A Flower Grew Out of My Heart


Christianity? Islam? Worldviews? Would a nine year old know these terms? Of course. What are history classes for? I knew them, just enough to pass a test. But nowhere did I understand them. They were of the dreamlike atmosphere that only the tall adults can reach and inhale, which was far above the surface air I breathed. How can one look at the air and know what it is? One must experience it. I was too short for the experience. But the summer of 2007 brought a change. I grew just enough to inhale the bottom layer of the dreamlike air.

C-h-i-n-a. When these five letters come together, they create a galaxy of cultures and values. The center of a galaxy consists of the brightest star cluster called the Eye. Due to its sheer brightness, it may seem that the Eye is the galaxy itself. The Eye of China is the Han culture. Kung fu, Confucianism, dumplings, and the most known images of China were developed by the Han ethnic group. However, just a few steps back would show that the Eye is but a fraction of the entire galaxy. Most of my life was spent in the very outer cluster of China’s galaxy. Its culture may seem dim compared to the Han culture, but without it and without that of all the 55 minority groups of China, the brilliant galaxy that shone through 4,000 years of human history wouldn’t exist.
My star cluster was in the most undeveloped region of the galaxy, Northwest China. Within this region is the Xinjiang Province. I lived in the outskirts of this province in the little town of Yining, right along the borders of China and Kazakhstan. Like most other areas of China, Yining is populated by more than 30 different minority groups with the Han Chinese in the upper classes. Thus, Shi Fan University, the major university in Yining, is characterized by multi-ethnicities. However, the university is unique in that it harbors foreigners, who are allowed long term visas to China on two conditions. They must reside within the university and are subject to surveillance from the government. Little did the government know most of such foreigners were undercover Christian missionaries. One family of such foreigners was mine, a Korean family. I spent more than six years in that university, growing up with Kazakh and Uyghur friends, whose parents were residents of the university. Naturally, their neighborhood games became my games and their holiday traditions, mine. Thus, my summer of 2007 was spent with those friends, and hence began my change.

