to be there, even just to look at nothingness. 

These street numbers no longer mean anything to anyone, but it’s all I have to paint the picture of the life of the closest person I once had, to imagine her path as it’s being forgotten, even violently yanked from the existence for an empty promise. 

What’s in a name? 

One day we shall reunite in the new city, nameless and formless. Until then, these ancient alleyways are all I have.