My very first memory of China is of pollution. I was five years old and it was my first time there. Unfortunately, that is also my only memory of that trip.

In 2002, when I was seven, I was already semi-accustomed to the pollution. That time, it was the people who overwhelmed me. Crowds and crowds of people: on the street, in cars, in stores, literally everywhere. And with people came noise. It would not have been China without the constant honking of car horns. Back in the US after that trip, I felt a strange emptiness.

It was not until my next trip, in 2005, that I could actually recall something more striking than noise and pollution, something much more personal.

I wake up to the sound of chopping and sizzling and the smell of breakfast food. The sunlight is already streaming through the cracked green-painted window frames and I slowly register the blare of traffic. It is eight in the morning in my waipo’s (grandmother’s) two-room house in Shanghai, China. My brother is already in the tiny kitchen, and as I take a seat, my waipo places two bowls of lian xing tang in front of us. I have always disliked this hot soup with the bitter lian xin (lotus plumule), dried red dates, and other “good for you” food, but I still eat it every morning along with a large wrap. This handmade wrap came from the countryside, transported to the city by my grandmother. It is filled with a cold crushed hard-boiled egg, fen si (cellophane noodles) and leftover vegetables from last night’s dinner. After numerous rebuttals to offers of more food, my brother and I finally escape back to the main room and engage in a checkers game with my grandfather. My brother lets him win every time, while I am not that considerate.

Before I realize it, dinnertime has arrived. Whole-family dinners are a common occurrence whenever my family visits. An array of aunts and cousins come by my grandparents’ house at least every other day to eat with us, with Saturday and Sunday dinners an entire family affair. Since today is a Saturday, cousins, uncles, and aunts all come, and we sit together at the red square table. One by one the dishes are placed, leaving a round spot in the center for the soup, which we always bring up last. Bowls, chopsticks, and paper cups are passed around. Everyone drinks 7-Up. I immediately zone in on the thinly sliced cucumber strips prepared with sugar, sesame oil, salt, and black vinegar. After I satiate my cucumber craving, I go for the tender string beans, cooked in soy sauce and vinegar, black fen si, chestnuts and pork chops, and end with the winter melon (a white, almost translucent melon) soup loaded with tender tomatoes, potatoes, green onions, and salted bamboo. If I sit there a moment too long, the onslaught of more food begins to fill my bowl. “Eat! Eat! Are you still hungry?” These seem to be the only words my family say to me; it gets quite annoying.

Trying to communicate is annoying as well. Since I am the only one in my family born and raised in the US, I don’t have the same exposure to my ancestral roots as the rest of my family. Talking to my grandparents is always difficult; we usually have a hard time understanding each other. It is frustrating, but I have never put in the extra effort to just sit and chat with them. Of course as kids, my cousins and I had no trouble playing with each other as it required minimal conversation, and my mother was always there to translate for me.

In 2005, I was ten: still young enough that my aunts wanted to hold my hand when we crossed the streets, but old enough that my grandparents always wanted to know why I was not studying. I would pull out a book and read just to please them, and the room would become quiet, a light breeze wafting from my grandfather’s fan. We would sit side-by-side, enjoying the language we both understand: silence.

I needed this, this constant, simple way of life. I needed my grandmother’s cooking, her urging me to eat more, my ever-growing cousins who look after me, my two very different aunts who dote upon me, and my grandfather, whose smile never fails to fill my heart with happiness. I needed all this as a reminder that my family is and will always be there; they fill that emptiness I had felt back in 2002. However, I did not realize this until years later.

I took all this back with me to the US, my third China trip over all too soon.

My fourth trip occurred two years later, in 2007. Everything was just as I had remembered it, down to the tissue box placement on the tiled shelf under the window. It was as if everything had frozen when I left, only resuming existance when I came back.

It was during that trip that I realized one of my cousins never directly spoke to me. I overheard him telling his mother that he could not understand anything I said. Was my Chinese getting that bad? It was quite possible. I hardly spoke Mandarin at home anymore. But that couldn’t happen! I wanted to be close to everyone in my family. They all lived quite near each other. They must have seen each other very often, but I only had my sparse summer vacations with them.

Each time I visit, however, I settle into a routine, which comforts me because I know it is something I can always rely on. I let my grandparents take care of me, bringing me sweet watermelon, huge red grapes, and my favorite fruit of all time, yang mei, a juicy, red, berry-like fruit with a sweet and tart flavor and a pit. Of course even the food-forcing remained the same and I still remained slightly annoyed, but the food never failed to bring the entire family together, and for that I was grateful.

Five long years later, I landed again in Pudong International Airport. After half a decade in America, I needed my extended family. I had missed them greatly. Of course I also missed the food and vegetables and fully expected my familiar routine to resume.

As I arrive at my grandparents’ new apartment, I take in the surroundings. Row upon row of identical multi-level apartments fill up the entire area, with the narrowest parking spaces imaginable littered here and there. I enter the apartment, again surveying the space. They still have a common room and a tiny kitchen, but they now have an additoinal bedroom and bathroom. My grandparents exclaim happily upon my arrival, shuffling over to lay out slippers and take my bags. I take a good look at my grandparents; for the most part they seem to be the same, although, of course, always older, never younger. This time, however, I have a renewed appreciation for them and for all they have done for me. I collapse on the sofa and exhale; I am home.

My first meal is absolutely extravagant. Not in the shiny-silverware-and-good-china way but in the amount-of-food-and-preparation way. There are my favorites—the crunchy cucumbers, though not so thinly sliced anymore, the green beans, the array of vegetables not available in US markets, lima beans with green onion and a hint of salt, and of course some type of meat, this time duck. But what makes it ten times more special are the people sitting with me, the food for my soul.

This visit occurred just this past year, in 2012. I walked in the park with my brother and grandfather, laughing as we watched a group of people dancing to music. I had a sleepover with my cousins, staying up until the wee hours of the morning, playing games on an iPad, eating ice cream, and using my slightly-improved Mandarin and their greatly-improved English to chat about our lives. I shoved money at a cashier to pay for groceries before my grandmother could pull out her moneybag, and then forced her to let me carry the bags. My best memory, though, is smiling extra wide just to see my grandfather reciprocate the motion; it is almost a reflex for him to smile whenever someone smiles at him.

It was also this past year that I found out my grandfather has cancer. I also found out my entire family only gets together for holidays, special occasions, and whenever my immediate family comes. They do not actually get to see each other as often as I had imagined. So I have played a bigger role than I thought; they need me too. I talked to my grandfather for a long time the night before I left for America. I even doled out hugs to everyone, something none of us ever had done before. I needed to imprint each memory in my mind, to store it like a bear stores nutrition for hibernation. Not for a winter, but for life. Even though it has taken over a decade, I now finally know, my family needs me just as much as I need them. They fill the emptiness. They are the food for my soul.