The Information War Cleaves a Family

They’re among my earliest memories. Grandma and I, treading the streets of rural Beijing en route to the market. I’ve recently mastered walking, and grandma holds my pudgy hand—and then picks me up and carries me with one hand. Back home, we play Chinese checkers together before she caresses me in her warm embrace. She teaches me Chinese calligraphy, making sure each stroke of each character is perfect. “Thumb on the inside, index finger hooks the outside.” She ensures I never miss a meal, and that I only wear the finest clothes.

In 2002, my mother and father immigrated to the United States. Working toward financial stability—and to decode the idiosyncrasies of American culture—my parents were overwhelmed. To acclimate themselves, and immerse me into Chinese culture, they sent me to live in Beijing. I moved back to the U.S. for grade school.

Thousands of miles apart, my parents and grandparents spoke every week. I kept a similar cadence. Aside from an occasional summer vacation once every two years, my grandparents and I spoke through wired phone lines, and more recently WeChat. Our conversations ranged from American fast food to debates over the best dog breed; we always laughed the whole way through no matter the topic. I was a busy kid. School would end at 3 p.m., and I was off to piano, soccer, art, ballet. Still, it was easy to find time to call my grandparents for hours on end.

Recently, though, something about my relationship with my grandparents changed. A few weeks ago, my parents, sister, and I had just finished dinner, and my mom left to go call grandpa. Quickly, the conversation grew heated. Through the walls of my mom’s bedroom, I heard my grandpa snap: “Why did America get involved anyway?” Mom shot back: “Why do you always believe everything you hear?”

Neither is easily angered. But when I entered the bedroom, I found my mother agitated, pacing and biting the sides of her cheeks. She shot me a fierce “go away now or else” glare as my grandpa’s shaking voice cracked through the phone.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine drew condemnations throughout most of the world—but not from the government of the People’s Republic of China. This is no surprise. A 2019 US intelligence report found that “China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950”—a period when they both backed Communist North Korea and Russia sent China engineers and equipment, bolstering Mao’s efforts to industrialize. Relations would eventually deteriorate, but in recent years, animated in part by a mutual mistrust of the United States, an ascendant China has invested heavily in the Russian economy as, according to the report, the two countries have “significantly expanded their cooperation, especially in the energy, military, and technology spheres.”

In the realm of information warfare, the two governments have found common cause as well. China’s state-controlled media is notorious, and the architects of the country’s repressive information ecosystem have worked with the Putin regime in recent years to help the Russian president establish one of his own. And as Putin establishes draconian restrictions on the media at home, China has come to his defense. In a recent directive, the Chinese government told its media to avoid information “disadvantageous to Russia or sympathetic to the West.”

Like most Chinese people, my grandparents did not go to college. Each grew up tending the family farm to help make money and at age 18 immediately entered the workplace to take on menial cleaning jobs. My grandpa entered the military. In their mid-20s, my grandparents met through an arranged marriage—a typical custom of the time. Both seemed to view love as a trivial matter and never dated or loved anyone before they met each other.

They have been retired for years now and perfected a routine that largely takes place within the confine of their own home. They receive daily Covid tests, buy morning groceries every other day, and cook two homemade meals a day. I imagine grandpa, with his immensely flexible schedule, wandering the kitchen, making my favorite wonton soup, and turning to China Central Television Twitter or Xinhua Twitter news— Putin is “The Great Emperor,” U.S. is a “super-spreader” of Covid—before falling asleep to the background buzz of China Central Television (CCTV) news.

I didn’t realize my mom and grandpa were arguing about the war in Ukraine until my mom told me before I went to bed that day. Learning this made me uneasy. The war has displaced millions, killed and maimed thousands, and driven up prices of basic goods, financially stressing families worldwide. It seems like the moral bare minimum to not endorse an aggressor of such a flagrantly unnecessary conflict. That is why I was determined to expose my grandparents to the atrocities of Putin’s war, to give some humanity back to the Ukrainians who have had their livelihoods stripped away.

