Homeseeking

“His and Linyee’s marriage had not been perfect by any means; it had survived their different backgrounds, her father’s disapproval, his gambling problem, immigration to a foreign country, financial uncertainty, and more. There’d been moments when he wasn’t even sure he still loved her. Yet, by the end, they were bound by their history, by the pain and laughter that could never be understood by anybody else.”

Haiwen’s marriage to Linyee is not perfect, but he remains committed to her despite its flaws. This quote illustrates the complex nature of marriage. After she dies, she becomes part of the complex of relationships and places he thinks of as the home to which he longs to return.

“We must always be brave and meet what scares us head-on, even if it is hard. But still, you must not forget who you are. You must always remain proud.”

This advice from Suchi’s father is an example of foreshadowing what Suchi will have to do to maintain her sense of self after she leaves Shanghai. Part of “not forget[ting] who you are” is cultural, as shown when Suchi makes Shanghainese dishes for Haiwen for New Year’s. It is also personal, as when Suchi later reconnects with her childhood bravery to leave her husband and reaffirm her independence.

“Suchi had been quiet for most of the drive and Howard hadn’t wanted to disturb her thoughts. Instead, a familiar symphony hummed gently through his head. While the blanket of haze hadn’t entirely lifted, he felt, for the first time since Linyee’s death, a sense of contentment.”

This quote is an example of how the third-person limited perspective creates tension in Homeseeking. Only Haiwen’s interior thoughts, the music he listens to, and his “sense of contentment” are revealed here. It is left open to speculation how Suchi might be feeling at this moment. It is an open possibility as to whether she wants to see him again and rekindle their relationship.

“‘You’ll find yourselves pulled toward each other again and again,’ the fortune teller said. ‘Like you’re tethered to each other with string.’ She folded her hands. ‘It’s a predestination more than anything. But like I told you earlier, this is meaningless in the scheme of your own actions. You have destiny with many people in this world. Perhaps your friendship is the fulfillment of that destiny. I’m just telling you what I see.’”

This moment is key to the development of The Enduring Nature of Love. The fortune teller emphasizes that Suchi and Haiwen are “tethered to each other.” Chen shows this throughout the novel as Suchi and Haiwen find each other again twice, once in Hong Kong and once in Los Angeles.

“Life was dynamic and vast, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to experience enough of it to feel satisfied, if she could die happy knowing she’d only gotten to rub up against the small corner of the world she lived in.”

As a young girl, Suchi had a dream of traveling the world. Although this dream does not turn out exactly as she had imagined, she does live in great metropolises, including Hong Kong, New York City, and Los Angeles, and creates a wonderful life for herself and her family. This quote foreshadows the satisfaction that she does indeed feel by the end of her life, having experienced its “vast” and “dynamic” nature.

“For a second—a moment—he imagined a parallel life. One in which they presided over this New Year’s dinner together, where these were their children, their grandchildren. The family they had built together. He blinked, guilt trickling through his body. The mere thought was a betrayal to Linyee. No matter what, that part of his past belonged to her, would always belong to her. And yet, Howard longed for something. For more.”

In this quote, Haiwen reflects on the “sliding doors” moment of his life when he decided to leave and ended up marrying Linyee instead of staying in Shanghai to marry Suchi. While he feels great love and affection for his late wife, he cannot help “longing for something […] more.” This feeling of longing is a defining aspect of Haiwen’s character.

“The past mingled with the present. He was Howard now, and she was Sue, but here she was, across from him again, still beautiful in every way.”

This quote emphasizes the way that immigrants are changed by their experiences living in a country different from their home. In the novel, Chen represents this in part by the name changes that the characters undergo, from Haiwen to Howard or from Suchi to Sue. However, even as they change, their essential selves remain the same, as reflected here in Haiwen’s observation that Suchi is “still” beautiful.

“Ordinary citizens were like ants to these powerful leaders: invisible, impotent, negligible collateral damage. While the mighty fought, they were trampled into dust to be blown away by the wind.”

This reflection from Suchi summarizes the novel’s message about The Impact of Geopolitical Events on Individual Lives. The figurative language comparing individuals to “ants” and “dust” emphasizes their relative smallness when compared to the “powerful leaders.” Geopolitical events are described as “wind,” a force that individuals cannot stop or control.

