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In my hope to get my father to talk about our family’s past, I have asked him the same questions repeatedly, “Dad, what did your dad do?” 

“He was a farmer.” 

“What did grandpa’s dad do?”

“He was also a farmer.”

“Do you have any ancestors who were not farmers?”

“No.”

Unlike my mother’s relatives, who boast about their ancestors at the dinner table, my father’s ancestral story is a plain soup. He grew up in a village in Tongpingzhen, Jiangxi. The generations before him were all farmers, as far as he could remember. My father was the first kid that went to college in the Dai village. He rarely talks about his childhood. I only know that he refuses to eat sweet potatoes because, for three years, it was his family’s only food source. 

I recall the last time I went to the village when I was still a child. The air was humid. That summer was not pleasant, but certainly memorable. My cousins and I stole eggs from a sparrow’s nest, stumbling from the wooden ladder, giggling. We caught crayfish at the nearby pond. I cried after being gnawed by one. My uncle cooked us frogs. My mom told me they were “just tiny chicken legs.”  

The last thing I remember from the visit was an old building. I peeked inside and felt fear. 

“Why are they stacking coffins? What is this place?” I asked my cousin.

“It’s our ancestral hall,” she said, “it’s only opened for marriages, funerals, and New Year. All the names of our ancestors are carved on memorial tablets.”

“Will my name be carved in there after I die?” I said.

She laughed, “No, we are girls.”

I paused, “How about my mom?”

“Yes, she will have her name carved because she married into the family.”

My grandfather was a man of few words. He liked to sit quietly at the doorway with his walking stick, watching people pass by. I remember the time when the village dogs encircled me. Although it was difficult for him to stand up from the chair, he got up and yelled at them until they ran away. When I heard the news that my grandfather passed away, the first thing that came to mind was his memorial tablet. It made me think of my death. In the village that I never belonged to, I will not be remembered.

Yunyi Dai is a first-year student in the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay department at the School of Visual Arts. She is an illustrator and a storyteller. Her story is inspired by her memory of her ancestral village in China