20. A brother's burden

In the early days of this millennium, I graduated university in England and set out for a new life in China. Here, I share the quiet stories of my journey, a chronicle of discovery and displacement, woven into the fabric of a land vast and unfathomable.

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The college had arranged the trip: a day’s excursion to Zhuhai, the seaside city pressed gently against the border of Macau. It was offered as a gesture of goodwill, a kind of soft diplomacy from the Foreign Affairs Office, whose job was, at times, to remind us of our status. We were "foreign experts", though the term always made me uneasy, as if I had smuggled in some arcane knowledge that the students would not have found on their own. Lin was coming along, assigned to oversee the journey. A handful of other staff would join us, and a few students too, including Martin, whose excitement was evident from the moment he heard.

The minibus drew away from the college gates just as the sky began to pale. The air was tinged with the dusty melancholy of autumn. It was neither cool nor warm, but hung somewhere in between. Overhead, the sun was caught behind the industrial smog that so often lay thick across Guangzhou’s skyline, its glow reduced to a dull coin behind gauze.

We crawled through the city’s arteries, bumping over fractured roads, weaving past rows of concrete apartment blocks where laundry flapped from rusting balconies. Red banners sagged from the shopfronts, their slogans curling at the edges like ancient scrolls. The city was still waking up. A man on a bicycle carted a mound of flattened cardboard packaging, his outline blurred by the grit of exhaust. As we drove further, the clutter began to loosen its grip. Factories gave way to quieter expanses, roadsides emptied, and the scenery slipped past in a procession of grey.

Martin sat beside me, upright and attentive, his frame taut with that peculiar intensity he carried like a badge. He was always alert, always eager to learn. Every journey, every exchange, was an opportunity.

“Zhuhai is close to my hometown of Foshan,” he said, the words tumbling out as if he had been waiting to speak them. “It is very famous for gong fu. Do you know Li Xiaolong?”

His face gleamed with anticipation.

“Of course. His English name is Bruce Lee.”

He lit up, delighted, as though I’d passed some hidden test. There was a kind of pride in his voice, not boastful but rooted, a desire to connect through shared knowledge. He leaned slightly closer.

“My family live in Foshan. My father has a small workshop. He makes bricks. My younger brother helps him.”

“And your mother?” I asked.

“She sells them. To the builders.”

The words settled between us. I tried to picture the workshop: the dry dust clinging to forearms, the dull roar of the kiln, a landscape of fire and clay. It seemed a world away from the present softness of our journey, the artificial upholstery of the minibus.

“And your brother,” I asked, “will he come to college too?”

There was a pause. His fingers tapped quietly against his knee. “No. He will work. He must work. He will help my father pay for my education.”

The bus juddered over a pothole and we rocked briefly in our seats. I glanced at him. “So the plan is for you to study, and your brother to support you?”

He nodded, slowly. “This is normal in China. In my family, one must go forward. One must carry the hope. My brother is younger. He has time. But me, I must study hard. I must speak like a foreigner.”

He said it plainly. As if the very act of speaking it aloud might carry some power. There was a stillness in him, a sense of quiet debt that stretched far beyond the moment. I asked him how his brother felt about it.

Martin looked out of the window, watching the road unfurl before us. Hills appeared in the distance, faint outlines softened by mist. “It is what must be done. My parents work hard for me. My brother works hard for me. So I must work hard too.”

There was no complaint in his tone, no tremor of resentment. It was simply the way things were. I found myself thinking of my own childhood, the expectations that shaped me. In England, we had been taught to chase personal ambition, to carve out lives of our own making. Here, ambition felt heavier, tangled with duty. It moved in families, passed down like heirlooms. One child might bear it so the others could remain still.

Perhaps Martin’s brother understood. Or perhaps he simply accepted. There are silences in every family that are never filled with words, only acts.

The outskirts of the city began to soften. Where factories once stood, there were now open fields, their brittle grasses stooped beneath the wind. Occasional buildings stood unfinished, their exposed rebar clutching at the sky. From time to time, smoke rose in lazy curls from unseen chimneys. The air, even through the windows, felt lighter.

Martin turned to me. “Do you like China?”

I smiled. “Of course.”

“Why?”

A simple question, and yet it caught me off guard. How does one explain the feeling of standing alone in a foreign alleyway and not feeling lost? Or the strange calm that settles when you realise the unfamiliar is no longer frightening, only different? I thought of the men playing xiangqi in the parks, hunched over their boards in quiet deliberation. I thought of the smoky sweetness of roasted chestnuts, the flicker of neon above noodle stalls, the strange music of Mandarin tones, floating like ribbons through crowded air.

But more than anything, I thought of people like Martin. People who carried their families inside them like bones, who walked with the weight of others’ hopes stitched into the hems of their jackets.

“Because of the people,” I said.

He laughed, pleased by the answer. His smile, wide and unguarded, belonged to a younger world, a world that still believed entirely in the possibility of dreams.

He turned again to the window, and for a while neither of us spoke. The bus droned on, following the arc of the road as it bent toward the coast. I studied his face in profile, wondering what he saw. Perhaps the future played out behind his eyes, half-formed but glowing. Would he one day stand in the doorway of an aircraft, fluent and sure, bound for a new country? Or would the pull of home prove stronger, drawing him back to the brick kiln, to the unspoken promise made by his brother’s labour?

The future, in its uncertainty, seemed to stretch out like the road ahead of us. And perhaps that was the truth of all journeys. That the destination mattered less than the moment of movement itself, the decision to go forward, step by tentative step.

The minibus continued on, carving its way towards the coast. Zhuhai lay ahead, waiting, but for now, this journey - the quiet of the road, the steady conversation - felt like the true destination. Somewhere behind us, the sprawling bulk of Guangzhou receded into the distance. In the seat beside me, Martin sat with his hands folded in his lap, his mind, perhaps, already leaping towards the future that he and his family were building, brick by brick.

A Moment of Gratitude

If the words of Ill Grandeur have resonated with you, consider buying me a cup of tea. In China, tea is more than just a drink - it is a symbol of connection, warmth, and reflection. A one-off tea is a way of sharing in the journey, supporting the story, and keeping the spirit of discovery alive. Every cup helps bring the next chapter to life.