My earliest memory is when I was a child crying. That time, no matter how mom and dad coax, I just ignore, a cry non-stop.

My mother carried me into the kitchen, pulled out a piece of colorful wrapping paper, spread it flat on the table, and folded my gadgets. After folding, pressing, blowing, and rolling, the paper disappeared at her fingertips. With a light blow, a flattened paper model was instantly transformed into a living being.

"Look, little tiger!" she said, putting the paper tiger in her hand on the table. I took the little tiger from my mother's hand. It scurried from side to side at my fingertips, the roar of "Ow" mixed with the rustle of paper.

I was both surprised and delighted. I touched his back with my index finger, and the little thing jumped up and down, making a low roar.

"It's called origami," my mother told me in Chinese.

Now, I didn't know anything about origami at the time, but I knew that my mom was an amazing origami artist who could make all these objects jump up and down with a single blow.

Dad picked Mom out of a booklet.

It was the spring of 1973, and Dad wanted to find someone through a matchmaking service. So he casually flipped through the brochure, glancing at each page until the moment he saw his mother's picture. "Ever since I saw her picture, I don't want to look at anyone else," Dad said.

The woman was described as an 18-year-old, a dancer, from Hong Kong and fluent in English, but none of the personal information was true.

"She doesn't speak English at all. The letters I receive are all written by the matchmaker in her tone. Her English is completely at the level of'hello 'and'goodbye'."

But Dad didn't break into the dating agency to ask for a refund because he was deceived. Instead, he took his mother back to Connecticut and processed immigration for her.

A year later, I was born. That year was the Year of the Tiger.

Whenever I wanted, my mother would fold me all kinds of small animals - goats, deer, buffalo, etc. - out of colorful wrapping paper. The tigers roared and chased them around, and when they caught up, they would push them down with their claws, squeezing air out of their bodies and turning them back into a flat origami. Whenever this happened, I had to blow air into the little animals to make them jump again.

When I played with the tiger in the yard, it always liked to catch sparrows. Once, a cornered bird bit its ear in anger, and it whimpered for a long time. In my company, it reluctantly accepted my mother's tape stitching surgery.

One day, I watched a documentary about sharks on TV and asked my mother to make me a shark. When the shark was ready, I saw it lying on the dining table, so I filled the sink with water and put it in. In the wide water, the shark swam happily. Before long, his body became soft and transparent, and slowly sank to the bottom of the pool, and the folded paper slowly unfolded in the water. When I came back to my senses to save it, it was too late, and only a wet piece of paper was left in my hand.

Mom made me a new shark out of waterproof paper, and it swam happily in the big goldfish tank. I like to sit by the tank with my little tiger and watch the waterproof sharks chase goldfish in the water.

Mark was a neighbor's kid. One day, he came to my house with a Star Wars Obi-Wan Kenobi doll. The doll's lightsaber not only glowed, but also screamed, "Use the Force!"

I didn't have any toys other than the origami. So I took the paper tiger out of the bedroom. It was worn out by then, and it was covered with tape that my mom and I had put on over the past few years when we were repairing it. As time went by, the old tiger had long lost its former vigor.

"Little tiger!"   I said it in Chinese, then stopped and repeated it in English.

Mark looked up and down at the paper tiger made of Christmas gift box wrapping paper: "What kind of tiger is this? Your mother makes toys out of garbage?"

Mark touched Obi-Wan's head with his hand, and the lightsaber danced again, swaying his arms up and down: "Use the Force!"

The little tiger turned around, lunged at Obi-Wan, and pushed the plastic man off the dining table so hard that his bones broke. The tiger was proud, and I laughed too.

Mark yelled, "This toy is expensive! You can't buy it now! Maybe your dad didn't spend so much money when he bought your mom!" He grabbed my paper tiger and riveted it, tearing and biting it. The paper tiger was instantly dismembered in half, with a different head.

After Mark left, I cried for a long time alone. I tried to flatten it out and restore it to its original folds, but no matter what I tried, it just wouldn't recover and it was a pile of shredded paper.

Two weeks later, on Friday, I came home from school, and as soon as I walked in, my mother asked, "How was school?" I shut myself in the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror - I wasn't like her, not at all!

At dinner, I asked my dad, "Do I look like a Chinaman?"

Although I never mentioned the school, Dad seemed to have guessed what was going on. He closed his eyes and touched the bridge of his nose: "No, you don't look like that."

Mom looked at Dad puzzled, then at me: "What is a Chinese guy?"

"English! Speak English!" I burst out.

She struggled to find English words to speak: "What's wrong with you?"

I threw down my chopsticks and pushed away the rice bowl in front of me. Looking at the stir-fried spiced beef with green peppers on the table, I said in a commanding tone, "No Chinese food in the future!"

"Son, many American families also eat Chinese food." Dad tried to defend his mother.

"The problem is that we are not an American family!" I said, looking my father in the eye. "There is no mother like me in an American family."

Mom sat there in amazement, looking at Dad, then at me, lips parted and closed, hesitating to speak.

"It's time for you to learn English," Dad said. "It's just that I didn't ask for anything in the past, but Jack still has to fit in with this society."

Mom looked at Dad and touched his lips with her fingers. "When I say the word'love 'in English, I feel the sound, but when I say the word'love' in Chinese, I feel the truth." As she spoke, she covered her chest with her hands.

Dad shook his head helplessly, "But you are in America now."

Mom sat down in her chair in frustration, looking like a deflated paper buffalo.

