CT VOICES CONTEST – 1st Place

Congratulations to Henry Liu for his First Place award in our CT Voices contest collaboration with WSHU Radio.

From Connecticut

By: Henry Liu

Father:

For forty years, you have rested beneath the mountains of northern China. But you never really
left me. I still ask: If you were alive, would you want me to do this?

In your last letter, you hoped I would study on scholarship in Massachusetts, then continue in
California.

I did.

But you did not live to see me finish.

As a World War II veteran who lost his brother in that war, you wanted me, like you, to serve the
public.
In my thirties, I left a “princely salary” in New York and returned to China to strengthen its
financial market integrity and the rule of law.

Later, I returned to America and spent decades in law and investment banking–fields that barely
existed in China during your lifetime. My work was recognized in America and abroad–
something I wish you had lived to see.

I now live in Connecticut. Its Chinese name begins with kang, suggesting health and peace. You
would have liked that.

Here, there is running water and reliable electricity–things missing from my childhood. You
might wonder why I chose a lawn over vegetables.

Our new country, and the life I was building here, were not always easy or peaceful. Twenty-five
years ago, on September 11, tragedy changed both my life and the country I called home.

Living between China and America became both a gift and a burden: I could see each more
clearly yet felt fully at home in neither.

When you died in your mid-sixties, I was in my early twenties.

It was an afternoon in California. The setting sun was large and red. A telegram lay in my school
mailbox:

“Father has died.”

I barely cried. I buried the grief.

But grief buried is not grief gone.

It became sorrow, guilt, and a haunting that followed me for forty years.

I tried not to disappoint you. But I had lost the person I most wanted to share my successes with.

When I swam in the ocean, I thought of how you never saw the sea. At my children’s
graduations, I thought of how you never saw where your own son went.

Most of all, I remember leaving for America.

You walked with me along a rough dirt road. You were six feet tall but already stooped. I
watched your back grow smaller until you disappeared.

I regret that I did not stop longer.

I regret that I did not embrace you.

And I regret that I never said, “I love you.”

In families of our generation in China, we rarely spoke those words. We rarely hugged.

Love was parents pretending they were full so a child could have the remaining rice.

Love was letting a teenager travel twenty hours by train to college far from home.

Later, love was letting that child cross an ocean to build a life ten thousand miles away.
A father’s love was a silent love.

For forty years, I carried the need to prove myself, guilt I could not escape, and a debt I could
never repay. That burden sat on my shoulders like a mountain.

Recently, I joined a writers’ workshop. As I began to write, I finally understood:

The person who had held me captive for forty years was not you.

It was me.

Love does not demand repayment. You let me leave home and cross an ocean so I could have
choices you never had.

You did not put this burden on my shoulders.

I put it there myself.

And now, I can put it down.

Since childhood, I have dreamed of writing. Now that I have reached the age you were when you
died, perhaps my next journey can begin with writing.

This time, I am not writing to prove anything.

I am not writing to repay anyone.

I am writing for myself.

I was lost, but now I am found.

I was haunted, but now I am free.

Father, if you are somewhere I cannot see, I think you would tell me to keep writing.

Because forty years ago, the first person who gave me the courage to go far away was you.

Your loving son

About the Author: (Henry) Hong Liu has reinvented himself as a writer after a career as a partner at global law firms and a managing director at global investment banks. Drawing on his personal journey across cultures and his international professional experience, he writes to explore the intersection of historical transformation, cultural conflict, and individual lives.