When we pull up to the longtang gate, my grandma is squatting on a short wooden stool. She spots us immediately and limps over to us. Her black t-shirt drapes around her shrinking body. It’s probably her newest shirt. She saves her most esteemed clothes for special occasions like this. I roll down my window. She reaches out her hand to hold mine. “Finally, you are here,” she says in Shanghaihua. She can’t stop chuckling. “Oh yo, I came down 40 minutes ago.”    

      I haven’t seen her in four years. Her hair is completely white now, the bags beneath her eyes a shade darker, her limp more pronounced, her laugh just as loud.

      Growing up, I spent my summers with my grandparents in their one-bedroom flat where it got so humid that we slept on xizi on the floor to cool down. We spent the afternoons splayed on my grandparents’ stiff bed, playing Chinese checkers on a neon-colored board. They whisked me on top of their shoulders when they felt strong and when I cried. When I got sick, they brewed zhong yao for me on the two-burner stove, filling the apartment with the smell of anise.

      As I grew older, my annual summer sojourns dwindled to weeklong visits. I went only when I had an extra vacation week. I prioritized summer internships and then jobs and more exotic vacations over returning to Shanghai. Then Covid hit and effectively stopped travel into China for years. A few months ago, the government finally lifted its restrictions.

      The inside of the third-floor walk-up is stuffy and hot. Two pairs of mismatched slippers are laid out for me and my boyfriend of four years, who my grandma is meeting in person for the first time. The apartment smells of cedarwood and mothballs. And it feels like home.

      A table full of delicacies awaits our sleepy, jetlagged appetites:  smoked fish, roast duck, boiled taro. The three of us sit around the compact table, the gusty ceiling fan lifting our hair. We take turns saying my boyfriend’s name, in effort to teach my grandma. No matter how many times I say, “Neil,” my grandma repeats, “Meer.” We burst into laughter. My grandma has an imitative laugh. When she hears others laugh, she starts laughing too. My dad calls her “echo.”

      Every time my grandma points at a dish, we shake our heads politely. We’re not hungry. “Eat,” she commands. But she is the only one shoveling down food.