I was afraid that if I blinked, the flowers would be blown away by the wind. I watched my parents pause to look around. I had never seen them so stunned.

“I didn’t think anything grew around here other than grass and pine trees,” Father marvelled.

“It doesn’t look real,” Mother commented.

“It’s beautiful.” Father said.

“No, look at the water. It looks unnatural. The flowers, they look fragile, like they’ll break, fly away. The flowers back home are bigger and last longer. All kinds of lotuses, frangipani, hibiscus. They are heartier and brighter!”

“It’s different,” allowed Father.

Mother looked away from the calm, quiet landscape and fiddled with her scarf.

The beauty of the valley charmed me. I wanted Mother to share my delight in the grass dancing beside me. “Don’t you like it here?” I asked.

She swivelled her jade bracelet, encircling the cuff of her sleeve, and muttered, “It doesn’t matter.” Mother wrapped her cream-coloured cardigan firmly around her shoulders, buttoning it up. After her sweater, she fidgeted with her socks, rubbing her ankle briskly before pulling them up higher. Perhaps she really was just adjusting to the cool breeze, but I saw a person who didn’t want to admit the scene was beautiful, that it was worthy of her attention.

“Doesn’t the water look like a mirror, Mom?” I tried again.

“Jin ge, fake. Don’t let it fool you. Things probably can’t survive there. Back home, the ocean is where we harvest things, where the most delicious food is.”

“What about the grass, Mom? Doesn’t it look so soft, like you could sleep in it?”

“Don’t be silly, Lily. It’s too cold to sleep here. Back home, you could sleep outside. It’s warm enough.”

I felt like I couldn’t enjoy the scene before me without betraying Mother’s love for the nature in her homeland. She made me feel as if I was doing something treasonous.

“Let’s go,” she said. “We don’t have all day, and it will be dinnertime soon.”

Father pulled out his camera and asked Mother to pose in front of the lake. I wanted her to tilt her head like I saw her do in the pictures of her youth, but she said, “I don’t feel like having my picture taken.” Father snapped a photo of her anyway, settling for the frown on her face. To make Father feel better, I asked him to take a picture of me. He obliged, and then Bea joined me.

Seeing the scene, a young couple approached and asked if we all wanted a picture together. Father reluctantly gave his camera to the young man, and Mother then knelt beside me for the picture. We played the dutiful tourists to Father’s satisfaction.

The young man handed the camera back to my father and asked him something in Mandarin.

Father was surprised to see a white man speaking Chinese. His eyebrows lifted, but he did not smile. He tried to ignore the man, but he was persistent, asking again. Father finally said in English, “Sparwood.”