The family plan: Visit Hilton Head for 2 weeks and return to China. Then came COVID
“I am from a place I can’t go back to; This year on the Island has felt like a new life, that I am still waiting to begin.”
That’s the opening line of 10-year-old Vince Mathison’s poem “Where I’m From,” written for an assignment in his virtual 4th grade class at Hilton Head Island Elementary School.
He was told to write based on a poem with the same title by George Ella Lyon, including descriptions of his family, his food and his feelings on the pandemic.
His classmates did the same: “I am from the computers which I face every day, and the teachers so close, yet so far away,” one wrote; “No friends around, no more playdates, no more BBQs,” wrote another.
But though every student had something different to say about their experience during the pandemic, Vince might have had the most unique answer to “where I’m from:” His hometown is Shenzhen, China, a city of 12.6 million that borders Hong Kong.
He wrote that what was meant to be a two-week visit on Hilton Head has turned into a 15-month stay.
‘Everything changed’
Since 2015, the Mathisons — mom Linzi, dad Thomas and brothers Vince and Ray — have come to Hilton Head Island to celebrate Chinese New Year and, belatedly, Christmas with Linzi’s parents.
They arrived on the island around the start of February 2020, a few weeks before COVID was officially classified as a pandemic and right before the Hilton Head International Piano Competition announced two Chinese competitors would be unable to attend due to travel restrictions.
“We planned on two weeks,” Linzi Mathison said. “And then everything changed.”
Most commercial air carriers reduced or suspended routes to and from China in February 2020, according to the State Department. Dad and the two boys have U.S. passports and weren’t allowed to travel back to China, Linzi Mathison said, “and I’m not going to go home by myself.”
Without an end in sight to the travel restrictions, the Mathisons enrolled Vince and Ray at Hilton Head Island Elementary that month.
Vince got “about two weeks” of in-person school before S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster moved schools to virtual classes through the end of the year.
It was a big adjustment, he said — in Shenzhen, he’d attend eight lessons a day between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., with a 10-minute recess break between each lesson.
And though Vince had taken English lessons and read several books in English, he “didn’t feel as confident” as he wanted to with the language, so he enrolled in Hilton Head Elementary’s Chinese immersion program, where some subject areas are taught in Mandarin.
He joined teacher Karen Perdue’s class. She asked students to write “Where I’m From” poems as they studied contemporary poets such as Amanda Gorman and learned writing techniques like alliteration and metaphor.
“Vince’s writing is always very creative,” Perdue said. “There’s a lot of interest in it, and he has a great flow — you can tell that he thinks a lot about what he’s going to write before he puts it down on the paper.”
Perdue asked her students to submit their poems to the Medical University of South Carolina’s annual Septima Clark Poetry Contest. In the end, only two did, including Vince.
He didn’t think much of it, until Thomas Mathison told him he’d won third place in the statewide contest’s elementary school category.
“My dad is the one who told me, and I thought he was kidding,” Vince said.
Linzi Mathison added: “His first words were, ‘Daddy, is this a scam?’”
On April 30, he read his poem aloud at MUSC’s virtual award ceremony. Hilton Head Elementary principal Sarah Owen was there, cheering him on with applause emojis in her Zoom window. She was there a week later, when Vince read his poem to the Beaufort County Board of Education, garnering a round of applause and congratulatory messages from the elected officials.
“It’s either a lot of people participating in the scam, or it’s real,” Vince said.
Making the decision
Vince misses his Legos. He misses his friends in Shenzhen, and has a hard time calling them with a 12-hour time difference between them.
But he’s begun to adapt to life on Hilton Head. He’s joined a baseball team, and started playing tennis and soccer with friends at school — friends whose parents were friends with his father when he was growing up on the island. He’s had more time to hang out with his dad, who traveled extensively for his job as a furniture designer before the pandemic. He said his “new life” from the poem is “starting now.”
After spring break, Vince went back to face-to-face classes, leaving Perdue’s virtual classroom. The teacher said she’s looking forward to scheduling time for Vince to celebrate his award with his classmates, who miss his humor and his Pictionary skills.
Linzi Mathison said that after a lot of thought, the family decided to move to Hilton Head permanently. They’ve bought a house, and she’s found a job: she’s a long-term substitute teacher in the Chinese immersion program at Hilton Head Elementary School.
“I never taught in China, but my mom was a teacher for 20 years,” she said. “When I came over here I thought ‘oh, I want to be a teacher!’”
She said she’s excited to teach people more about China and Chinese culture. She’s planning a family trip to visit Shenzhen again this summer to pick up the clothes and belongings they left behind, though it will depend on the city’s COVID restrictions — currently, visitors have to quarantine for two weeks when they enter the country, and that’s “too long,” she said.
The original draft of Vince’s poem was shorter, and a little less loyal to George Ella Lyon’s structure. He talked more about the connection between Hilton Head and Shenzhen — “And across the ocean I go, to the most beautiful place in America; So I come from, the beautiful island of Hilton Head; And the busy city of Shen Zhen.”
He talked about his little brother, Ray, now a second-grader in Hilton Head Elementary’s Spanish immersion program: “Even being a billionaire isn’t as good as having my brother.”
He talked about the stands and the monkey bars at Dolphin Head, and “the teacher’s words: ‘the difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.’”
But he kept the ending mostly the same.
“I’m from laughing about the past, and smiling wide in the present, also hoping for the future, and after all, pursuing happiness.”