A Bear, a Brother, and a Goodbye

Written by Eric Wu from Washington, USA

“Looks like Zhuxiong got dragged over by TSA again.”

I sighed. His tiny legs fluttered as they dragged him helplessly into the treacherous inspection chamber. His cylindrical body meant his face had to be squished to fit into the container. 

This had happened once in New York, once in Beijing, and twice in Seattle. Clearly, the TSA had found high schoolers bringing stuffed animals through security suspicious. In the past, I had thrown tantrums. Now, I am mature enough to understand that I can do nothing to stop the almighty hand of airport security. 

Showered by hopelessness, my insecurities about my relationship with Zhuxiong emerged: I’m thirteen, and the stuffed animal comes from a story for three-year-olds. My troubles at the airport led me to the beginning–when I first set my gaze upon Zhuxiong.

—

During second grade, my brother and I wandered around the house under the guise of doing “spring cleaning.” In reality, we were just playing around and exploring. Our adventure brought us to the attic, a seldom-visited area where a family friend once stayed. We pranced on the creaky, wooden boards, looking aimlessly for objects of interest. 

Suddenly, sunlight from the window illuminated the hollow space beneath the bed, and a bright sphere of yellow emerged as if we were witnessing the birth of a star– naturally, we gravitated towards it like clingy planets. My brother slowly retrieved the object, treating it like newly discovered gold. 

“What did you find?” I asked.

“It’s squishy and round, like  yellow tapioca pearls.” He held it out. “I think it belongs to Auntie An-qi. Remember when she was living in this room? We should probably put it back and–”

“No! Absolutely not. Give it to me,” I cut him off.

“But it’s not ours…” My brother’s voice sounded soft and feeble.

“Don’t you see how much he wants us to take him in? It’s on her for abandoning him.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

My brother dropped the treasure into my hands–I felt the weight of the stuffie landing on my arms. It was almost half the size of me. His pillowy-cotton filling retracted as I pressed, but the outside felt slightly rough in an almost rebellious way. Still, I couldn’t let his feisty skin prevent me from constantly holding on to him. 

At first, I found it eerie how one of his eyes was wide open, while the other eternally winked. I don’t even notice that anymore. His legs looked like beans, so tiny that we wondered what the point of them was. 

Here was a stuffed animal that looked nothing like any stuffed animal we’d ever seen before. His eyebrows seemed to reach the heavens, giving the impression of confusion and bewilderment. If it weren’t for his yellow color and red “shirt” (which was really just a thick, red stripe), one would never realize he was modelled after Winnie the Pooh. Or connect the fact that Zhuxiong resembled the silly old bear’s distorted reflection in a moving river. In all honesty, at the time, we didn’t even make that connection ourselves despite having watched the cartoon. So, we convened in a family conference to establish its name. My brother and I conjectured that Zhuxiong was modelled after a pig. Even now, I’m not sure where we got that from.

“Looks more like a bee to me,” my dad suggested. 

My brother and I liked the idea of a cute, chubby, clumsy pig better.

“No, it can’t be a bee.”

“Why not?”

“Just can’t.”

In the end, we rattled our creative minds and came up with the name Zhu, meaning pig. The name stuck, or at least until I brought Zhu to school for show-and-tell. 

“That’s a weird-looking Winnie the Pooh. Where’d you get it?”

“A what?”

“A Winnie the Pooh? The cartoon?”

“Oh.”

Then it hit me: I had been calling a bear a pig for the past two months; I wondered if Zhu was offended. Returning home that day, I quickly explained my revelation to my co-offender. I apologised to Zhu repeatedly (he didn’t forgive me, to my dismay), though it was partly on him for not correcting us after all these days. We spent the next two hours brainstorming possible new names.

“How about Winnie?” My brother suggested.

“Nope, too literal.”

“How about Buster?”

“Nope, too generic.”

“Bear?”

“Hmm, it’s getting there–”

“Oh, I got it this time: Zhuxiong, or Pigbear, in English,” my brother said proudly.

We looked at each other and high-fived with both hands. “Yep, that’s the one.”

Here are a few reasons why the name Zhuxiong is perfect: one, it reconciles our newfound knowledge and past misconceptions. Two, it embodies both the clumsiness of a pig and the cuteness of a bear. And three, it is a result of our collaboration and brainstorming together. 

Since getting his new name, Zhuxiong became the catalyst for our imagination. One day, he was Liu Shaoqi from the Cultural Revolution, escaping from the Red Army; the next, he transformed into Miley Cyrus, performing "Wrecking Ball" with our couch as a stage. 

I always hypothesized that, as a history-enamoured high schooler, roleplaying revolutionary figures with Zhuxiong was my brother’s way of escaping junior-year stress, although he would never admit it. He never lets his shy and reserved personality stop him from appreciating the joys of nonsensical childhood ingenuity–or at least until our parents told us to cut it out. 

Eventually, though, even our parents accepted Zhuxiong’s permanent presence at the dinner table, the couch, and as a family member. The grandparents, however, were another story.

