Dear Mother,

I’ve been thinking about the Chinese restaurant, Dragon Inn, that we owned in Michigan. Was it in Rochester? I wish you could tell me where it was, what it was like, what it meant to you. I wish I could see its aerial view. Wish I could remember what was around it. Wish I could see what’s there now. Another Chinese restaurant, a hair salon, ghosts?

Memory is everything, yet it is nothing. Memory is mine, but it is also clinging to the memory of others. Some of these others are dead. Or unable to speak, like Father.

Finding memories is a bit like free diving, although I’ve never free dived before. You jump in the water and hold your breath as long as you can without dying and hope you come up with a memory or two. Then there’s the problem of opening the memory.

I remember that everything was red. The vinyl booths, the wallpaper, the lanterns, the sign in chop suey font with a dragon at the side. The big bowl of mints that tasted like toothpaste. The Chinese horoscope place mats. The beautiful chef with long black hair that he pulled into a ponytail.

This past week, I was in the Hudson Valley in New York. I walked out of the hotel and smelled garlic and sesame oil. The sign above said Buddha Asian Bistro. A new restaurant. Still the chop suey font. I turned away so as not to look inside, in the same way that I often turn my head away from Asian people on the street. If I don’t look at them, I won’t have to see myself.

I remember how crowded Dragon Inn was on Sundays when we had an all-you-can-eat brunch for $4.99. The line went out the door and everything was frenzied and nameless—the waitresses setting up, you lighting the little blue flames below the buffet containers, the chef shoveling fried rice into large metal containers, Father seating the customers who rushed in.

We offered fried rice, egg rolls, fried noodles, and maybe sweet and sour pork. I don’t remember all the food. But people came from all over town, whatever town we were in.

One day, the brunch disappeared. I never asked why, but I imagine customers ate too much or it was too much work. These are the kinds of questions that absolutely did not matter at the time. The things that didn’t matter at the time are often the most urgent questions after someone has died.

After the brunch disappeared, I remember the quiet restaurant with the handful of customers who came in occasionally for egg foo young or moo shu pork—none of the foods we ate. I remember our secret menu, the one just for Chinese people. This makes me think about how we perpetuate our own stereotypes, our own vanishing.

Resolve isn’t inactive, though. Resolve is a live animal. We perpetuate the narrative that is given to us in order to survive. I didn’t even know until recently that we opened restaurants because of labor restrictions placed on Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century.

So much of our identity is based on how others expect us to be, how others want us to behave, to dress, to talk, how others perceive Chinese food. All the expectations, all the way down to the font. The alternative is to change the font and go out of business.

Once, a photographer asked me if I had a Mao outfit that I could wear for the magazine’s shoot. I didn’t even know what a Mao outfit was, if there was even such a thing. I’m not sure what I said or did, but I’m sure I didn’t protest. Can you wear all black then? he asked. I thought about it, Sure. Because I thought a Chinese person should either say nothing or say yes.

Once the brunch disappeared, I spent my Sundays going back and forth to the liquor store next door. I remember having the urge to slip a small chunky chocolate square into my pocket without the owners noticing. I was so bored that I even missed the white people who lined up not to see us. Who lined up to eat us alive.

One day, the restaurant just disappeared. It may have had something to do with Father’s having another job. Or with the restaurant’s not making money. Or with the chefs always fighting with the waitstaff, who were always intentionally and stereotypically Chinese, not unlike the food itself.

Much later, I heard that you had bought the restaurant for your brother, whom you had sponsored from Taiwan, but he didn’t want it or want to live in Michigan. I don’t know which brother or where he is now.

When I google Dragon Inn Rochester Michigan, another Dragon Inn comes up, and I marvel at all the new Chinese restaurants such as Panda House, Pings, China Town … I wonder about all the Chinese American children wandering around those restaurants. I imagine the mother yelling chi fan, time to eat. And then all the kids gathering at the back table to eat dinner, a dinner that the chef made just for Chinese people. I’m not sure people even do this anymore. I don’t remember the last time I saw a child in the back, slipping fortune cookies in small wax bags, like I did. Even the children have disappeared.

Now, instead of feeling ashamed of Chinese people, I yearn to be around them, the way plants have companions—the way garlic plants improve the growth and flavor of the beets next to them. Mother, you used to do all the ordering, but now when I go to a Chinese restaurant, sometimes I ask for the Chinese menu, something you often did. When I see an old Chinese woman at the table with her daughter, I see you, your garlic personality, my beet cheeks, and I proudly order everything you taught me to order. Maybe you had to die before I could ever order on my own, before I could have ever wanted to be Chinese.