This photo above shows me holding up a crab from the store that we buy all of our seafood from. My dad staunchly refuses to buy seafood from anywhere else- whether it be Costco’s or even the Asian supermarkets populating Washington, he insists that this is where the real deal is.
Before immigrating to the US, I lived in Nanjing in the Jiangsu Province of China. A speciality of that area is the “hairy crab,” a truly unmatched delicacy only available during winter seasons. My family would frequently tempt me with visions of its wonderful taste, boasting that nothing in the United States could ever come close to authentic hairy crabs. And yet, the seafood we buy from this place, as described by my dad, “rivals the crabs we have at home.”
I think a common misconception that immigrants like me have is the idea that we are never at home. We face struggles regularly in school, in the workplace, never feeling like we truly fit in. But I think that it is important to have solidarity; we are all in this together. Regardless of where we are, home always lingers with us, just like how the taste of crab does for me.