Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes a story I read, sometimes something that came to me while holding my mala beads.
An American girl wore a mamian qun to prom. The comments asked what brand it was. She said: It's not a brand. It's 400 years old. This skirt has only been back on Chinese streets for twenty years. Where did it go? How did it come home?
A bundle of white sage sells for twelve dollars online, promising to cleanse negative energy. Watching that smoke, I thought of the bronze burner on my grandfather's desk. Chinese people have burned incense for thousands of years — but never to chase anything away. The Song Dynasty counted it among its four leisurely arts, agarwood is a tree's scar, and an incense seal makes time visible. They cleanse; we settle. That difference is what this piece is about.
I found an old red string in a drawer — the one my mother tied on my wrist years ago. Red strings have been on Chinese wrists for two thousand years: the long-life thread, the old man under the moon, the zodiac year. Chinese families don't say "I love you." Love turns into soup, a sweater, a string.
A foreign friend asked why Chinese grandmothers all wear jade bangles. The answer turned out to be about comfort, companionship, and two thousand years of quiet faith.
A friend gave me agarwood incense. The night I couldnt sleep, I lit one, and everything stopped. Agarwood is the scent of a tree slowly healing its wounds—and that thought stayed with me.