The Shikumen in Homeseeking: Home, Memory, and the Irrecoverable Past

The Shikumen as a Symbol of Home and Loss in Homeseeking

In Karissa Chen's Homeseeking, the shikumen—the traditional Shanghai row houses of the Sifo Li neighborhood—serve as the novel's most concrete symbol of home, memory, and the irrecoverable past. These stone-gated dwellings appear across the narrative's shifting decades, from the 1938 childhood explorations of Suchi to Howard's 1993 return to a transformed Shanghai. As the characters move through war, exile, and diaspora, the shikumen remains a fixed point of longing, yet its physical and emotional condition changes, mirroring the impossibility of returning to what once was. This analysis traces the shikumen's literal form, its recurrence, and its evolving meaning, connecting it to the novel's central themes of the unreachable past, displacement, and music as memory.

What Is a Shikumen?

A shikumen is a style of residential architecture that emerged in Shanghai in the late nineteenth century, combining Western row-house layouts with Chinese courtyard elements. The name literally means “stone gate,” referring to the stone-framed entrance that leads into a small courtyard. In Homeseeking, the Sifo Li neighborhood is a longtang—a network of alleys lined with these houses. The novel describes the Zhang family's shikumen as “the sixth row house along this perimeter” (chapter 3), and the Wang family's as a similar structure with a “modest courtyard.” In chapter 5, seven-year-old Suji wanders through the longtang and notices a shikumen with “no clothes hanging from poles,” a “stone door frame,” and “two black-painted gates” through which she can peek into the courtyard. This architectural specificity grounds the symbol in a tangible place, making it a concrete anchor for the characters' memories.

The Shikumen as Childhood Home and Site of Discovery

For Suchi, the shikumen is initially a place of adventure and wonder. In 1938, she explores the alleys of the longtang, finding “every twist and turn held the possibility of a heroic adventure.” The shikumen becomes the setting for her first encounter with music: she hears a strange, unfamiliar sound emanating from a neighboring house—the violin playing of a boy who will become central to her life. The shikumen thus becomes the origin point of her connection to Haiwen, and later, the place where he leaves his violin for her before enlisting. In chapter 3, Haiwen mentally traces the path from his shikumen to Suchi's, noting the “painted bunny” near her back door, and plans to leave his violin there. The shikumen is not just a building; it is the stage for the novel's most intimate moments—first meetings, shared walks, and the quiet exchange of gifts.

The Shikumen as Site of Departure and Loss

The shikumen also marks the moment of rupture. In April 1947, Haiwen descends from his family's shikumen in his new uniform, knowing he will board a train with other enlistees. The longtang, which he calls “this comfort he has grown up with,” becomes a backdrop for farewell. He closes his eyes and sees the neighborhood as a “movie,” but it is a movie he is leaving. The shikumen is where he says goodbye to his family, and where he later leaves his violin at Suchi's door—a symbolic abandonment of his musical self and his love. For Suchi, the shikumen is also the place she must leave when she and her sister depart for Hong Kong in 1948, ostensibly on a business trip that becomes permanent exile. The shikumen thus becomes a threshold between a known world and an uncertain future.

The Shikumen as Irrecoverable Past

The most powerful transformation of the shikumen occurs in chapter 10, when Howard returns to Shanghai in 1993 after decades away. The longtang is still there, but it has changed: “parts of the longtang appeared run down, uncared for. It all appeared dirtier, smaller, more crowded than he remembered.” The shikumen that once held his family is now rented out to strangers. When he enters his childhood home, he finds “haphazard furniture” crammed into what was once the sitting room, and a “small black-and-white television” blaring in a corner. The courtyard where he practiced violin is now crowded with laundry racks. The tenant reveals that Howard's letters—sent from America in 1982—were turned in and reported, never reaching his mother. The shikumen, which his mother had kept as a home waiting for his return, becomes a symbol of failed communication and lost connection. Howard feels like “a lonely spirit pacing the corridors,” unable to reclaim the past that the shikumen once contained.

This transformation directly echoes the novel's epigraphs. The first, from In the Mood for Love, describes bygone years as “like a dusty windowpane: visible but not graspable.” The shikumen is that dusty glass—Howard can see the outlines of his childhood, but he cannot break through to touch it. The second epigraph, from Eileen Chang's Half a Lifelong Romance, states simply, “Shijun, we can't go back.” The shikumen embodies this impossibility: it is the same physical structure, yet it is no longer the home he remembers. The past is irrecoverable not because the building is gone, but because time and history have irrevocably altered both the place and the people who lived there.

The Shikumen and Memory

The shikumen also functions as a repository of memory, but memory that is selective and fragile. In chapter 22, set in 1982, an elderly woman lies ill in her shikumen, attended by her friend Sieu'in. She recalls her children, especially Haiwen and Suchi, and tries to dictate a letter to them, but Sieu'in reveals she cannot read or write. The shikumen is the setting for this final act of longing—a space where the past is present in the mind but cannot be communicated. Later, Howard's sister Junjun reveals that she kept the shikumen after their mother died, because “Ma would have wanted me to hold on to it. She always worried if she left, you wouldn't know where to find us when you came back.” The shikumen is thus a physical attempt to preserve a home for a returning son, but that attempt fails when the letters are intercepted. The building remains, but the home it represented is gone.

Study Questions

1. How does the shikumen function as a symbol of the irrecoverable past in Homeseeking?

The shikumen is the physical site of the characters' childhoods, love, and family life, but by the time Howard returns in 1993, it has been altered, rented out, and its original inhabitants are gone. The tenant's revelation that Howard's letters were turned in shows that even his attempts to reach his mother through the shikumen failed. The building remains, but it no longer holds the home he remembers, making the past visible yet unreachable—exactly like the “dusty windowpane” of the epigraph.

1. What does the change in the shikumen's condition reveal about the theme of displacement?

The shikumen's deterioration and repurposing reflect how diaspora characters are displaced from their origins. Even when they return, the home they left no longer exists in the same form. Howard feels like a foreigner in his own neighborhood, and the shikumen's transformation—from a warm family home to a crowded, rundown rental—mirrors his own sense of being out of place in a Shanghai that has moved on without him.

1. How does the shikumen connect to the motif of music in the novel?

Music originates from the shikumen: Haiwen's violin playing first draws Suchi to his house, and he later leaves his violin at her shikumen. In 1993, Howard recalls the courtyard where he practiced, sensing “ribbons of music dancing across the air,” but the courtyard is now filled with laundry racks. The loss of music in the shikumen parallels the loss of the past itself—the sounds that once defined the space are gone, replaced by the noise of a changed world.

1. In what ways does the shikumen serve as an emotional anchor for Howard?

For Howard, the shikumen is the locus of his memories of Suchi and his family. When he returns, he involuntarily steps toward Suchi's shikumen, feeling she might still be there waiting. Approaching his own shikumen, a “damp weight” descends on him. The shikumen anchors his longing for a past he cannot reclaim, and its physical presence—even in decay—keeps his memories alive, for better and worse.