City of plague: A New Yorker’s pandemic chronicle Pt 21.

A family story about distance, marriage, and the strange quiet that forced us to speak about what we had long avoided.

When the pandemic arrived, it did not knock on the door politely. It barged in.

One day our daughter was commuting to Manhattan every morning, squeezing into the subway with thousands of strangers. The next day the city shut down, offices closed, and the world shrank to the size of our house.

My wife suddenly became a full-time homemaker, not by choice but by circumstance. Our daughter, Jingying, became an unexpected beneficiary of the new reality. No more rush-hour trains. No more navigating office politics or sitting nervously under the watchful eye of her supervisor.

Instead, our home quietly transformed into her company’s remote office.

Her bedroom became a workspace. After we bought her a large desk, it ended up squeezed between the bed and the window in a way that was almost comical—work on one side, sleep on the other, as if her life had folded in half.

Sometimes my wife and I would look at the arrangement and laugh.

But beneath the humor was relief.

At least she didn’t have to risk infection by going out every day.

Because of the lockdown, we began spending far more time together than we ever had before. For immigrant families like ours, life had always been busy—work, commuting, errands, responsibilities. For more than a decade in America, our lives moved forward in a blur of effort and survival.

Now suddenly, time slowed down.

We talked about everything.

Family gossip.

Groceries and cooking.

Old television shows.

Office colleagues.

The latest pandemic news.

Eventually, however, we ran out of topics.

There was only one conversation left—

the one that every Chinese parent eventually has with their grown child.

Love.

Or more precisely:

Marriage.

The Question

Jingying was now twenty-four years old.

She had graduated from college and had been working for a year. Seeing her grow from a quiet elementary school student into a young professional had been one of the great joys of our lives.

For parents, nothing feels more reassuring than seeing a child become independent.

But independence also means something else.

One day they will leave you.

They will build a life of their own.

And parents, whether in China or America, secretly hope that their children will find someone who will love them for the rest of their lives.

One evening after dinner, the question finally came.

My wife asked it suddenly, without warning.

“Jingying,” she said casually, as if asking about the weather, “do you have a boyfriend?”

The room went silent.

Our daughter froze, chopsticks still in her hand.

Then she forced a small smile.

“No.”

My wife blinked.

“No?” she repeated, surprised.

“You studied in college for four years. You mean you didn’t find a boyfriend there?”

Jingying sighed and put her chopsticks down.

“Mom, it’s not like shopping in a supermarket. Just because there are many vegetables doesn’t mean you’ll find the one you want.”

“But surely there were male students in your classes!”

“There were,” she replied, “but this isn’t China.”

She leaned back in her chair and explained patiently.

“In American universities, everyone’s schedule is different. Students of all ages are mixed together. After class, everyone just leaves. People have jobs, families, responsibilities. You don’t spend all day with the same group of classmates like you do in China.”

My wife frowned.

“So you never even talked to them?”

“Not really,” Jingying said with a tired laugh. “Most of them disappeared after class before I even remembered their names.”

My wife shook her head.

“That sounds like an excuse. If you want opportunities, you have to create them.”

Jingying’s patience began to wear thin.

“Mom, can we not talk about this again?”

“I’m not nagging,” my wife insisted. “I’m worried about your future.”

Her voice carried the tone of a traditional Chinese mother.

“Marriage is an important step in life. The best partner is someone you meet in school—someone who grows with you, someone whose personality you understand. Once you start working, finding someone becomes much harder.”

Jingying stood up abruptly.

“You think it’s that easy?” she said.

“Do you think I don’t want a boyfriend? It’s just that I haven’t met the right person.”

Then she pushed her chair back.

“I’m not hungry anymore.”

And with that, she walked upstairs to her room, the door closing behind her.

After the Argument

My wife turned to me, clearly irritated.

“Look at your daughter,” she said sharply. “You spoiled her too much. She thinks she’s better than everyone.”

I sighed.

“Right now the world is in chaos,” I said. “People are worried about their health, their jobs, their lives. Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about marriage.”

But if I was honest with myself, I shared my wife’s worries.

Years earlier, while Jingying was still in college, we had hinted more than once that she should consider dating. We had even gently suggested she find a Chinese partner if possible.

It wasn’t prejudice.

It was practicality.

Shared language and cultural habits often make marriage easier.

But Jingying had never shown much interest in the conversation.

Now she was already twenty-four.

Even if she wanted to marry later, it would reassure us if she at least had someone she was seeing.

Instead, there was nothing.

Perhaps the pandemic had intensified our anxieties.

Parents always worry about their children’s future—but isolation leaves too much room for those worries to grow.

A Father’s Conversation

My wife eventually persuaded me to talk with our daughter.

I waited until the weekend when she seemed relaxed and not buried in work.

I knocked on her bedroom door.

“Come in,” she said.

Her desk lamp illuminated a neat workspace: laptop, notebooks, coffee mug.

Outside the window the neighborhood was quiet.

I sat down beside her.

We talked for a while about work, about the strange new reality of remote life. Only later did I gently bring up the topic again.