“Howard had an urge to tell him, to tell anyone and everybody, that he had grown up here, that this was his home. But there was no one familiar to tell. Laundry hung from poles overhead, and it billowed gently in the breeze like ghosts waving. The alley was quiet, wooden doors mostly shut.”

The sensory details in this scene of Haiwen returning to his home neighborhood contrast sharply with the sensory details of it on the morning of his departure. In that opening scene (the Overture), Haiwen focuses on the many sounds of the neighborhood. Upon his return, by contrast, “the alley [i]s quiet.” Instead of familiar faces, Haiwen sees only closed doors and hanging laundry that looks like ghosts. This emphasizes that the place he once knew is “dead” to him and no longer as vibrant as it once was because everything that made it “home,” the people, is gone.

“He fell to his knees. Flakes of white ash broke off the joss sticks and snowed upon his knuckles. Tears mingled with snot above his upper lip. He wanted his mother’s forgiveness for leaving her, but he would never receive it.”

In this scene, Haiwen mourns at his mother’s grave. It is one of the few moments in the novel where Haiwen viscerally expresses his feelings without his violin. The fact that he has tears and snot running down his face indicates the depth of his feelings of regret and sadness.

“The gnarled branches of the banyan tree filled Suchi with unbearable sadness. Her eyes traced the lines of each root and vine, searching for their connections, following where one tucked in and disappeared into the shadows, and where it reappeared and branched into another limb. She loved the tree’s complication, its chaotic beauty, and yet she couldn’t decide if she felt its unruliness was one of creation or destruction.”

This is one of the rare examples of nature imagery and symbolism in the novel. Suchi reflects on the banyan tree as a symbol of the complexity of life and death, with its twisting branches representing different the relationships and choices that one experiences and makes throughout a lifetime. Suchi is unsure whether it represents “creation or destruction,” suggesting that it is both, as death (destruction) is part of life (creation).

“From the haven of the taxi, he could appreciate the beauty of the snowflake, its miniature geometry. Like much in this world, what was beauty and what was torment depended upon the context.”

This moment of nature imagery comes soon after Suchi reflects on the banyan tree and suggests that Suchi and Haiwen share a similar outlook on life. Haiwen takes in an element of the natural world, the snowflake, and reflects on how it is illustrative of an aspect of life and its complexity, both the good and the bad.

“She thought of the things she once longed for, fantasies that had come true: She had traveled, she had seen something other than her longtang, she was in Hong Kong hobnobbing among singers and well-to-do men. But the reality was nothing at all like what she had imagined. Now what she wanted most was impossible—her family, Haiwen, and the comfort of home. All her dreams lay in the past.”

This quote gives Suchi’s perspective on the search for belonging and home. It also alludes to the enduring nature of love in that, despite her many years apart from him, Suchi still longs for Haiwen. At this point in life, she is feeling disillusioned that she will ever again have a home or love again.

“She searched for a shadow of Haiwen. She knew he was out there, somewhere in the hazy distance, on a horizon she could not make out. She pictured him, his violin cradled between his chin and shoulder, his arm raised, bow hovering above the strings, and was struck with a certainty: all she had to do was sing the right notes and he would know, he would feel she was alive, he would launch his bow upon the strings and play with her.”

This moment is exemplary of the enduring nature of love. Suchi is at a low moment, and she bolsters her spirits with the memory of Haiwen. Figuratively, through the power of love and memory, it is as if they are making music together once again.

“It was because of President Chiang he was separated from his family, from Suchi, forbidden to reach out to them. And yes, it was because of President Chiang so many locals hated him, because of President Chiang so many innocents had suffered and died for simply trying to live a just and fair existence.

But it remained that President Chiang had been his last hope—the last hope for all of them, Zenpo, Lau Fu, every last military man who had left for Taiwan not knowing they would be here for this long. Without President Chiang, there would be no reclaiming the homeland, there would be no returning to China. Without President Chiang, there would be no way to take back what was lost. Everything that had still seemed possible was now extinguished forever.”

