I politely nod as my grandmother speaks in streams of Mandarin I can no longer dissect. The tones are familiar, but I struggle to keep them from dissolving into sound—like the language was painstakingly carved onto my arms but the West Coast eroded them to scars.

As the disconnect tone concludes the call and I return to my dinner, the nagging guilt of my American tongue grows harder to swallow.

In front of me, oil collects and lingers, floating like a stubborn buoy, attempting to mask the weak broth underneath. I crack packaged chopsticks and anticipate their wooden aftertaste. It won’t be bad—it rarely is, but I’m weighed down by the memory of it being salivating, and when I close my eyes:

“Lǐ Jiā Lè” sounds from the kitchen, my mother’s voice bouncing off the walls of my grandmother’s tiny apartment. “Nǐ yào chī shénme? (What do you want to eat?)”

I’m delirious from the day-long flight, jet-lagged beyond belief. Yet, I’m consumed by the need to walk back down five flights of stairs, cross the street, and order a steaming bowl of hóngshāo dà pái miàn (braised pork rib noodles). 

I can already hear the ding of porcelain soup spoons against bowls bigger than my head: soaking along with meat cooked to tender perfection, a display of fresh veggies layered on top of carefully cut noodles. And then, the star of the show: the broth.

My eyes greedily consume its rich golden hue, knowing it carries an unimaginable depth of flavors. I feel any tension dissolve into the initial sip that spreads warmth throughout my body, melting into my bones and flooding my bloodstream. I revel in the dance of flavors introducing themselves to my taste buds the way you’d greet old friends—one by one but somehow altogether. Thinly sliced green onions reappear occasionally with their mild taste, ceaselessly complementing playful spices and savoury profiles. The indulgent aroma sticks around relentlessly, beckoning my hand to reach for another taste, until my little fingers are lifting the rim of the bowl to lips that are still savoring the satiating soup when the dish is dry. 

But this memory’s taste only lasts for so long. The rich flavor dissipates into thin air, and I feel my identity slip out from under me.

Who am I to claim a neighborhood I haven’t visited in years? Who am I to tell the story of broth that, for all I know, doesn’t remain? And who am I, if this part of me is pruned?

So, I’m left scouring for remnants of a past life, stuck with the knowledge that the underlayer of spice is missing and a special kind of yearning comparable only to a permanent aftertaste. I shut my eyes again, trying to persuade the memory back to life, but a part of me can’t shake the feeling this taste is on the tip of a tongue that isn’t mine. 

But isn’t it? If it doesn’t belong to me, whose could it even be?

When the Los Angeles sun paints its lasting strokes on my back, it falls upon the same skin that soaked up Shanghai’s summer rays. My mom and aunt trading taste tests while making dinner are more permanent than a geographical coordinate. And, I can still hear the clicking of my worn-out sandals against the cobbled streets of my grandmother’s neighborhood when I breathe in the shedded leaves and faint pollution of Berkeley.

My senses don’t change just because the setting did.

There really is no separating Emma Lee and Lǐ Jiā Lè. They’re indistinguishable—different representations of the same self—and considering them strangers is more foreign to me than my language will ever be. 

The presence of one isn’t the erasure of the other.

Maybe it has never been about absence or disconnection. Maybe the mere existence of one is enough to prove the invisible, inextricable string tying the other to my soul. 

I keep thinking if I stray too far from my motherland, it will become lost to me—as if it isn’t integrated into my very being, following me everywhere I go. It’s how I sip at the oiled spoon in front of me and easily envision Shanghai’s soup unfragmented. It’s how I believe one day I’ll return to that apartment and still feel at home. It’s how I enjoy this bowl of soup, because it carries a little bit of my culture in its attempt, comforted by the knowing that I’ll have the real thing again. The lingering aftertaste of familiar broth was only ever mine to begin with. 

One day, I will find my way back to this memory and renew it. I will lift the perfectly curved soup spoon—warmed by spices and stove—to the confines of my mouth. I’ll experience the same satiating sensation as the flavor rushes at me, strong like tidal waves and layered like deep earth.

And I’ll be consumed by some part of me that never left. And like will recognize like as the broth soaks into my bones—we are both from here. 

My prevailing prayer and five star review: I will return again. I know it.