Her reaction surprised me.

“Maybe I’ll just stay single,” she said suddenly.

“I’ll focus on my career and independence. I don’t need marriage.”

Her words sounded firm, but I could hear the frustration underneath.

I smiled calmly.

“Independence and marriage are not enemies,” I told her.

“You can be strong and still share your life with someone.”

I explained that many successful women balance both careers and family. Of course, some choose to remain single—and there is nothing wrong with that either.

In America, single-parent families are common.

Freedom comes in many forms.

But every choice carries its own kind of loneliness.

Humans are emotional creatures.

Especially women, who often experience emotions deeply.

Choosing a path out of anger or disappointment can lead to regret later.

Jingying listened quietly.

So I decided to tell her something I rarely talked about.

The story of how her mother and I met.

Our Love Story

More than twenty years ago, China was very different.

The country had just begun opening its economy. Starting a business was still unusual and uncertain.

At that time, my future wife—Mei—ran a small food wholesale shop with her older brother in a county town.

She was a city girl.

I was a poor young man from the countryside.

During the agricultural off-season, I set up a small street stall selling goods. Sometimes I bought products from her shop to resell in rural markets.

That was how we met.

At first, we were just business acquaintances.

But gradually we began talking more.

She was lively and intelligent. I admired her from a distance.

Yet I never imagined she would like someone like me.

My mother had died when I was thirteen. My father was old and weak. Our family had almost nothing.

Marriage felt like a luxury I could not afford.

One day, however, Mei confessed her feelings.

I thought she was joking.

How could a city girl fall in love with a poor village boy?

When her brother found out, he was furious.

“If you want to marry my sister,” he told me bluntly, “buy a house in the city first.”

At that time I could barely afford a Phoenix bicycle.

A house?

It might as well have been the moon.

Soon her sister-in-law began arranging blind dates for her.

But Mei refused every one.

She said only one thing.

“If I marry, it will be him.”

Illness and Proof

Around that time, I suddenly developed severe pain in my back.

The pain was unbearable—sharp like a knife.

At the hospital we discovered I had kidney stones.

Surgery was risky. The doctors recommended a new treatment: extracorporeal shock-wave lithotripsy.

It was safe, but extremely expensive.

Thousands of yuan.

An impossible amount for me.

While I was worrying about the money, Mei quietly paid the hospital deposit.

When I learned what she had done, I couldn’t stop my tears.

In that moment, I understood something clearly.

This woman truly loved me.

The treatment lasted just over an hour.

When the stones were finally broken and passed, I walked out of the medical room feeling as if I had escaped from hell.

Outside the door, Mei was waiting.

We embraced right there in the hallway, not caring who saw us.

No vows were spoken.

But we both knew.

Nothing could separate us now.

Building a Life

In the autumn of 1990, despite her family’s objections, we registered our marriage.

We had no house.

No wedding banquet.

No professional photographs.

But we had love.

After the wedding, we rented a small apartment and started our own wholesale business.

We worked together from morning until night.

When Mei became pregnant, she still insisted on helping at the store.

Two years later we finally bought our first apartment.

And not long after that, you were born.

For a while, life seemed perfect.

Another Trial

But happiness rarely travels alone.

When Jingying was two years old, Mei developed a strange illness.

Pain would move through her body unpredictably—first her elbow, then her knees, then her back.

Doctors could not diagnose it clearly.

We spent years visiting hospitals.

Western medicine.

Traditional Chinese medicine.

Nothing worked.

The pain grew worse.

On rainy days she sometimes cried from suffering.

Eventually I decided to study medical books myself.

After months of reading and analyzing past prescriptions, I reached a conclusion.

Her condition came from internal heat and dietary imbalance.

I changed her diet completely and treated her with herbal medicine and compresses.

After half a year, the pain began to ease.

After one year, it disappeared entirely.

On her thirtieth birthday, she hugged me and said something I will never forget.

“If there is another life,” she said, “I still want to marry you.”

Through Plague and Migration

Years later, in 2003, SARS struck southern China.

Businesses closed.

Streets were empty.

People were afraid to leave their homes.

But our customers still needed supplies, so Mei and I traveled to Guangzhou to buy goods and distribute them to rural stores.

Together we endured poverty, illness, epidemics, and hardship.

In 2007 we immigrated to New York.

Years passed.

Our marriage remained strong.

And now our daughter had grown into an adult.

Back to the Present

When I finished telling the story, Jingying sat quietly for a long time.

Outside, evening sunlight filtered through the curtains.

Finally she said softly,

“You and Mom went through so much.”

I smiled.

“Yes. But that’s what love sometimes looks like.”

It is not always romantic.

Often it is simply two people choosing not to give up.

I stood up and walked toward the door.

“Don’t rush,” I told her.

“Love cannot be forced.”

“But when the world becomes normal again—when this pandemic ends—keep your heart open.”

Because somewhere out there, perhaps unexpectedly, someone may appear.

And when that happens, you will recognize it.

The way your mother and I did.