Hometown is not home

     Hometown is not home. Home is a warm lamp when you are wandering and adrift. Hometown, on the other hand, is the root of a surname.

    I have always loved Wang Guowei's three realms in "Human Words on Poetry": "Alone I climb the high tower, gazing to the ends of the earth," "My clothes grow ever looser, yet I have no regrets, for I am wasting away for her," and "Suddenly I turn around, and there she is, in the dim light." These are three realms of art, and also three realms of life, perhaps also applicable to the early, middle, and advanced stages of a life of wandering. We can see the bitterness of the wanderer in "Alone I climb the high tower, gazing to the ends of the earth," we can see the wanderer's faith in "My clothes grow ever looser, yet I have no regrets, for I am wasting away for her," and we find a sense of belonging in "Suddenly I turn around, and there she is, in the dim light."

    No one is born with a hometown. Your current place may be your family home for four generations, so you mistakenly take it as your hometown. It's simply because this place holds memories of your birth and upbringing, simply because your loved ones and fellow villagers are intertwined with this land. This fosters a deep-seated attachment within you, an attachment that resonates more deeply in your heart as you grow older and wander far from home. Humans are born without a true homeland. For most, we simply set sail from the harbor built by our ancestors, searching for our generation's ideal home. Perhaps that is our true "home," while our "hometown" may have been lost in the time of our grandparents. The ideal homeland we find may become the harbor where our children set sail, or perhaps their superficial understanding of their hometown after settling there for generations. Thus, generation after generation, people migrate and settle, settle and migrate. This may be grandfather's home, that may be grandson's home, but neither here nor there is their true hometown. A

    ancestral home may be the root, but before that lies endless migration. My father told me that when he was three years old, my grandfather carried him out of the mountains of Luonan on a shoulder pole, and they eventually migrated to Baishui. My father became a grandfather, and to his children and grandchildren, Baishui is our hometown. But for my father, his hometown was both Luonan and Baishui. Luonan gave birth to him, but Baishui nurtured him. It is said that my grandfather's ancestors migrated from Shanxi, first settling in Huayin, and then from Huayin to Luonan. In my grandfather's generation, they moved with my father to Baishui. Now, I cannot settle down in Baishui, a place that seems like my hometown yet isn't really my hometown. So a new round of migration has begun, and wandering and drifting have become the entirety of life and livelihood. Perhaps for us, the descendants of the Yang family, settling down is just a distant dream.

    I don't know where I will go, nor do I know where I will find peace. Because life is a process of searching, and also a process of moving from movement to stillness. Because on this land of Baishui, my grandfather's ancestral graves have been leveled, leaving only other families' fertile fields. Perhaps years from now, there will be no more burial grounds, let alone graves. And on his deathbed, Grandpa didn't speak of Baishui, but of Luonan, the place that gave him birth and nurtured him. Huayin and Shanxi, before Luonan, were probably the hometowns his ancestors had longed for! Thus, wandering and drifting have been passed down in my surname. Now, we, the younger generation, have once again set sail, once again begun our migration.

    Hometown is so dear because it easily touches the most vulnerable part of your heart. It is a utopia that cannot be found, a kind of warmth followed by longing and deep affection. It seems to exist, yet it doesn't. Perhaps for those who have lived here for generations, one day they will lead their people away to find their new paradise.

    As a wanderer, I like to look at the lights shining from the windows of settled people on my journey. I know that is not my hometown, nor is it my home. But there is the home I yearn for, there is the family happiness I cherish. Perhaps only the kinship under this lamplight truly captures the essence of human existence. I may be but a fleeting passerby here, yet the tenderness I felt in that moment is forever etched in my memory. Hometown

    is not home, but it is the existence of home that makes a wanderer yearn for it. Hometown becomes a memory and a concept, something to be sought. Hometown exists because of the memories of those who gave me birth and nurtured me; it exists because of the companionship of close relatives and fellow villagers. In truth, this is only a superficial understanding of hometown, not the essential home.

    When we begin to build homes elsewhere, the lack of familiarity may make us miss our hometown. Perhaps only when close relatives and fellow villagers give their children the memories of giving them birth and nurturing them is that place their superficial understanding of hometown, their essential home. Thus, this becomes the hometown of the next generation, but not yours; it's only because your "home" is here, here is the lamp you saw when you longed for it and yearned for it on your journey.

    Hometown is not home; home is a stopover in migration, while hometown is the source from which our surname was born.