In the first spring of the twenty-first century, a group of overseas Chinese who had immigrated from Burma to Southern California held a lively reunion dinner and seniors’ celebration at the Arcadia home of an alumnus. Laughter and the warmth of hometown feeling drove away the chill of early spring and seemed to raise the day’s temperature to 83°F.
Everyone held a fragrant bowl of mohinga—the rice noodles served with fish broth cooked with fish, onions, fried garlic, and lemongrass—while Burmese folk songs played on a recorder. People caught up on old times and new. The atmosphere was warm and spirited, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Speaking the familiar language of their second homeland brought a natural feeling of warmth and excitement, washing away the worries and fatigue of struggling for a living, together with the loneliness and sadness of missing home.
Most of them had immigrated to America during the 1980s and 1990s. Once they had lived peacefully in their second homeland, among coconut breezes, banana rains, and forests of pagodas, getting along well with the local people. The Burmese called them “pauk-phaw,” meaning brothers of the same family. Some were second- or third-generation Chinese. None had imagined going elsewhere. At most, when they grew up, they might return to Tangshan—the ancestral homeland—to study, then go back to their second homeland; or in very old age, return to Tangshan so that fallen leaves might return to their roots.
But a catastrophe in the 1960s shattered those sweet dreams. From then on, it was as if they had been caught in a hurricane, blown like dandelion seeds and scattered everywhere.
With sorrow, they went far away to the Americas, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao. Some returned to mainland China. Later, a group of students who had come to America to study as early as the 1970s established families and careers, then began applying to bring their parents, brothers, and sisters to America.
They became like nomads following water and grass. Wherever there was peace, wherever there was freedom, wherever life suited them, that was where they moved.
Apart from some of the earlier arrivals who became doctors, lawyers, engineers, or well-paid government employees, most were wage workers. Some worked in garment factories, restaurants, gas stations, and all kinds of factories, earning the government minimum wage and struggling at the lowest levels of capitalist society. Having grown up in a deeply Buddhist country, they carried a compassionate view of life that led them to sympathize with and support one another. “Meeting an old friend in a foreign land”—whenever they had a chance to gather and speak from the heart, they felt especially happy and warm. They formed Burmese Chinese associations and alumni groups named after their old schools. “Our feelings for one another have no limit; we drink from the same river.”
Whenever there was a gathering, volunteers came forward to cook the fish-broth rice noodles everyone loved, full of the flavor of home, easing the melancholy of being orphans overseas and allowing travelers scattered to the ends of the earth to feel the warmth and care people most need from one another.
In the eastern Los Angeles area are two Burmese Buddhist temples. Every month or every week they hold merit-making activities and charitable events. Following Burmese custom, they provide delicious mohinga free of charge. When people hear the news, they come from everywhere: couples together, whole families, American-born Chinese, even white-haired elders who need someone to support them as they walk. They eat fish-broth noodles, listen to Burmese folk songs, talk about old times and new, and enjoy themselves immensely.
Those warm pauk-phaw hearts, on American soil thousands of miles from Burma, have not grown depressed with the passing years. Instead, their youthful energy has become even more alive in another homeland.