Between them, their useful English consisted mainly of “hello”, “thank you” and, in my father’s case, one particularly useful word: “tea”.
Yet somehow, they had already made more friends than I had.
They went for walks and came home with stories. Someone had invited them in for tea. Someone else had given them honey. The trout had come from a neighbour who had been out fishing.
Then one day they came home especially excited.
“There’s a Chinese family living nearby!”
Better still, they came from the same province in China.
Not long afterwards, the family came to visit us.
One day, as I was pushing my daughter in her pram, a neighbour stopped to say hello.
“Your parents are lovely,” he said.
I began to wonder who actually lived in the neighbourhood – my parents or me.
My father seemed comfortable wherever he went. During a visit to Te Puia, the audience was invited on stage at the end of the performance. My father went straight up and joined in, learning a few haka moves from the performers.
For a man with three useful English words, he was doing remarkably well.
One afternoon, I was in the living room with my baby in my arms when my father noticed cars parked all along the street. People, most of them dressed in black, were gathering outside the house opposite ours.
An elderly man who lived there had died, and his funeral was taking place that day.
When my father realised what was happening, he turned to me.
“We should go over and see him off.”
I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know him.
My parents crossed the road, and I followed with my daughter in my arms.
We stood quietly on the driveway: my father, my mother, me and the baby.
Three generations, seeing a neighbour off.
My father stood straight and still.
At the end of five months, my parents returned to China.
In 2017, my father became seriously ill and was admitted to hospital. I booked a flight and rushed back to China.
He pulled through.
The next time he became seriously ill, getting home was no longer simple.
Covid had closed borders, disrupted flights and brought quarantine restrictions. For most of my adult life, China had been a plane ticket away.
Suddenly, it wasn’t.
In the final weeks of my father’s life, I saw him on my phone screen.
Each time we spoke, he seemed a little smaller.
His face grew thinner.
His voice became weaker.
I could see him, but I couldn’t touch him.
Then one evening, a text arrived from my sister.
“Dad’s gone.”
I put down my phone, went into the bathroom, locked the door and turned on the tap.
The water kept running.
My father had survived a war. When he first became seriously ill, he had survived that too. Somewhere inside me, I had come to believe that he would always survive one more thing.
But this time he didn’t.
And I couldn’t go home.
Every now and then, I drive past the street where we used to live.
The house is still there.
So is the driveway across the road.
When I see it, that afternoon comes back to me: my mother and father together, and me beside them with my baby in my arms.
We had gone there to farewell a man we barely knew.
For a moment, we are all there again in the New Zealand sun.
And I can still hear my father’s voice.
“We should go over and see him off.”
I only wish I could have been there to see him off.