2021 Global Expression and Thought Essay, Honorable Mention

Somewhere during elementary school, my friends and I had a long, cisheteronormative discussion about who we would marry later in life. This discussion consisted of the “important things,” like intelligence, a sense of humor, and height. But eventually, we got around to talking about race. 

Here’s some background: although I am second generation American on my dad’s side, and fifth generation American on my mother’s side, ethnically I am still fully Chinese. At the time, I was at the age where I believed my mom was the prettiest and my dad was the handsomest. 

So, when my friends decided that they would never marry an Asian man, I nodded out of peer pressure, internally astounded that an entire race could be deemed unattractive.

I heard this prejudice many times, from mixed-race friends, first-generation-American Chinese friends, even strangers on the internet, and it was disheartening, despite generally being more directed towards men than women.

Through the years, I heard this opinion less, but I couldn’t stop feeling uncomfortable in my Asian-ness, specifically in being Chinese. While the other eastern Asian countries (South Korea, Japan) are progressively more welcomed in mainstream culture (Kpop, anime), China seems to be more and more often the butt of a bad joke. When my Mandarin teacher told my class about the wondrous inventions of the Han dynasty and the influential politics and culture of the Tang dynasty, I couldn’t help but wonder where all that greatness went. 

At the moment, the US and China are the two top economies in the world, and yet, at times these two parts of me seem like such contradictions. There is such a divide between the two countries not only geographically, but also in terms of family obligations, social norms, and more importantly political standings. 

Both sides of my family left China for America before the Communist Revolution, and perhaps this has left me feeling all the more this great divide. Every now and then, I hear about what seem like China’s attempts at patriotism–– from trying to unify the nation’s language by only broadcasting in Mandarin, to allowing students to “purge” the nation of intellectuals in order to develop the socialist system during the Cultural Revolution. I do not miss the irony in the fact that these deniances of human rights feel more shameful to me rather than patriotic. 

In contrast, when I see my grandfather’s patriotism and how proud he is of his Chinese heritage and his China, the one he was born and raised in, I think there must be something Chinese in me besides ethnicity because of how guilty I feel going against filial piety by rejecting a place that my history is so rooted in. 

I think that I am lucky to not have had to grow up as a first-generation American. Unlike other immigrants, whose internal confusion might have been caused by racism from others or the clashing of cultures, I didn’t experience any of that. Instead of translating the difference in cultures between my parents and the rest of America, I learned to speak Mandarin from a babysitter from Beijing, and only had to translate a language between my parents and her.  I was able to grow up appreciating–– or at the very least, not scorning–– so much of my culture. My discomfort with my race was based on the country itself. 

When we moved to Hawaii from California, the first thing that struck me was the syncretic culture, regardless of race. What most surprised me was how despite the events of Pearl Harbor, Japanese culture still influences “local culture,” be it in the food, the local language, or calling strangers Aunty or Uncle. It surprised me how easily people were able to leave the past behind to appreciate each others’ culture. To be inherently–– albeit distantly–– tied to a nation doing horrible things, and yet still manage to understand that it has nothing to do with you, surprised me. 

In a way, I have accepted the fact that no single part of who I am is wholly good or bad. My family is still Chinese, as much as it is American. We believe in feng shui when it prohibits buying a corner lot, but not when it says to paint the front door red (because that’s tacky). At the same time, my pride in my ethnicity and my culture is not an endorsement of China’s actions. Instead, I am lucky enough to choose the parts of my history that I will act on and let define me.