Sixteen Candles

I was born at 10:53 AM on August 15, 2009 in San Jose, California. Ever since I’ve known that information, I’ve practically counted down the seconds it would be 10:53 AM, August 15, 2025 and I would be 16. 

While others daydream over their weddings at a young age, I daydreamed over my 16th birthday. At eight years old, I wrote a timed email to my 16-year-old self––one that I sadly timed incorrectly to be sent on August 15, 2055. One of my first Google Docs is entitled “Wishlist For My 16th Birthday,” a page of elaborately curated links to black platform boots and plaid miniskirts. 

When August 15, 2025 came, the day was nowhere near what I had expected. Though I’d long outgrown my elementary school fantasy of the day, I’d always expected some acknowledgement of my birthday from my family. Most of my seven-member family lived up to this expectation. My siblings woke me up with an insult-inspired rendition of happy birthday. My mother hugged me and wished me a happy 16th as she plated my breakfast. My father was the only one I hadn’t heard from. Away on business, I resolved that he was most likely caught up in work or it would take him a little time to figure out the time difference. Yet, the day went by, and even as I began to check my phone out of instinct, he never called.

January 14th, 1990

Zhù nǐ shēngrì kuàilè!

My father was officially 16. His family clapped and cheered as his mother set down a bowl of longevity noodles in front of him. Their smiles couldn’t hide the fact that they were holding their breaths, waiting for a knock on the door or a ring on the landline. Just a year ago, he had enrolled early at Tsinghua University due to his top scores in school. He was ready for 16 to be a year of rest, preparing to attend the top university in the nation as his classmates stressed in school to get anywhere near being in his position. Ever since June 4th, 1989 however, everything was different.

It started in late July with a heavy pounding on the door. It had been nearly two months since my father and his friends returned from joining the protests at Tiananmen Square. As they heard the government’s search for protesters was moving into the Shandong area, the worried teenagers met to discuss their next move. Having bought the train tickets to attend the protests, my father agreed to take most of the blame. 

For a couple days, it seemed no one would even figure out they had attended Tiananmen Square at all. However, any hope they had of it staying that way died as July came and my father’s mother opened the door to a county official. He introduced himself and asked to speak with my father before stomping his muddy boots into the house. 

The fall was full with meetings. Once a week, after school, my teenage father sat across the table from a rotation of county officials and later on state officials. 

The meetings began with them demanding writings from my father: confessions of attendance, oaths to party loyalty, letters of remorse. None of these meetings bothered him until December when a college counselor joined one for the first time.

As the office’s frosted window reflected the setting sun in beams across the room, the college counselor folded and unfolded his hands on his lap. He began to speak. My father wasn’t going to Tsinghua. He wasn’t going to any university in the country. He’d been blacklisted from all 3,000+ universities in the nation. 

“We offer those spots to the politically loyal students of the country.” The counselor explained. 

My father broke in front of the officer for the first time. He begged to write another letter, to take another graduation exam or take the gaokao, which he had previously been exempt from. The stone-cold faces of the officer and the counselor remained as unmoving as their resolution. 

It hardly mattered if my father’s future was still promising or not, any hope or spirit that had blossomed in the spring lay dead as the trees turned bare. The talk of the town reverted to which families had a good fishing season and the new plants in the community garden. The radio was never on, it turned into an ashtray for peach rolling paper cigarettes and thick, unfinished cigars. Though its broadcasts of determined students had once lit up the living room in a white-blue glow each evening at seven, after June 4th, CCTV wasn’t worth watching anymore.

Some people in the town began to slip into my father’s house in the shield of the night.

“A top student in the nation!” They would exclaim as they stood in the kitchen. “From our own town! They have to change their minds.”

No matter what they slipped to my father’s mother––food, money, or words of encouragement––all their efforts were futile. Or so it seemed until he turned 16.

Just about a month after his 16th birthday, my father had his final meeting with the state official and the college counselor. The three had grown familiar with each other. My father’s stiff, upright position in his chair had weakened into a slouch. The counselor’s hands now filled silences with rhythmic taps on his lap, and even the official stopped ironing his uniform each time they met. 

In March, they announced my father’s case would be closed and, after much consideration, allowed him to attend a single university, Qingdao Ocean University. Though my father had no interest in marine studies, he was elated at the offer. He rushed home through the houses decked in red for Lunar New Year, legs burning as he climbed each uphill. He pushed past kids carrying fireworks and farmers leading pigs to the market, invigorated by the good news. 

As his mother loaded jiao zi and nian gao onto the table for Lunar New Year dinner that night, the political tension around Jiang Zemin and frozen trade relations seemed to fade alongside the setting sun. 

By his next birthday, he would have made it to Singapore and then to the United States. At 16, he was the first one in his bloodline to go on an airplane, to make it out of the village, out of the country. 

“16,” My father would always say to no one in particular as he recalled Tiananmen Square. “is a year to remember.”

August 15, 2025

Happy birthday to you!

I was officially 16. As my siblings cheered around me and my mother ended her recording of their birthday song, I closed my eyes and made a wish. Though I’d wished for the same thing all 15 years before, this wish was different.

My mother used to jokingly ask if I felt older on each of my birthdays, and I always used to jokingly respond that I did though that couldn’t be further from the truth. However, as I woke up on my 16th birthday, I really did expect to feel different. After all, it was the age I’d anticipated turning all my life. Laying in my bed on August 15th, 2025 though, staring up at the ceiling as the sun crept beckoned me out of bed from under my curtains, I felt younger than ever.

