Tuyen T.
Yelp
There is a quiet beauty in the simplicity of Hing Hay Park. A pagoda stands before a reach of concrete that breaks itself into stairs and is reminiscent of a Shinto temple and its courtyard staring at a mountain expanse.
In the evening, it becomes a lot more quiet than other reviewers may suggest. In the dark stillness of one such evening, I looked at the Pagoda with a confused yearning. It felt familiar. I had walked by it so many times, thousands even, but tonight, it somehow resonated with me more than it ever had before.
Maybe it was the way my breath wisped out in front of me like ghosts, beckoning me to somewhere important, but nowhere in particular. Maybe it was the way the cold pinched at my cheeks in ways grandmothers do on the television. Not my grandmother, though. Not Asian grandmothers. Maybe it was solemnity of a cold, quiet night combined with the enrapturing laughter of family dinners carried on the scent of barbequed pork escaping from nearby restaurants.
Some secret recipe of the night left me hungry, staring at the pagoda. I wondered how many scents I'll never smell. How many ancestors I'll never know the names of. How many breaths will I never know the heat of.
The small, simple structure, adorned in primary colors, was steps away, but felt so far in the dense darkness. I wondered if it felt like me. Different from the buildings around it, so much smaller, so colorful, so obviously different in it's history. Does it feel at home in this park? Does it wish it were somewhere else? Does it know it doesn't belong anywhere else either?
In the morning, grandfathers will play chess and rebellious teenagers will smoke cigarettes at this park, and the pagoda will be here. And maybe I will be here. In this neighborhood of in-betweens and outsides. A neighborhood of Asian and America. A neighborhood always seeking to pick one or the other, when it's really both.