Summer break was a time when the days of the week lost their meaning. Everyday was a play-day, and on such a day, my friends and I gathered by the long, concrete plank in front of the vegetable shop. Trees beside the walls that lined the plank provided some shade from the scorching sun. We squatted by the walls and chatted of fun games, gossips, and past incidents that were exciting and embarrassing. Truly, my past with them had shaped much of my personality.
As we got tired of the talk, one of my best friends, Bagejang exclaimed, “I know. Let’s intrude Yi Er Yuan!”
All of our faces lit up with mischievous smiles. My friend was referring to the kindergarten playground, which was right down the street. The playground was surrounded by tall metal fences that were painted blue and converged into spikes at the top. It was the neighborhood tradition for kids to intrude the place after the kindergarten closed for the afternoon. This playground was another landmark in my childhood history, where I shared many experiences with my friends. When we were younger, we had to flex our muscles, hold our breaths, and squeeze our skinny limbs and torsos through the fences. But with puberty, our muscles and flesh expanded in size like an overblown balloon that we would be stuck between the rails, only to wait for the help of an angry janitor. This nasty experience signals that the time had come. We had to climb over the fence instead of through it. When we learned how to accomplish this task without experiencing ‘intimate contact’ with the spikes, we were acknowledged to be the “older children.” I broke into a huge grin at Bagejang’s suggestion, for I had come to love this neighborhood practice of intruding the Yi Er Yuan.
Just then, the corner of my eye caught something light and fluffy. My friends headed in the direction of the Yi Er Yuan, but I turned my back on them and headed for the object, which lay upon the barren ground a few inches away from the ditch. The object was a chick. The motionless chick stared at me with its miniature beady eyes. I was shocked to see a scatter of tiny blue humps that overlay its eyelids. I turned to my friends, who had stopped in their tracks to wait for me.
“There’s a chick here. I think someone abandoned it because it’s ill,” I said.
They only shrugged.
“Well, I’m going to help the chick,” I muttered and started to pick the chick.
“Don’t. Just leave it there.” One of the girls stopped me.
I didn’t understand. Though I went to the local Chinese public school, I was also given a standard American education at home and was exposed to American novels, which viewed helping injured animals as a good quality. Subconsciously, I was influenced to believe I had to be a Good Samaritan and help this chick. I assumed that my friends shared the same view. Isn’t helping animals the right thing to do?
“If you want a pet chick, just buy a good one from the peddler. It’s only 5 mao [the price for a cheap ice cream],” my friend said.
“No, it’s not that. This chick is ill, and it needs my help,” I cried out in frustration.
My friends only stared queerly.
Finally, my best friend spoke, “I guess if you help the chick, and it lives, you would have done a good deed. But if you try to help it, and it dies in your hands, Allah will surely curse you. If that happens,” her eyes turned into an icy fire, “we will no longer be your friends.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
The girls turned their backs. They left.
I turned my back on them, not because I was angry at them, but because I had to hide the tears that kept on streaming down my face, which had been full of laughter just moments ago. The sun shined on, but it rained in my heart. My closest friends were Kazakhs and Uyghurs of Arab ancestry. Their religion? Islam. I had known that before. I had even spent Ramadan with them and shared their lamb feasts, but those had only been activities for fun. Did they really believe the soul of the lamb would take them across the spiritual river to heaven? I did not know, for I had never asked them. Why hadn’t I asked? Then it hit me. Most of my childhood past was spent not with my Muslim friends, but with my Christian missionary community whether it was Korean, Chinese, or western. Whatever time I spent for a Chinese-style education, I spent double of that time for an American and a Korean style education. Even my friends … my best-best friend was British. The friendship between the Kazakh and Uyghur girls and I seemed so trifle before the glass walls dividing us, walls that I couldn’t see but could only experience by bumping into them.
Still immersed in my thoughts, I looked up to see a Han Chinese girl looking straight at me.
“What happened?” She asked.
Embarrassed by my tears, I tried to find a good excuse for it. “That chick is ill,” I replied.
“Oh no! We should help it,” she spoke and came over to pet the chick.
I felt so grateful for a companion. I picked up the chick and stroked its scant fur. I gained confidence that I was right and firmly sided with the Christian side in my life’s spheres of influence. Together with the Han Chinese girl, we visited my Singaporean friend’s father who was a missionary and a doctor. He gave some advice on healing the chick. By the time we got out of his apartment, I was confident I could nurse the chick back to its health. I looked at my new companion who was stroking the chick. I sought an agreement that would give me even more confidence, so I told her what my Kazakh and Uyghur friends had said about Allah and the chick.
“That’s nonsense!” She said.
“Right.” I was relieved.
“There is no such thing as Allah and certainly no such thing as God!” She exclaimed.
For the second time, something hit me. Of course. The Han Chinese. The most fervent believers in Communism and atheism. I had sought a place with no walls to only run into another glass wall, and this time, even harder. I wanted to run, to run away to a place with no glass walls, a place with where everyone could touch each other freely. Then shame hit me. Everyone didn’t waste a second to reveal their worldviews. Me? I bumped into a glass wall but refused to uphold my own glass wall. I did not want any more conflicts, so I backed down. Confusion hit me. Was it wrong to do so? I became bruised all over as I ran into reality.
That day, I left my new companion and placed the chick back where I discovered it. Then I went ahead to join my Kazakh and Uyghur friends in the Yi Er Yuan. I climbed over the fence spikes with ease. A few years back, I hadn’t thought much about climbing the metal fence because I had always been small enough to squeeze through the rails. But then I grew, just like my worldviews and values increased and solidified. It became harder and harder to flex my worldviews to reach the other side. This time, I had climbed over the spike of the ‘Good Samaritan law of injured animals’ to reach my friends, but those spikes would get sharper and taller. Would I ever give up Christ the Messiah for a mere prophet? Would I never point at the sky as the Koran teaches?
When I was returning home, I passed by the ditch again and saw some Han Chinese boys who apparently thought playing ‘ice hockey’ using the chick and sticks was quite entertaining. One of the boys ‘goaled’ the chick into the deep muddy ditch, completely twisting the chick’s right leg. There is ineradicable image of the chick stuck in my memory. It is that of the scorching sun drying up the ditch and evaporating the soul out of the chick bound in dried mud – the price for abandoning my values.
On that day, it rained in my heart again, and out of my heart grew a flower. A nightshade. Just as the nightshade opens in light and closes in darkness, I became accustomed to revealing my worldview in a bubble environment and hiding it in a conflicting world. However, if one climbs a spiked fence to the other side, one has to climb it again to come back. In recent years, I’ve become afraid that I would stay on the other side, intimidated by the arduous journey back. I’m afraid that I’ll I would never open in light again, only to wither in darkness. Therefore, slowly, I am rooting out that nightshade to grow a rose. A rose that proudly presents its petals and threatens with its thorn anyone who dares to pluck it.
That summer of 2007 brought a change. I grew enough to breathe in the once-unreachable air. The myriad of contrasting cultures in the outer rim of China’s galaxy stimulated this growth. Perhaps many glass walls are not such a bad thing after all. The existence of clashes in values indicates there can only be one true value. Once one has found that true value, all the other values that contradict, all those collisions into glass walls, and all the fence spikes help one to appreciate the one and only value.