“Wei! Kai-kai! Why are you still lugging that thing around? Aren’t you turning thirteen this year?” they would ask every time we FaceTimed (Kai-kai was a nickname for my brother that only my grandparents used).

“Actually, I’m turning seventeen this year, but close enough.”

In all honesty, I think my grandma has had enough of our spewings of Zhuxiong’s adventures and complaints that his floppy ears had almost fallen off because we were dragging him out of a battlefield. 

“Oh, by the way, do you think you could stitch him up next time we go to China?” we asked in unison.

“Ni shuo shen me! You’re bringing that thing to China?”

I didn’t just bring him to China during the summers–I brought him along on all our trips: one night in Portland, one week of vacationing in Hawaii, and occasionally even on the routine grocery run (I made sure he wore his seat buckle). After enough convincing, even our grandma’s unsympathetic heart began to warm up after we convinced her to stitch up his ear.

“This thing isn’t so bad after all. It’s pretty funny looking,” she would say. I even caught her resting her head on him once, although she quickly lifted her head up and denied the allegations upon my sudden appearance. 

Our days of coming up with fun stories together continued throughout my elementary school years, but it was hard for me to accept that it would all end when my brother, who was vastly older than me, inevitably left for college. My family, Zhuxiong, and I all cheered when the University of Chicago accepted my brother.  The part of me still stuck in carefree, childish days frolicking with Zhuxiong in my arms didn’t want him to leave–and I felt guilty about it. 

By now, I was a rising middle schooler, far beyond twice the size of Zhuxiong, and my brother was no longer the spellbound history nerd of before. Our daily sessions with Zhuxiong dropped to twice a week. The stories that we came up with were no longer as inventive or senseless. I pretended that my brother would never leave.

Only the week before his departure did we realize we wouldn’t always be together. My brother seemed to forget his duties as a college freshman, and we savored every moment of our last summer days together with Zhuxiong, continuing our roleplay and taking turns narrating the storyline.

“Today, Zhuxiong was outsmarted by Sir Isaac Newton!” my brother exclaimed.

“No. Zhuxiong actually discovered gravity before him, and Newton disgracefully stole his idea!” I responded, sitting on his pillow when it was my turn to narrate.

Our debate comparing Zhuxiong to famous scientists continued well past my bedtime. We knew this, of course, but neither of us could stop because my brother’s flight loomed close - his departure scheduled for the next day.

“Zhuxiong, along with his friend Einstein, discovered the general theory of relativity!” We said at the same time.

“Ni men! Go to sleep.” Our mom came into the room, cutting us off right as we hit the climax.

“C’mon, just fifteen more minutes–”

“No, absolutely not. Do you know how late it is? Xinkai, your flight is early in the morning.”

“Hey, you can sleep with Zhuxiong tonight,” I whispered.

“No, I’m fine.” My brother chuckled, and I wondered what he found funny.

Begrudgingly, both of us went to bed, which, in my case, did not mean sleeping. My listless eyes were closed and still, but my restless mind vacationed to the Summer Palace in Beijing, the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and all the places in the world where Zhuxiong had been, racing through memories of the past four years we spent together alongside my brother. I wondered how my relationship with Zhuxiong would change after the departure. Eventually, once the sky partially lit up, I fell asleep from fatigue. 

I woke to the umami smell of gun-dan (which loosely translates to “get out of here!”) noodles and the bustling noise of banging suitcases from chaotic last-minute cramming. I hurriedly ran out of my room, still dressed in my pajamas with Zhuxiong in my arms, to see my brother for the last time before he’d be whisked away to university. It would be several months before our reunion. 

The family had gathered to accompany him to the airport, and there fell among us a sort of quiet resignation. 

“Ai-ya, look at how old Xinkai has grown!” My dad patted him on the back with so much force that it sent him stumbling forward.

“Flight leaves in three hours.”

“Can I come along?” I asked.

“Oh, look who’s awake. Of course you can come.” Mom smiled.

“I’m bringing Zhuxiong along.”

“I’ll sit in the back today,” my brother said before we got in the car.

“You always want to sit in the front though; doesn’t sitting in the back make you carsick?”

“It’ll be fine today.”

Once in the car, I buckled Zhuxiong into the middle seat, between my brother and I, while our parents sat in the front.

“Hey, do you know what happened after Zhuxiong discovered black holes?” My brother whispered in my ear.

“I don’t know. He got published?”

“No, everybody thought he was crazy! But guess what? Black holes really do exist.”

“And what happened next?”

“Hmm, I’ll tell you next time we meet. It won’t be too long.”

“You promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

We had arrived at the airport, yet our story never finished. I held my brother’s promise and his hand close to me. As he left the car, he gave me one last tight hug, with Zhuxiong watching from the car seat. I watched him walk into the terminal through teary eyes; he looked back at me once and smiled.

—

“Hey kid, it looks like your stuffed animal is no trouble. Go on ahead.” The officer’s deep, smoky voice snapped me out of my reverie.

“Oh great, thank you so much!”

“Anyways, where are you headed?”

“Chicago.”

I put Zhuxiong snugly onto my shoulder, and we walked through to our gate and on to my brother, where we’d finally get a chance to finish that story.