mental manifestations

Disclaimer: A lot of the observations I make in this post are general trends I have personally observed or experienced. What I say is not absolute, because I have also seen exceptions.

There is a post over at 8 Asians that has been bothering for me some time, but I haven’t had the chance to formulate a thought-out response at the time. The issue that the post revolves around is interracial dating between Asian and Caucasian people. What bothers me the most is that the response to the issue feels too generic and stereotypical. What someone says in a few words about “typical” Asian males definitely does not encompass the entire spectrum. The reason it bothers me a lot us because it is opposite from what I have seen. People’s lives are so hugely influenced by their environment and social dispositions.

I was born and rasied in Boston. I lived in an Irish neighborhood. I really never saw a huge Asian population until 7th grade. Up until then, I went to schools that were predominantly white or of other minorities (black, Hispanic, etc.), and my only contact with other Asians were family, Chinatown visits, or the small percentage of students in school. 7th grade was a big change for me; I entered an extremely diverse school of over 2400 students where my graduating class was at least 300 students. