I kneeled before the altar; my knees planted firmly on a red cushion that had been worn thin with age. Winds of incense slowly spiraled upward. Sandalwood drifted in with its calm aroma, merry to heighten the contrast of this ancient ambiance. To me, the smell is ancient, familiar in a way that drew something from the depths of my chest. Every spring, we gather for Taigong Ji. The ceremony is a rite held to honor our earliest recorded ancestor. The family comes together to bow, burn incense, and speak the names of those who came before, reaffirming the unbroken chain of lineage. I fought for this moment to stand beside these people-for the youngest in six centuries. I thought standing with them would make me one of them.
But there, even in the silence, I was reminded that I am not.
And in the atmosphere of still silence, hazy and blurred, a figure began to make itself known in my mind. A black-and-white photograph hangs in our ancestral hall; its edges yellowed with age. Everyone in the picture sits stiffly, arranged in neat rows, wearing the best of their clothes. After all, clicking a picture was no casual thing back then. Yet there, close to the edge, is one figure whose face has been deliberately scratched out. The body lines of this figure persist: tall, narrow-shouldered, and slightly hunched- with the effect that someone tried to erase him, but the job does not seem to have ever been completed.
I asked: Who was he? My father said, "He worked somewhere nearby; he had a temper and didn't get along with anyone." My mother claimed that he went away for business and never returned. My grandfather was not afflicted with hesitation.
Image Description: A pale blue silk scarf takes up the photo. It has branches with small blossoms and hummingbirds decorating it.
Credit: Diana ✨ / Pexels
“People like that,” Grandfather said, lips tightening, “are not worth remembering.”
Their stories never matched. What did match was the hollow tone in their voices and the way each reply sidestepped the actual answer.
However, when I asked my grandmother, her eyes remained glued on the photo longer than I had expected, tracing the shape that was not really there. After an interminable silence, she murmured across the room.
“That is my younger brother, your great-uncle. He was different even when we were little,” her voice drifted away like the end of a lullaby. “He never went for women. Always, I knew. He never had to articulate it, for I could see it in the way he moved and looked at the world.”
Grandmother's fingers brushed against the edge of the table. It felt like letting go. “He loved Chinese opera. He'd borrow my silk scarves and would go twirling before the mirror as if he were another. Once, he brought a boy home. They stood in the courtyard holding hands. After that day, my father said nothing. But he made sure no one spoke his name again, never during ancestral rites, never at any offering, never in the hall, as if
silence could make him vanish. And my brother… he left not long after.”
She stopped there. Her eyes drifted away, unfocused. I felt something seize inside me. A kind of quiet panic. She turned toward me, as if she had more to say, and for a moment, I thought she might reach for me, not with her hands, but with something older, something closer to knowing.
I couldn’t let her look too long. Couldn’t let her see the storm her words had kicked up inside me.
I stood too quickly, muttering something about the dishes, and before I knew it, I was already out the door. The wind cut through my jacket like a blade, but I kept going. I walked faster, then faster again, as if moving fast enough might leave everything behind. As if silence could protect me.
But I wasn’t alone. My great-uncle walked with me—the man from the old photo, the one they tried to erase but never truly lost. In the days after, I kept sensing him, like something lodged inside me I couldn’t swallow or name.
His absence wasn’t just a ghost. It was a warning. Or maybe a question—what happens to the ones who don’t fit inside the frame?
I’m just like him.
I’ve always known this house wasn’t built for someone like me. Men bring wives home here. They pass down the family name like a torch. And yet I came anyway, lit the incense anyway, knowing I’d be the one to break the chain. Still, I thought—if I followed every rule, if I memorized every chant, bowed at the right times, spoke the right words—maybe I could make myself belong.
I studied harder than anyone. Knew the rituals better than the cousins who barely bothered to show up. I wanted them to see me, to let me stand at the front, to trust me with the weight of it all. Maybe then they’d say my name like it mattered. Maybe then they’d believe I could carry this, too.
But now, kneeling in front of the altar, I’m not so sure.
The Taigong Ji happens every year. When they chose me to lead it this year, I thought it meant something. But now I wonder—did they really know what they were asking?
A few days before the ceremony, my grandfather pressed a worn booklet into my hands. The red cover was fraying at the edges, the threads coming loose. His fingers lingered on my wrist, his voice low but firm: “Read it true. You represent all of us.”
