‘tiger balm cures all but the smell trails’
(Courtesy of Jasmine Kapadia)
16-year-old Chinese American student Jasmine Kapadia shares the poetry collection she wrote during the COVID-19 crisis about the strength and beauty of her culture.
My mom, like many Chinese parents, firmly believes in the magic of Tiger Balm, an herbal ointment. When I was younger she hailed it as a cure-all, rubbing it into my skin as a treatment for anything from mosquito bites to heatstroke.
My poetry collection “tiger balm cures all but the smell trails” began as an ode to this cultural staple, as well as an exploration of my Asian heritage. A month into the project, COVID-19 broke out. Suddenly, I was seeing my culture everywhere — and for all the wrong reasons. CBS News reported that advocacy groups in the U.S. had recorded 2,100 anti-Asian hate incidents related to COVID-19 in a three-month period. 832 of those were reported in California, where I live. A week before my school closed, I was buying coffee during my lunch break at Trader Joe’s when a middle-aged White woman muttered “Asian” to her husband and stepped out of my line.
As a Chinese American individual, the COVID-19 crisis has forced me to reexamine my roots and how I belong. Being an Asian American has always meant there is a sort of incompleteness to my existence; a sense of searching for a space to belong to that may not even exist. Many Asian Americans can testify to this. The divide between those two cultures often feels so far, and you’re either deemed “too Asian” or “too Whitewashed.”
The rise in hate crimes against Asians due to the COVID-19 crisis has dredged up trauma, leaving me wanting to assimilate to be more “American” again, to reject my food and my traditions and my language like I did when I was younger as a way to protect myself.
“This project began as an exploration of a culture I sometimes feel removed from. It finished as a testament to the strength and beauty of my culture.”
This project began as an exploration of a culture I sometimes feel removed from. It finished as a testament to the strength and beauty of my culture.
Some of the poems in “tiger balm cures all but the smell trails” were written out of anger. Others were born from grief, or from loneliness, or from feeling lost. But what ties them together is that they are all, in one form or another, love letters to my community. These are words that I have spent my whole life trying to find. I have no doubt that I am still trying to find some of them.
My experience as a Chinese American is ever changing, ever evolving. I hope that this project might provide a closer look into my existence, and by extension, become a snapshot of the multi-dimensional life of my community through these unprecedented times.
Episode 1: Denial.
This poem is built completely off of a pun. In Chinese culture, peaches represent longevity and immortality. The word for peach is also pronounced tao, much like the word for “run away.” Chinese culture often regards death as a taboo, something better to avoid and not talk about. I combined these themes into this poem, a way of navigating and coming to terms with death from COVID-19 when your culture tells you to brush it aside.
canned peaches as an escape from death
turn a body so the breath doesn’t catch in throats,
so dirt doesn’t steal air from the dead,
take these corpses and make them diamonds. coat these tears
in red-paper and do not speak. there are a thousand white qipaos for us
to choose from, china-print porcelain that clings and slices
flowers on our skin. there is no space to mourn. it is only
a matter of time now, darling, for us to follow. paint an extra layer of peach on
our lips, pretend it can hide us from the blue that is spreading.
tao. it is what we always do.
Episode 2: Surrealism.
At the beginning of the pandemic, my family in Taiwan were all talking about things their government had put into place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In the U.S., however, I was still going to school every day and watching things get worse. I felt like I was living in a dream world, detached from reality.
sexagenary cycle
look. it is sick
half pretend you are dying and half
pretend you know how to. tongue running on shrunken heads
we are out of cabbage.
smoothing seaweed across puckered lips
hiss and draw back. rewind
this life of yours and
open like a babe’s head cracked on brick
your son,
he is dead. swiping
across bloodied feathers. so much has
changed in two weeks
look. isn’t it wondrous
catwalk in empty cathedrals
to ignore the gongs being struck
make like you are going to save yourself
from this unknown curse.
Episode 3: Microaggression.
Right before the closure of schools, my history class took a trip to San Francisco’s Chinatown. While we were there, many of my White classmates purchased rice hats and wore them around. I wasn’t able to express why exactly that rubbed me the wrong way until I sat down to write this poem. When the U.S. started taking COVID-19 more seriously, one of the first things that happened was an increase in hate crimes and racism against Chinese Americans. However, it is important to remember that microaggressions are just as harmful as blatant racism, sometimes more so.
yulan magnolias for menstrual pain
chinatown. my girl-friends are wailing down the street; fat clots tumbling down legs, jelly
legs and spoiled-milk curdling into the pits of their stomachs. and i am walking
into the pharmacy with a piece of paper my mother gave me
hastily scribbled chinese that i might be able to make out if i just tried. but they don’t have the time for me to learn,
and i am sliding this family heirloom across
continents to get herbs. they only want my culture for the pain-relief;
in other words, they ask me to speak chinese because it eases their guilt. but we don’t have time for that,
so i am running
out of this home-away-from-home to find them with boba clutched between sloppy hands
and eyes hidden under rice hats. i am
cooking water to make tea for them and i am
throwing out the extra. it has always seemed like a waste, to only take
the benefits. i scoop the bitter flowers out from the garbage can as they leave
chew,
swallow.
the assimilation of nutrients; the gathering of crushed yulan
sellers by the side of the road.
Episode 4: Assimilation.
Increasing racism against Chinese Americans due to COVID-19 has caused a lot of insecurities with my culture that I battled when I was younger to resurface. I found myself being ashamed of my heritage again, trying to minimize my “Asianness.”
mutt
canker sore on my bottom lip
i am twisting my hair out of my scalp
such is the nature of love
it is passed down from ammas only i have no excuse
there is no name for my flatness
i hide chopsticks behind the piano
pretend like i hold them right
step on a man’s foot at the corner store while getting winter melon tea
& wish i was a bottle-blond
Episode 6: Isolation.
I originally wrote this poem about my grandmother, who is alone in Taiwan this summer because flying is too dangerous for her grandchildren to visit her. We video chat every day, but I can tell she is lonely. As the stay-at-home order dragged on in California, though, I found myself experiencing the same loneliness as outlined in this poem. I began to isolate myself, just like this poem describes my grandmother doing.
when the children have all left home
there is not much left
in the seventh house of her body; bumblebee wings and a few bronze earrings.
it is still too loud. and there are skype calls that she ignores, sitting at the
dining table spooning tofu and soy sauce into her mouth.
faxes sitting at the machine. a box of dumplings rotting in the equatorial heat.
the news crackling on twice a day, as if elections still matter to the elderly. her gold has
been shipped off to thailand, and the polaroids to america. the sunlight
is enough to sustain her. and if it is not, well, she has been through worse.
Episode 7: Omens.
This poem has darker imagery than the previous ones. Right now the conversation around racism has become incredibly divided, and the hate is on display for the world to see. I found my insecurity around my culture brewing into anger and frustration. Why should I feel ashamed of my culture because of other people’s ignorance? There’s a fierce sense of reclamation in my life recently, and I hope it continues.
leftovers
have u seen my body? u cracked eggs against the sycamore tree
asked me to pick out the shells with my teeth. take the caltrain at 10pm,
bus across the bridge
+ into the river. the water is always ice cold. crazy how we used to get
lost here, drown in city lights. u chase me down the sidewalk
peanut brittle between ur teeth, stoop under the wonton stall
breaking ur back contorting on the doorstep. here low-life fairytales come
to fruition, knife worked nine inches in
pulled out six. exorcism. midwives delivering red ink + roaches, baby crawling out
of my throat. tear my corpse apart to see it hit the pavement
spider carcasses piled at the church door to be dumped into tsap seui
+
such a long night.
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