Who Coined the Phrase You Cant Go Home Again
Locked out.
"You can't get domicile over again" is the title of a novel by Thomas Wolfe. It's meant metaphorically. Only for many years information technology was literally truthful for my married man. His hometown was locked abroad behind the Bamboo Curtain, off-limits to outsiders.
Possibly that'south why my husband kept his childhood memories so bright and alive in the stories he told.
In Eugene's stories people rode in sedan chairs and ate "fried ghosts." They climbed Sunlight Rock and played in the street. His hometown, Gulangyu, was a colorful, dramatic place, frozen in the mind of an eight-year-erstwhile boy.
Then, 30-four years after he left China, the pall parted.
Nil changed and everything did.
If you've ever returned to someplace after a long absence, you know how faded and small or even unrecognizable it can seem. When our transport sailed between Gulangyu and Xiamen, Eugene stood silently at the railing, gazing at the once-colorful scene. On that drizzly solar day it looked more similar a sepia print.
We defenseless a taxi, and, subsequently a contentious dispute over our reservation (See my post, "No Room at the Inn."), we checked into our hotel in Xiamen.
The following morning nosotros caught the ferry to Gulangyu. Our beau passengers, who all seemed to exist wearing the aforementioned blue or gray jackets, stared at Eugene'southward clothes and mustache and at my low-cal hair and blue eyes. 2 men backside usa were especially obnoxious, cackling and chattering in their dialect. Suddenly Eugene whipped effectually and shouted at them. The men'due south mouths dropped open up, and so, smiling sheepishly, they muttered something and backed off.
"What happened?" I whispered.
"They chosen me a fat Japanese. Said I had an ugly big-nosed wife."
"What!?"
"I asked them who the hell they idea they were calling Japanese."
"And?"
"I called them sons of turtles, and they apologized. Said they didn't know I was one of them."
"That's all? You didn't stand up for my dazzler?"
"Oh, honey. They didn't mean annihilation. Remember, in that location haven't been any foreigners hither since before they were born. Anyway, they said the kids turned out okay. I think they were a little surprised by that."
The ferry docked, and while I was still considering the unchallenged insult to my proficient 
looks, the oversupply swept us onto the dock and up the hill. When Eugene was a kid, wheeled vehicles were banned on Gulangyu. They even so were. In fact, equally nosotros made our way up the narrow, curving lanes, it seemed that zip had changed. Eugene recognized shops and houses and schools.
We visited Mr. Ma, an quondam family friend who lived in the aforementioned house he'd occupied for the past fifty years. His wife prepared fresh spring rolls for the states that were just like those Eugene's female parent used to make, the wrapper soft, the seaweed crisp, and the pork and vegetables sliced as sparse every bit toothpicks.
Surface impressions can exist misleading, though. No way had we gone back to Eugene's childhood. Mr. Ma didn't have control over his ain house. Two other families lived downstairs while his married woman, grown children and grandchildren all lived with him on the peak floor.
The near disappointing sight for me was of Eugene's former house. It was a nice ii-story crimson brick house with white pillars and pale bluish louvered shutters. But hearing his stories, I'd imagined information technology much larger and more than Chinese, an erstwhile-fashioned Chinese firm with an inner courtyard.
I could never live there again.
Information technology rained on our mode back to Hong Kong. I listened to the confused design of waves and rain battering the side of the ship as I sat cantankerous-legged on my narrow bunk.
"I can't stop thinking," Eugene said from his side of the room. "Information technology's and then dissimilar. I could never live there."
He didn't exactly confess that day that Gulangyu hadn't lived up to his memories, just afterwards he seldom told stories well-nigh his childhood. Which was fine, I suppose. He had plenty of other stories to tell.
Side by side week's post: Fashion Torture
Source: http://nickichenwrites.com/wordpress/visiting-gulangyu/you-cant-go-home-again/
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