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I was very close to my grandfather. He was a deeply autistic man who, even in death, has his special interests on his grave. (People are instructed to leave flash lights and alarm clocks, never flowers, there)

He never told me stories about Swatow. He just said he got on a boat and never looked back. He didn’t have fond memories. He never returned, not even once, not even when we could afford it. He never wanted to go ‘home’.

But the sense of home he imparted to me was tied strongly to the language he spoke to me in. I have his accent, so strongly and so distinctly that even my elderly Teochew neighbors in San Francisco think I was born there, too.

In Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Chinese restaurants around the world, if they’re not speaking Mandarin or Cantonese, it’s enough to say, are you from Swatow too? And we all say yes, even if in practice, most of us have never even been there.