Later, I threw the pile of origami animals into the attic. If my mother and I spoke Chinese, I refused to answer. She would imitate the American mother on TV and hug and kiss me, but her movements were always so exaggerated and comical. Knowing that I didn't like her like this, she stopped hugging me.

Sometimes I see her sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the wrapping paper in her hand in a daze. Before long, a newly made animal will appear on my bedside table and snuggle up next to me. But I will still press them and throw them into the box in the attic.

Sometimes when I go home, I look at her thin back, listen to her humming Chinese songs, and after busy in the kitchen, I still can't believe that she is my biological mother. We are not from the same world at all! I won't go to talk to her, I lock myself in the bedroom and pursue an American-style happy life alone.

In the hospital, my mother lay in a hospital bed. The doctor diagnosed her with terminal cancer, and surgery would not save her life. But my mind was not concerned at all with my mother's condition. It was the height of campus recruitment fairs, and my mind was full of resumes, accomplishments, and interviews.

"Jack, if..." she coughed nonstop, finally taking a deep breath. "If I can't do it, don't be sad, you have to live well. Keep that shoebox in the attic, and every time you take it out on Qingming Day in the future, you will think of me. I will always be by your side."

Qingming is a traditional Chinese holiday to remember the dead. When I was very young, my mother would write to her dead parents in Qingming to tell them how she was doing in America. She would read the letter aloud to me, and if I said anything, she would write my words into the letter. Then she would fold the letter into a paper crane and release it into the air. The paper crane flapped its crisp wings and flew west across the Pacific Ocean toward China, landing the graves of its ancestors. But that was many years ago.

"Child, Mommy loves you." She coughed again. I can't help but think back to the scene many years ago, when my mother covered her heart and said the word "love" in Chinese.

In the first week of April, two years after my mother's death, I was lounging on the couch, watching TV. A documentary about sharks suddenly grabbed my attention, and for a moment, I seemed to feel my mother coming back to me, folding paper sharks for me out of waterproof paper. My little tiger and I surrounded her, watching in a trance.

Bang! I looked up in surprise. A piece of tape-wrapped paper rolled to the floor and landed next to the bookshelf. I went over and picked it up and threw it in the bin.

Suddenly, the paper ball moved and slowly stretched out. It turned out to be the little tiger that I had forgotten for a long time. He jumped on my leg in a graceful posture characteristic of cats. Then his body began to dismember and stretch, and finally, what was left of my leg was crumpled wrapping paper, white paper dotted with dense Chinese characters. I quickly ran to the computer and opened the page. Today is Qingming Festival.

I immediately took the wrapping paper and ran into town to find a Chinese tourist. She read it to me word by word. The voice I had been avoiding for years finally came back to my ears, but this time it was not quickly forgotten, but sank to the bottom of my heart and soaked in my bones. After that, my heart was turned upside down, and my soul could not sleep at night.

Son, we haven't talked in a long time. Whenever I approach you, you are always so angry, I don't know what to do, so I decided to write to you, and after I write the letter, I will make it into the paper animal you have always liked.

If I die, those little animals will also lose their vitality. But every Qingming Festival, every day when the deceased relatives come back to visit their families, I can come to you at the moment when you think of me. The little animals I made for you will jump around then, maybe you can see these words.

Because I wanted to write these words with all my love, I had to write them in Chinese.

For many years, I have never told you about my past. When you were young, I always wanted to tell you when you grew up, but that day never came.

I was born Vietnam in Sidul village, Hebei Province, where origami is very famous. My mother taught me how to make small animals out of paper and give them life. It's a big magic in my hometown village. We make paper birds to drive grasshoppers out of rice fields and make paper tigers to scare mice

When I was 10, I was an orphan. Then I was smuggled into Hong Kong and sold to a family named Jin as a maid, and I suffered a lot. And so, after six years, an old lady selling fish took me aside one morning and told me that some American men like to marry Asian girls. If I can cook, do the housework, and take good care of my American husband, he will give me a happy life. This is my only way out. So, my picture appeared in the booklet with false information, and then your father met me. Although the story is not romantic at all, this is my story.

In the suburbs of America, I was lonely. Your father was very kind to me, and I was grateful to him. Then you were born. I was overjoyed to see your little face look so much like my mother and father and me. I lost my family, everything I loved. But I have you, and your face tells me that my memories of my hometown are real, not hallucinations.

You grow up day by day, it really makes me feel at home. I have finally found my own happy life. I really wish my parents could be by my side, so that I can let them enjoy happiness. But they are no longer there. Do you know what is the most painful thing for the Chinese people? It is when children want to be filial to their parents, their parents are no longer alive.

Son, I know you don't like having Chinese eyes, but they reveal my expectations for you; I know you don't like having Chinese black hair, but it contains my prayers for you. Can you imagine how beautiful you have made my life? Can you imagine how much my heart hurts when you stop talking to me or letting me speak Chinese to you?

I was terrified that I was about to lose all the good things in my life again.

Son, why don't you talk to Mom? Mom's heart really hurts.

The letter was finished. The Chinese woman handed it to me, and I was too ashamed to look up at her face. I bowed my head and asked her to do me one more favor, to teach me how to write the Chinese word "love." I clumsily copied the word "love" she wrote at the bottom of the letter, and wrote it over and over again. She patted me lightly on the shoulder, got up and left. Now, my mother was the only one with me.

I followed the crease, folded it back to its original appearance, and nestled it in my arms. With its roar, I took it on my way home.