In the early days of the war, I sent my grandparents a video of Ukrainian refugees fleeing to Poland. Among the refugees was a 16-year-old girl, very similar to me, who broke down crying at the thought of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. My grandparents deemed this “fake news.” I sent another video through WeChat about Ukrainian children being kidnapped and used as shields for the Russian army. They told me to “stop reading useless information.” No matter how many videos or credible articles I urge my grandparents to read, it seems impossible to persuade them of the war’s dark absurdity. Our disagreements flare up quickly, as we rapid-fire messages, one after another. The longest argument lasted around two hours over WeChat video call. Our most heated disputes give way to a stalemate period, as neither side wants to initiate another potential fight.

My grandparents’ neighborhood’s elderly community is tight-knit, and it comforts me to know that they find joy in their friendships. Still, these relationships are vectors of dubious information. As I’ve observed during trips to China, every person they interact with holds a strong anti-West sentiment. My grandpa prolifically posts misleading articles on WeChat, and my grandma and her friends discuss American politics in the community park. They see the war in Ukraine as an act of Russian self-defense against the creeping influence of Western powers. If Ukraine did not try to join NATO and the U.S. did not meddle in other countries’ business, there would have been no war in the first place.

Once my grandparents form opinions, they do not easily waver—even when they disagree with each other. My mother experienced this firsthand. While my grandpa diminished the importance of grades, my grandma upheld traditional Asian imperatives and always pressured my mother to excel in school. My mom says this was an ongoing point of tension in her childhood years, and that each time she brought home a graded test, another blow-up would begin to simmer.

As my grandpa’s health has deteriorated, he and my grandma fight less. The wrinkle lines creased over his dark brown eyes have grown more prominent. His hair, once clean-cut and black, has faded into splotches of silver. My grandma, who takes much greater care of her appearance, has maintained most of her black hair. But the weight of familial matters has also taken a mental toll on her. I can see signs of fatigue in her eyes, and she seems frailer each time I call.

My disagreements with my grandparents are not without precedent. Not long ago, I spent two months living in my grandparents’ traditional house in rural Beijing. Many Chinese citizens live in large, 50-story high buildings. My grandparents, however, chose to build their own traditional si he yuan, or “Chinese four-sided structure.” The largest building used for communal gatherings is positioned on the northern axis, with beautiful red gateway doors on the south side. Other smaller structures stand on the west and east. Gray stone pavements border the buildings on all four sides, and a vegetable garden rises at the center.

I traveled to China at the end of 2019, during the very early period of the pandemic. I spent most of my days outside, helping them tend their garden or crabbing on the ocean shores. When exhaustion got the best of them, we scrolled through our phones to unwind and politics began to creep into our conversations. My grandparents believed Chinese media narratives that the U.S. military artificially created the virus, and saw skyrocketing global Covid infections as a validation of Chinese exceptionalism. “Look how good China is dealing with the pandemic,” my grandma said. “The Chinese government is just more efficient.” Such remarks brewed a deeper sense of insecurity about how my American classmates would perceive me back home. What if, when I went back to school, everyone would think of Chinese people as insensitive, much like the way I perceived my grandparents?

But the war in Ukraine feels different. I am unsure what sentence I might say that triggers another fight, and I do not know what sentence they might say that angers me. While we both love one another dearly and talk at least once a week, our conversations are shallow, revolving around school activities or holiday celebrations.

My grandparents had four daughters, three of whom had children. Of their three grandchildren, I am the only one who grew up in a Western society. Although they support my parents’ decision to chase after the American dream, they are equally wary about my immersion in American life. Their concerns only deepened in recent years, as anti-West sentiments boomed in mainland China. Of course, I miss China dearly sometimes—the food, the communal housing, and the streets I know so well. But just as China is part of my identity, America is too. My years in America have helped me realize that two identities can co-exist, and I can take pride in my multicultural upbringing. My grandparents’ attempts to kindle a sense of Western hatred in me has fueled my sense of identity as an American.

When I look back at old photo albums from my early years in China, I often think of a shopping trip with my grandparents. They took me to a neighborhood market with dozens of little booths selling traditional goods. We came across one booth that was selling jewelry, and it had a lovely display of jade necklaces. In that instance, my grandparents suggested I replace the gold necklace around my neck with a more “Chinese” accessory. As is often the case, the suggestion gestured toward everything we share in common—and also towards an anxiety that a gulf between us would inevitably emerge. That anxiety was there in my earliest memories, when I clasped that jade necklace around my neck, or when, at grandma’s urging, I first picked up a calligraphy brush. ▩