"How Could I Explain Gentrification to Someone from Mainland China?" by Teresa Mei Chuc

How could I explain gentrification to someone from mainland China?

Imagine a shopping mall being built on top of your ancestors’ burial site.
Imagine your family being forced to move because the owners are building luxury apartments.
Imagine experiencing homelessness. Imagine children experiencing homelessness.

Peony flowers have been in China for thousands of years. Imagine peony flower petals being plucked one by one. Imagine every peony tree being uprooted. Imagine its pink blush and medicine gone. A spring without peony blooming.

Imagine thousand-year-old gingko trees being chopped down to make way for a road.

Imagine a harsh winter without plum blossoms in the snow. Imagine the 1,600 year-old-plum tree in Hubei gone.

Not knowing the taste of native plum on the tongue.

Teresa Mei Chuc

Poet Laureate of Altadena, California (2018 to 2020), Teresa Mei Chuc is the author of three full-length collections of poetry, Red Thread (Fithian Press, 2012), Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing, 2014), and Invisible Light (Many Voices Press, 2018). She was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and immigrated to the U.S. under political asylum with her mother and brother shortly after the Vietnam War, while her father remained in a Vietcong “reeducation” camp for nine years. Her poetry appears in journals such as Consequence Magazine, EarthSpeak Magazine, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Kyoto Journal, Poet Lore, Rattle, and in anthologies such as With Our Eyes Wide Open: Poems of the New American Century (West End Press, 2014) and Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees (W.W. Norton, 2017). Teresa is a graduate of the Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, and teaches literature and writing at a public high school in Los Angeles.

Headshot: Joseph Paz Dominguez

Photo Credit: Shayne Schultz