That Christmas, you
took me to the village
where you grew up
in North Yorkshire.
A village whose name you said
could be found in the Doomsday
Book. A name I couldn’t
remember or pronounce.
Except that I briefly philosophised
about the end of the world.
The village was tucked
deep in endless
mountains and moors covered
with patches of snow and ice
and dry heather.
Grey sky.
Low clouds.
Vast land.
Winding road.
Black stone houses.
Perhaps it was indeed
the world’s end.
The smell of roast turkey
floated in the air.
Your mum was busy
preparing the table while your dad
sat on the sofa watching
boring Christmas television.
The noise was hypnotising,
but it saved some small talk
for us.
We took our seats, thanked
whoever had brought us the dinner
(Anyone but your mum.)
and helped ourselves to boiled
vegetables, roast potatoes, gravy,
pigs in blankets.
Lots of things were said
about the neighbours and the relatives.
Not much was mentioned
about you
and me.
I smiled and nodded,
as if I understood
all your heavy
accents. You seemed
to have changed
to a different
person: polite, reserved
and straight.
The programme I enjoyed
the most was the ritual
when we grabbed
both ends of the crackers
and pulled them apart.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
There came
the magic hats,
red and green and purple and yellow.
We put them
on our heads, proudly
competing for silliness.
We laughed
at one another
in childlike innocence.
You took me to a pub
that night. A local pub
for local people. A pub
where a red and white
St. George’s flag flew
high on the roof.
There men drank dark ale.
Men played pool.
Men threw darts.
Men bantered with mates
about football and women.
(There were no women in the pub.)
There people looked at you,
me and us, in curiosity
and slight hostility.
I must have been
the first East Asian
they saw in this pub.
We must have been
the first gay couple
to have patronised the place.
We made
history and brought
juicy gossip
to this quiet village.
Early the next morning,
we bade farewell
to your tired parents,
to the sheep that awaited
their grass, to the dog that barked
at us, to the school building you hated
so much, to the church you refused
to step back into. I didn’t
ask you what it was like
to grow up
in the village.
Driving along the zigzagging
road across the mountains,
the moors,
the rocks,
the heather,
the patches of snow and ice
and childhood memories,
throwing your hometown
behind, just like what I had done
to my hometown.
(Although one is in England,
the other is in China,
one has a population of 500,
and the other, 7 million.)
Linguistic
and cultural differences
aside, we actually share
many similar
childhood experiences.
Was it this
that had brought us
together?
by Hong Wei Bao
Hongwei Bao (he/him) grew up in China and lives in Nottingham, UK. He uses short stories, poems, reviews and essays to explore queer desire, Asian identity, diasporic positionality and transcultural intimacy. His creative work has appeared in Allegory Ridge, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Messy Misfits Club, Shanghai Literary Review, The AutoEthnographer, The Hooghly Review, The Ponder Review, The Sociological Review Magazine, the other side of hope, The Voice & Verse and Write On. His flash fiction ‘A Postcard from Berlin’ won the second prize for the Plaza Prize for Microfiction in 2023.