All throughout my childhood, my father had prided himself in how similar he and I were. While my older brother took after my mother, my father loved to point out the similarities between us. In my whole family of five children, my father and I were the only ones born in the year of the ox. Ever since I was born, it seemed, that was enough assurance to him that I would inherit his every trait.

Each time I met a new family member, he would smile in content as they noted my resemblance to him. Even years later, he always laughed as he recalled my grandmother pointing out our identical noses the first time she saw me at just a few weeks old.

When I was in elementary school, he would often come into my room to tuck me into bed. When he found me reading or writing, half-asleep but still holding a pen dutifully in my hand, I could always see his wide smile even in the near-darkness of my bedroom. 

“I see the most of myself in you,” He would say softly, kissing my forehead and pulling my blanket over my chin. “I always wanted to know everything, read everything, write everything.”

I didn’t know what that meant or even why exactly he saw himself in me, but all that mattered was the fact that he did. The older I got, however, the less I heard this from him. 

On my 15th birthday, my family sat around me as I distributed the slices of my strawberry birthday cake. As I sat down, already digging my fork into the cloudy white frosting, I found my father looking over at me. His expression was one that I’d seen before: he was scanning for the mirror image of him that was so comforting to find in me. Yet, as my siblings chanted for me to take a bite of the cake, his eyes turned away.

“You grow more and more like your mom.” He finally intoned as I swallowed the first bite of my cake. The vanilla sponge and bits of cold strawberry felt heavy on my tongue as I twisted my mouth in response. I didn’t need to ask what those words meant, I already knew.

I could explain with the B+ that tarnished my fall report. 

“I don’t understand,” My father scoffed, holding the paper so tightly it began to crumple under his fingers. Even as I stood in the doorway, I could see his jaw clench as disappointment and anger bubbled through his skin. “I never had any trouble reaching out to teachers! You used to love science when you were younger!”

I could explain through his reaction as I came home from dinner with a friend he disapproved of.

“I always thought you had more respect for yourself.”

I could explain through his face as I began sleeping through the day.

“I always thought you had your priorities straight.”

When I began eating less.

“I always thought you just had a natural balance.”

When I began eating more.

“I always thought you cared about your fitness.”

But the best way to explain was my very own 16th birthday. By the time I turned that age, it seemed he had forgotten what he thought of me at all. So when he didn’t call on my birthday, I called the next morning.

“Hello?” His pixelated face appeared centimeters away from the screen after three rings. 

“Hi!” I held my breath, hoping the face of his first-born daughter would remind him of what day had just passed. I was sitting on my bed, legs crossed over each other with my back to the wall. 

“Have you gotten your SAT score back yet?” That phrase had replaced small talk of weather and casual “how was your day’s.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat as I responded that the test was next week.

“You’re still planning to take it,” He stated and paused before adding, “correct?” Only the top of his head was visible on the screen, but I could see his furrowed brows through the low-quality video. I assured him that I was.

“Meg, you must spend your time more wisely. You should know this. You used to know this. You used to plan out every second of your day and stick to that plan.” He sighed as he rubbed his hand over his head. He had kept his hair short for as long as I could remember. My brothers and I used to joke that, when he shaved, he could just run his razor over his entire head and it wouldn’t make a difference what was cut off. His hair was greying now, nearly all white, and it was no longer his choice whether it was short or not. I only noticed that as his head froze and unfroze on camera. He continued with the same words I had grown too familiar with in the past few years. I always, I always, I always. 

Without even realizing, I began to cry. The lump in my throat swelled into a lesion formed by each similarity of ours that had broken throughout the years, and it became impossible to swallow. 

“It was my birthday yesterday,” I finally cried, unable to stop the tears nor the words as they tumbled out. “I turned 16 yesterday and you don’t even care?”

“Meg,” He said after a pause. “The older you get, the less I’m concerned with what you think I care about.” He paused again. The static of the phone call was silent aside from my muffled sniffling. “You’re 16 now?” I replied with no words, just a slow nod, as I evened my breath. “So you should know now more than ever what to prioritize. I did when I was 16.”

As his face turned into a disconnected grey screen, I knew more than ever what the words he said just a year before meant. He wasn’t talking about how the bridge of my nose had grown taller like my mother’s or how my smile had grown tighter like hers. He meant that I was no longer him.

Staring down at my phone, the white letters spelling “call ended” bore into my tear-blurred eyes. I slouched down into my bed.

I was not like him anymore.

At 16, I could not discipline myself into studying until my eyes wore out.

At 16, I was not among the top students in the nation.

At 16, I did not attend Tiananmen Square, let alone figure my way out of the consequences a communist political machine sent after me.

But I was not like him anymore. 

At 16, I had parents who dropped their work to help me with my advanced classes.

At 16, I had no fear that my disapproval of my country’s president and his politics would completely jeopardize my future.

At 16, I had the liberties my father dreamed of at my age.

And it was all because my father was just himself, Yan Fanjuin, at 16. He was not his father who never wished to leave his hometown, nor his father’s father who fell into political submission and became a CCP government official. 

My downturned lips slowly slipped into a  smile as I turned my phone off. I was 16, but I was not my father.