Tasting Rainbows and Reunion: A Six-Year-Old's Journey from China to Canada

The Unknown Path from Daqing to Calgary in the Early Days of China's Opening to the West

One morning on September 1st, 1990 when I was six years old, my mother and I put on our best clothes and left China for good. I had no idea what was happening, except that I got to wear the swirly red and yellow dress that my aunt had made me, the one that flew out in a dazzling spiral when I spun around.

That aunt and all my family members in Beijing came to the airport that day to see us off. My mother had had her long hair permed and hairsprayed in 80s fashion, and wore big sunglasses to cover her crying eyes. It was the day that everything changed for us. We were leaving the comfort and safety of everything we’d known in China to join my father in the distant and foreign land of Canada.

There is a photo of this last day in China, with the expansive family and friend group who had come to the Beijing airport to see us off. It was taken outside, in the sunshine, with my mother and her big hair, yellow shirt, and pearls at the front, and me beside her, gleefully ignorant, making pistol shapes with my hands to pewpew the camera, confused why everyone around us was so sad.

It was one of those photos you look at decades down the road with your fingertip hovering over each faded face, trying to recognize who each person was, and their relation to you. Occasionally you found your finger hovering over a face that no longer existed in the present.

I had just started the first days of grade one in our hometown of Daqing, when the decision was made that we were going to join my father in Calgary. In truth, that decision had likely been made many months ago, but of course, in a time when China was just beginning to open to the West, and suspicions were high, no one was going to tell a six-year-old who would likely blurt something out that could be heard by the wrong ears and create problems for us with the officials.

So I had no idea what was happening. I didn’t even know that we were at an airport. I’d never seen one before. All they told me the night before leaving was that I was going to see my father. I was elated. I hadn’t seen him in two years. This for a six-year-old is an eternity. During that time, because we expected that our phone lines were tapped, the main method of communication my mother had with my father was sending recorded cassette tapes to each other, back and forth across the Pacific, an antiquated form of voice messaging.

All I knew of Canada was that someone had once told me there were rainbow-colored biscuits there. I couldn’t wait to try them. In my mind, rainbows tasted as good as being together with my father again.