Because my huge midterm for AAS 1100 was this past Thursday and because recently I've been feeling rather reflective and nostalgic, I thought it would be appropriate to write down some thoughts about my trip to China during my winter break. I know this post was supposed to put up last week but I'll be honest, I had a lot of difficulty writing this. There were just so many feelings that I didn't know how to articulate into words. But hopefully, I was able to do it some justice in the end.
So why is my trip relevant to this class, you may ask? Well, if you take a closer look at the semi-essay/reflection below, here are some thoughts I've been bottling up for quite some time.
China 2014
I haven't been back to China to see my family for ten years. Ten. Years. And while I confess I didn't think much of it back then, as I was busy with school and college, it suddenly struck me sometime during my freshman year how utterly alone and out of place I felt at college. Maybe it was just me being super homesick but often times I found myself fitting in nowhere. I wasn't American enough with the girls who lived near me and I wasn't even Chinese enough for my international roommate, despite being brought up in a traditional Chinese household. I was, as always, stuck firmly in the middle.
I bring this up because recently in class, there was a discussion about something that hit a little too close to home, something called the "hyphenated American." While literally this refers to the early tendency to insert hyphens between the terms "American" and other nationalities, metaphorically, it implies something much more prejudiced, a type of American that was somehow, different, sub-par, and not truly American. As purported by Woodrow Wilson, "Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready." The hyphen, therefore, not only represents the impenetrable social and cultural barriers all immigrants face coming to the U.S. but also confers a psyche all children of immigrants eventually internalize, that they don't fit in anywhere and that they are impure and therefore separate from both their own cultures and the one they were born into. For Asian Americans particularly, this mindset is especially damaging because the two cultures they come from are sometimes so irreconcilably different, so incompatible, that how could a healthy medium possibly exist?
I remember this day so clearly in class. Professor Pham had just asked us: "I don't know, have any of you ever felt this sort of identity crisis?" and my hand had impulsively shot up, before I even had time to think about what I was going to say. When she called on me to speak, my voice quivered slightly as I tried to explain, precisely what she had asked, that I had experienced a lot of those conflicting feelings throughout my entire life and that I for a long time, had felt, frankly, alone. As I talked I could see in my mind all those times when my American-bred wishes for autonomy had clashed with my parents' traditional beliefs and insistence on obedience (I confess that this was partially why I had decided to go to college so far away). In particular, I brought up this one moment last summer, before we had decided to go back to China in January, when I had experienced a tiny mental breakdown while looking over lost baby photos with my dad. I'm not so sure what had triggered it that day, but I remember crying for a very long time about the thought of being so utterly alone, deprived of any meaningful relationship with my family except for my parents, that I had lived this life without spending more than a few weeks with my grandparents, my cousins, and my aunts and uncles who had so painstakingly raised me those first two years of my life. While I'm sure Professor Pham was shocked that I had brought up something so personal, this issue had indeed hit close, almost too close, to one of my biggest insecurities.
So what happened in China during those 10 days? I confess, it felt strange and bizarre at first, like I was the invading tourist and cultural outsider. But strangely, it didn't matter to any of my relatives, not even my younger cousins, that I was so different from the rest of them. Quite the contrary, they delighted in showing me all the wonders of our home city of Shaoguan, doing all they could to bring me and my parents up to speed on the 10 long years we have missed out on. Food was a big part of our everyday plans. Everyday, we went somewhere new to eat, old favorite restaurants my family often flitted to, little bakeries with fresh soft baked buns, at various homes of distant relatives. Sometimes it didn't even matter where we went, because whenever we were able to go somewhere and sit down, we could just chat and catch up on the little things, trading stories, and talk about even the most ridiculous of things.
I give a lot of credit to my relatives for being so patient with me during our stay there. It must've been difficult for them, to even know where to begin with me, as I had neither a deep knowledge of China or Chinese customs nor a proficient grasp of the language. But they tried their best, and sometimes I think they were even taken aback how quickly I picked up little things. What was most gratifying to me was the joy I could see in their faces whenever they asked me whether I had ever heard or this or tried that and I would scrunch my eyebrows in a frown that clearly demonstrated "no" and they would launch us into a new conversation or anecdote that usually ended in peals of laughter.
I especially remember this one time we were sitting at this pretty fancy restaurant, eating straight up some of the best foods I have ever had in my life, and the conversation had drifted to my knowledge of Cantonese slang, some of which I had heard before and some of which I hadn't. I don't remember what in particular was so funny about the subject, but by the end of dinner, all of us were up-ended in our seats, dying in spiels of laughter. It was as if we had never been apart, as if the 10 past years had been nothing more than a flitting dream. And it was on that day when I finally realized how wrong I have been for the past twenty years of my life, for it didn't matter to my relatives that I had grown up differently from the rest of them, that I couldn't speak their language; they accepted me just the same, even all the American parts of me they couldn't understand. Because they saw me fundamentally as still part of the family, I was just as "Chinese" as anyone could be under the circumstances. Heck, it didn't even matter what I was, as long I was healthy, happy, and living a successful life wherever I happened to be. So I reasoned to myself, if my long lost family could even accept me without a moment's hesitation, why shouldn't I begin accepting myself for who I am? Yes, I am stuck in that nebulous middle between two worlds, but that is as legitimate a place as any, as real a place as any, and as long as I can push aside these stupid social constructions in my head, everything will be not just okay but better. And better is always a good start.
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Wow, writing all that felt incredibly cathartic. And relieving. I guess I should do this more often.
To Professor Pham, should you ever read this: I hope that I haven't scared you in any way by speaking up the way I did in class. There are some things I get just a little emotional over that happened to be one of them. I assure you (although you may not believe me from my overly-detailed food diaries) that I am still a completely sane, normal human being.
So now that we've gotten this post over with, let's move onto some new posts, shall we? If you're not excited by now, you really should be, because I'm really excited about some of the new blog posts I have planned and can't wait to share with you guys all all the things I've learned both about food and about life here at school. So, with that said, here's to my many more crazy blog posts in the future!
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