The pages were filled with ancient characters—sharp, twisting shapes I barely recognized. I circled the ones I didn’t know, scribbled pinyin in the margins, whispered the lines over and over until my throat ached. Late at night, in my room, I practiced like the right pronunciation could stitch me into this family for good.
But I didn’t understand then what the words really meant.
Now, standing before the altar, the first lines come out stiff but clear. My voice echoes in the hall, rough but steady.
And then it hits me—the line I’ve been dreading:
“May our descendants last ten thousand generations, unbroken and unending.”
The words drop like stones into the silence. They’re supposed to be a blessing. But all I hear is a demand—a future I can’t give them. A wife I won’t have. Children I won’t father.
In that moment, it’s so obvious I almost laugh. They gave me the robe. They handed me the incense. They let me stand where only the chosen ones stand.
But the part of me they don’t name—the part that loves differently—still doesn’t fit inside this ritual.
When it’s over, the clapping is scattered. The ceremony gives way to the feast. Dishes clink.
Then, most people leave quickly. I stay to help my grandmother clean. We work without speaking, stacking plates, wiping down tables. When we’re done, she steps outside and sits on the stone ledge, her hands resting on her knees. She doesn’t look at me—just taps the space beside her.
I sit.
For a long moment, she says nothing. Then:
“You reminded me of my brother.”
I turn, but her eyes stay fixed on the ground.
And then she tells me a story I’d never heard.
He left Wenzhou at twenty-one—first for Shenzhen, then Zhuhai. Started out hauling crates in a warehouse, keeping quiet. Later, he found his way to something brighter. Organized dance nights behind a bar, played music no one back home would’ve understood. Eventually, he opened a hair salon. Sent money home every month in neat envelopes.
No one wrote back.
“They said he brought shame,” she murmurs. “Someone found a photo of him in a pink suit, smiling, his arm around another man. Some said it was just a client. Others were crueler. Then my father took the family scroll and crossed his name out in black ink.”
She stops. Her hand rests on the rag like she’s forgotten it’s there.
“After that, no one spoke of him. But he came back once.”
She describes it like she’s still seeing it: “Middle of the day, I don’t remember which year. Villagers saw him standing outside the ancestral hall, his jacket too bright. Held a basket of lychees. Didn’t step inside—just looked through the doorway for a while, set the fruit down, and left.”
Her voice tightens. “When my father found out, he locked himself in his room until morning.”
She twists the cloth once, slowly, then drapes it over her arm.
“You’re not the first,” she says, finally looking at me. “But don’t let them convince you you’re alone.”
Her hands curl in her lap. “I regret it,” she says softly. “I should have spoken for him. Even if only once.”
I want to say something back—something real—but all that comes out is: “I want to stay.”
I’m not sure if she understands what I mean by staying. That it’s not just about being here—it’s about being here as I am.
But she doesn’t ask. Like she decided long ago to accept me, even before I asked her to.
That night, I go back to the ancestral hall alone. The lights are dim, the floor still smelling of wood polish and old ash.
I stand in front of the scroll—the one that holds every name, written in bold strokes like they’ll last forever. My eyes find the black line where my great-uncle’s name used to be.
Then I see the words meant for me: “May our descendants last ten thousand generations, unbroken and unending.”
A promise I can’t keep.
I take out the pen. Press it to the rice paper. And draw a line straight through the old words.
In their place, I write:
“Bound not by blood, yet bearer of the flame.”
It’s not rebellion. Not quite forgiveness, either.
It’s just the truth.
I didn’t come here to force myself into a space that never wanted me. I came to widen the crack that was already there. My great-uncle was that crack. I’m just planting something in the space he left behind.
About the Author
Luke Liu is a high school junior in Shanghai, originally from Wenzhou. He began journaling in fifth grade, and what started as a quiet ritual of remembering grew into a deep engagement with memoir and nonfiction. After moving to Shanghai alone for high school, his writing turned inward, shaped by distance and memory. His essay, In the Space Where a Name Was Erased, asks what it means to belong to a ritual that was not made for you. The questions led him to co-found the Taigong Ji Youth Initiative, a national project linking 28 ancestral halls to update rituals, preserve stories, and invite new ways of belonging. More than a heritage NGO, it is a response to the disorientation many young people feel between globalized modernity and local memory. Luke also serves as Deputy Secretary-General of the Liu Ji Cultural Institute, where he works on burial reform and sustainable land use in southeastern China. In his free time, he plays the Guqin, an ancient Chinese instrument, and tries, with limited success, to convince his dog Gutou that shoelaces are not prey.
Add comment
Comments