Navigating with Demi

I was born in a military base, located in a remote border city in China. It was a tight knit community where all the kids from the base would play with each other everyday, and all the adults would greet one another with a smile.

I remember we spent a lot time being active in the outdoors – from this massive sporting area where all the families would hang out, swim, play basketball or football or ping pong almost every night, to this open-air movie “theatre” where we could bring our own little chairs and watch one black-n-white movie about Japanese invasion every Thursday night. 

I remember the delicious lunches from the common food hall, and the disproportionate amount of time I had spent agonising in front of the blackboard, about which three dishes we could get today out of the five options. The kids would play some made-up war games while waiting for the meals to be ready, and the adults would arrive one after another around noon, slowly forming smaller groups to gossip about work and other families. 

I remember one of my favourite places to be in the entire base is this single general store selling soaps and shampoo etc but more importantly, the only snacks we had access to, behind a massive glass counter. They had this beautiful section selling five different types of ice creams and I loved the “smiley baby face” milky flavour on a stick that cost 1 yuan each. I would save up pocket money from changes from my lunch ordering mission for my family everyday, enough to get one “smiley baby face” in a week.

I remember the base was incredibly green, filled with big old trees and vibrant grass fields. There were extended sections where whole patches of the sky would be blocked by the connecting branches. Looking back, it was very mini-Yosemite-like. There was this one lady who would sell roasted chicken feet and wings, and sometimes pork knuckles if we were lucky, under one of those massive greens every once in a while; and we would cheer and queue up whenever her little bicycle showed up. My mom and I would crush those skinny homemade chicken feet together after dinner as our celebratory snacks. 

Our home moved from the back of the base, slowly to the front, as my dad’s career progressed in the military. We started out as a family in a <48sqm (<500sqft) space with two small bedrooms, a compacted living/ dining area, and a kitchen that could barely fit two people at a time with a squat toilet/ shower area right behind the cooking stalls. It was a tight space but I remember it fondly. 

I remember watching mom carrying a massive Chinese cooking knife, taking deep breaths, and dreadfully cutting the throat of a chicken from the wet market, releasing its blood for it to slowly pass out. She would then remove all of its hair, wash and clean it with boiling water and clean the shower area after. That same night, we’d be drinking an exquisite chicken soup with some form of chicken stir fry. 

I remember coming home from swimming sessions with mom at night. We’d cut a massive water melon in half, spoon out its meat and devour them satisfyingly. After that, we’d sit around and chitchat on our wooden bench, staring at each other’s soggy skins that’s soaked in the pool disinfected water for hours, with a distinct chlorine smell in the hot summer air. 

I remember I was terrified of the ghosts and dark nights. I would yell and call for dad the moment I woke up in the middle of the night. He would rush over and sit with me till I fell back to sleep, every time.

My room connected to our balcony at the back overlooking the green edge of the base. I remember it was always vigorously green, as if all the trees and unmanned fields were fighting for my attention. Every morning, I’d wake up to birds’ whistles as they announced the arrival of mornings during their flyover ritual. 

We had a kindergarten at the front of base where I attended from two to six. I don’t remember a whole lot or even my teachers’ names then but vividly remember this fight with a boy – I was five, very inexperienced in fighting, tried my best and earned five stitches honourably. 

I remember walking out of the school that day with my dad looking very disappointed at the gate; he went “I can’t believe you were the kid who got stitches today; we heard about a fight at the kindergarten at work earlier and I was thinking there’s no way my kid would ever lose if she ever got into one.” 

I decided that I wasn’t going to let my father down. The following day, I woke up with a mission and attacked that boy good and got him some fresh stitches. And dad was very proud. Though I was made to apologise to the boy by the school master after, for my heroic act of revenge. 

These human experiences formed the earliest memories of my formative years and led me to grow into who I am today. I wish I could spend more time recounting them because they’d never fail to remind me of what defines a rich and flavourful life. 

So much of the talk of the town today centers around Artificial Intelligence and all of its glorious improvement in productivity and efficiency. Having been someone who’s once obsessed with, and probably still am to a certain extent, productivity and efficiency hacks, I hope I will never lose sight of the fact that so much of a fulfilling life roots deeply in its most undefinable and inefficient times. 

I hope I will never lose sight of what it means to be a human. 

Thanks for reading.