The Guardian

Welcome to the Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture,

politics and new thinking. For the text version of this and all our long reads, go to the Guardian.com

for a slash long read. As borders closed, I became trapped in my Americanness. China, the US, and me.

I've long nursed vague plans of moving back to China for a few years to solidify my place there,

but with each year that passes in the US, such a move gets harder and harder to make.

By Angela Chin, read by Emily Wu Zeller, and produced by Esther Apokou-Jeni.

My grandfather died on the 25th of August 2020, Chinese Valentine's Day. I believe it was peaceful.

He had been in hospital in a vegetative state for several months, and had been declining from

dementia for three years. He was 95. He had always said he would live to be 100.

53 days before he died, my grandmother died. She was eating a sweet rice ball at the dinner

table and her heart suddenly stopped. Mid-bite, she simply stopped moving. Frows, like a buffering video

clip. By the time they got her to the hospital, it was too late. She had been in good health.

No one had been expecting that she would pass away. I was alone in New York when I heard about

my grandfather's death. Because of the pandemic, none of the family in the US could travel.

We used WeChat video to attend his funeral. From China, my aunt called us all in on a group conference.

My brother in New Jersey, my parents in San Diego, my cousin in San Jose, my uncle in Indiana.

The faces of all these separate individuals in different parts of the US were huddled onto

the small screen of her mobile phone, which she held up at the funeral as she cried and prayed.

I sat my phone up on a small tripod in the living room of the Brooklyn apartment I'd been

subletting for more than a year, but never felt quite at home in. It was a summer evening, quite late,

after dinner. After the hard pandemic months of March and April, Brooklyn felt warm, festive,

...