This quote illustrates the impact of geopolitical events on individual lives. Haiwen connects the list of events in his life that separated him from his home and his family to the actions of one powerful leader, President Chiang. This is illustrative of the thesis that Suchi articulated: that ordinary citizens become collateral damage to powerful leaders.

“Every night she stood onstage and conjured up her loved ones’ ghosts and willed them to hear her. Every song was a prayer that somewhere Haiwen, Apa, M’ma were alive, that they could be kept alive by the sheer force of her memory. It wrenched her.”

In this quote, Suchi articulates the search for belonging and home and how it figured into her daily life while singing at the club. Although Suchi does not have any religious convictions, she nevertheless describes her songs figuratively as a form of “prayer.” This shows that they give her strength.

“She readied herself to run and leap over the railing; in her imagination, she was already flying through the air, cutting through the gray ice of the harbor. She opened her eyes, prepared to face the jaws of the water. Instead, she saw, sitting in front of her like a ghostly apparition, her love, her best friend: Wang Haiwen.”

This quote describes one of the key moments of melodrama in Homeseeking. At the moment before Suchi decides to die by suicide out of desperation, she sees Haiwen and stops. She uses a simile to describe him as “like a ghost apparition.” This shows that it is as if a part of her past that she thought was dead has suddenly come to life.

“‘Maybe we have to stop thinking about it and move forward with our lives.’ ‘But aren’t you afraid of forgetting?’ ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I’m afraid of a lifetime of remembering the things I want to forget.’”

This exchange between Suchi and Haiwen illustrates their different perspectives on remembering the past. Haiwen tends to wallow in it, living in the past, whereas Suchi tends to ignore it, shutting it out entirely. By the end of the novel, they find a happy medium between the two perspectives represented here.

“What had happened to Zhang Suchi? Zhang Suchi had died the moment she left Wang Haiwen sleeping in that hotel room, her last hope of running from her fate extinguished.”

In this quote, Suchi expresses her anguish at the circumstances of her life. She refers to herself in the third person to emphasize her depersonalization and disconnect from herself in this moment.

“Anguish spread through his chest, a thick sludge. It had been a long time since he had wept; he had gotten used to the permanent stone of grief he carried with him, a stone tears could not banish.

But now, thinking about Li Tsin, about his body floating somewhere in the vast ocean toward China, he began to cry. He had not done enough to protect him. He was filled with bitter remorse, but he understood why his friend had done it. He realized, as he choked through sobs, that in a way, he was envious.”

Haiwen is devasted by a thwarted desire to return home and reconnect with his family. His depression and grief are so profound that he feels “envious” when he imagines Li Tsin’s lifeless body “floating […] toward China.” In this moment of sadness, death seems preferable to his actual circumstances. Haiwen’s feelings of desperation at this moment mirror Suchi’s feelings when she is contemplating death by suicide while standing on the ferry.

“Those were just things, Soukei reminded herself. Things of the past. They didn’t matter. Only her future did.”

In this quote, Suchi reflects on what she will be leaving behind in Hong Kong by not returning to her abusive husband. Although she is speaking literally, about objects she will have to forsake, this also has a figurative meaning. From this moment onward, Suchi does not focus on her past memories, relationships, or dreams again until she reconnects with Haiwen.

“She’d spent her life not looking backward, only focused on surviving what was in front of her, pressing ahead day by day. For so many years, she’d told herself this was courage, but now the decades had passed and she found that this whole time she’d only been running away.”

After reconnecting with Haiwen, Suchi has this moment of realization and resolves to come to terms with her past. She had made the difficult choice not to think about it because it was painful, and she needed to focus on survival. When her life is more stable, she can open back up to those feelings, relationships, and memories.

“Suchi knew now that home wasn’t a place. It wasn’t moments that could be pinned down. It was people, people who shared the same ghosts as you, of folks long gone, places long disappeared. People who knew you, saw you, loved you. When those people were far-flung, your home was too. And when those people were gone, home lived on inside you.”

This quote articulates the novel’s message about the search for belonging and home. Although Haiwen, for example, is focused on the return to a place, when he gets there, he finds that it no longer feels like home because the people he cares about are not there. Suchi recognizes that home is not Shanghai or Hong Kong, but rather about those who live on in relationships and memories.