November 22, 2017

My Journey of Performing My Life Stories on Stage


Being a Chinese peasant’s daughter was my biggest shame growing up in China. In the '80s and '90s, peasants made up 80% of the population in China. They had the lowest social ranks, not only excluded from enjoying any social benefits, but also had to pay heavy agricultural taxes. When my family went to town, I could feel that we were looked down upon by city people. From a young age, I struggled with this discrimination against peasants and only wished that I were born to factory workers’ family. I saw my mother crying many times for not being respected. She said that she would do anything to support my brother and me going to school, so we would not grow up to be peasants like her.
 

Thirteen years ago, I crossed the Pacific Ocean to pursue my American “dream” of building a new social status for myself and my family. But five years later, that “dream” changed. I felt lost in climbing the social ladder in Corporate America. The “dream” was turned into an open-ended search, which still keeps unfolding. That was when I first started telling my stories on stage as a personal healing process.

 The Marsh, San Francisco (2012)

The Open Book, Grass Valley (2017)

Two years ago, after six years of writing and performing in various venues in the Bay Area, I grew tired of the same old story that I kept telling. Recounting what happened in the past didn’t lead me onto any new path that was meaningful to me. Meanwhile, as I met more and more people who devoted their lives to serving meaningful causes in their communities or in the world, I felt ashamed and guilty of focusing on myself. Inside, I felt deeply lost again. Thus, I stopped performing.

After a two-year hiatus, life somehow led me back to my own story. It is a story that will wait for me to finish if I don’t. After acting in the play Chinglish, produced by Community Asian Theatre of the Sierra (CATS) last year, I was invited by Jeannie Wood, the Executive Director of CATS, to share my full-length story at a book store in Grass Valley. I accepted it. I was thankful that Jeannie valued my story, but also anxious and perplexed about my new relationship with my own story, with my mother and my family, with my ongoing search of the meaning of life, and with China.

My mother is a generous soul who always serves, serving her own family and also neighbors and friends, while I have been very much focused on myself, studying, working, and finding the best way to live my life. It has always been my needs that come first. But as I grow older, I want to be more like my mother. My mother continues to be such a resilient and adaptable life force in my life, and I realized that there is so much I can learn from my illiterate mother, who is open to new things and ready to leap forward with relentless courage. 

Last year, I went back to China and lived there for five months. My decision to spend more time with my parents in China was not out of filial obligation, but a longing in my heart to be physically closer to my parents and to give thanks to them on a day-to-day basis for what they have done for me. In other words, I wanted to cultivate kindness within myself at the root level. While cultivating kindness within, I began to see kindness in many others in China. Instead of being cynical about the ugly side of China, I began to look at modern China with fresh eyes.

Filial piety is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. During the trip to China, I learned that there are four levels of filial piety: First, taking care of parents’ body (offer parents food, clothing and other necessities); second, taking care of parents’ heart (make them happy and not worried); third, helping realize parents’ dreams and purpose in life; fourth, opening parents’ minds and hearts for wisdom.

On one hand, I am thankful that I learned what true filial respect means before it is too late; on the other hand, I realized that becoming a filial daughter would be a lifelong practice.

I want to
integrate and reconcile the two cultures across the Pacific within me, without imposing one on the other. It’s a lifelong dance between the ancient and the modern, the East and the West, and between the seeking of personal liberation and family and social responsibilities.

I often ask myself: What is my passion in this life? What is my service to this world? These questions are still alive in me as my life continues to unfold. But it's clear to me that I want to live a life with integrity, not running away from my own shadows. I want to cultivate a deep sense of inner peace that gives me clarity and strength to go on each day. Every day is a potential new beginning. If I can find a way to shine light into all the shadows and struggles in me, I'd like to use that same light to light up the world. That could be my service to the world, I think. As the Zen Master
Dōgen Zenji put it, "To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things." Hope delving into my personal story could be my way of being liberated from it and then go beyond together with many others.

Upcoming performance at The Marsh Rising on February 7, 2018, Wednesday, 7:30pm.