Beautiful Flower

COHORT 1

Recently, a literary magazine for and by writers of the Sino diaspora published one of my poems. It is a tradition of this magazine to note their contributors’ un-Anglicized, Chinese names in their bios, and per this tradition, I was asked to also send along my Chinese name in Chinese characters if possible. I emailed back that I preferred to publish my name only in English. I have nothing against this magazine. In fact, I think that the beauty of their publication and the community that surrounds it are amazing gifts to and from the Asian American arts community. I just didn’t want or even know how to explain the history that has resulted in me not knowing how to spell my own name.

But let me say that possibility is a tricky thing. For many children adopted into American families, their Chinese name becomes their middle name, and I guess this practice is common enough that you could call it a tradition, though on my adoption certificate, my middle name, my Chinese name, is spelled wrong, Jinmei instead of Jin Mei. 

Once, the Chinese exchange student my family hosted when I was in ninth grade told me I was pronouncing , my middle name wrong. Years before that, my mother and I took a Chinese class together. I was in elementary school, still in the critical period for second language acquisition, my mother, on the other hand, was not. Before I aged out of the critical period, we both quit before reaching any kind of fluency. One of the first things we learned in those lessons was that there are four tones in Mandarin, the classic example being, ma, which can mean mother but also horse. When our teacher would tell us to speak with our conversation partner, I would wonder if I was calling my mother my mother.

My mother has always told me that my middle name means “beautiful flower.” I have always believed her. Neither of us speak Chinese. I’m so used to calling Jin Mei my middle name that I sometimes forget that it is my Chinese name, that it was ever my first name.

When my mother adopted me from China, she commissioned a painter to ink my Chinese name across a thick, whole-milk heavy sheet of parchment paper. There were documents, too. The orphanage records, the passport before it was renounced, but I can’t read Mandarin. I can only guess the shape of my name, where it might begin and end. I know that the painting is of my name because my mother has said so, and this too, is how names are given.

Writing: Erin Jin Mei O’Malley

Music: Noreen Ocampo

Art: Kelly Liu