Because I have to be preparing for next year’s college entrance exam, I plan not to go back to my hometown in Fujian Province this winter holiday. It means that I will not have joined my folks in the celebration of the Spring Festival in my hometown for two consecutive years. I feel a great deal of heartache.

Over the years, I have asked my parents many times why they chose to work so far away from our hometown. I thought how wonderful it would be if I could be growing up at my birthplace or somewhere nearer to it. Father explained that he had just followed in his uncles’ footsteps to this place in Hubei to make a better life for the extended family. That’s true. Most of my uncles and aunts work in other provinces, leaving my grandparents and great uncles and great aunts behind in the home village being farmers and fishermen.

Sometimes when I feel a pang of homesickness, I cannot turn to anyone because most of my contemporaries do not share the same experience. They do not suffer from lack of sense of belonging as I do. At best, the few guys I can relate to are a couple of my dorm mates from rural Shiyan, whose families are not here in town.

When it is sunny, I look up at the white clouds in the blue sky, wondering whether they have just drifted over here from my roots in Southeast China. When warm spring breezes caress my face, I think of sea wind. The scene where I was singing in the wind on the rooftop of my grandparents’ house flashes back to my mind’s eye. When it is a full-moon night, I admire the moon and miss my grandparents. They must be admiring the same moon too, missing me. A pitch-black sky studded with diamond-like stars in my village pops up in my imagination.

This weekend I made a phone call to my grandpa, in which I told him apologetically that I will not be able to make it home this year for the big festival. Though he sounded a bit down at first, Grandpa encouraged me and promised to pray for me at the village temple. I was moved and grateful.

Leaving the hometown behind is to make a better life; separation for the time being is for a better reunion one day.