My grandfather had a baffling interest in watching me watch Bernie Sanders speak. In the beginning, he stood a bit afar, squinting, scratching his neck whenever the crowd on my laptop applauded. In April, when Bernie went to Coopersville, addressing the trade union, Grandpa came over, pointed to the screen, and said, “This dude, my age, is going to be American president?” After I said “maybe,” he sat down by me.
I switched on auto-translate, but he waved his hand and said, “I don’t need to understand! I watch just because he seems okay.” So Grandpa, who speaks only Chinese and whose life is far from live streaming, firewall, VPN, and the Elephant versus Donkey, joined me watching Bernie. When I applauded for Bernie’s brilliancy, he frowned; when Bernie was given a close-up, he sniffed loudly as if there were something “fishy.”
In mid-June, after Grandpa watched Bernie in D.C., he sat in his chair for a prolonged period. Then he told me, “This okay guy, he actually reminded me of my good old mate in the 70s.” Wiping sweat off his forehead, he added, “I wish him the best!” his voice so vehement that it frayed. Then he hobbled back to his room and that was the last time he watched Bernie with me.
He was again the Grandpa who would blast to me news ranging from “China’s high-speed train” to “China’s agricultural breakthroughs”; whose nostrils would flare disapprovingly over my criticisms about our country; and who would silently object with his stare—or sometimes loudly with his chopsticks tapping his bowl—when I discussed with my parents about studying political science in the states.
Grandpa never mentioned Bernie again. But as I watched the campaign alone, Grandpa’s words stayed with me. All I knew about him was that he was forced to work in the field like many others in the 70s and was later relocated to a metal factory. I knew neither his life details nor his “good old mate.” Meanwhile, I couldn’t figure out why a seventy-year-old American man suddenly made him think of a Chinese friend belonging to such a distant past. Was it Bernie’s manners? His warm tone? What did Grandpa and his friend go through?
Grandpa’s confounding empathy for Bernie, traversing time and the Pacific Ocean, and the mysteries surrounding his past forced me to reexamine my relationship with him. But the more I thought, the more shame I felt, as I realized my interaction with Grandpa had contributed to my ignorance of his life. I pegged him as “over-patriotic,” telling him “sugarcoating doesn’t help” when he reminded me to be more respectful toward our country; I abruptly ended our conversation when he spoke of patriotic lessons, which I dismissed as ossified, uncritical. Yet I had never bothered to figure out why Grandpa, who was “mistreated” in the 70s, ended up loving our country; and I never pondered the possible struggles, the epiphanies and compromises entailed in his complex transition.
“The personal is political,” as I iterated the notion, I realized how privileged it is—only our stories, the self-realization/awareness stories of the Generation Z, are deemed politically empowering, while Grandpa’s generation and their stories are silenced and locked into the past, not only by society but also by us, their beloved.
With this sharp realization, I’m determined to change the way I live. I started listening patiently when Grandpa speaks on patriotism; I calmly compare his reasoning with mine when he wants me to stop criticizing China; and I spend more time helping him water his flowers and tweak his radio so I can learn a bit more about his past and present.
I still don’t know who Grandpa’s good old mate was, nor do I know why Bernie. It may take us a long time to get there. But until then, I’ll sit by him and listen patiently, just as he did for Bernie.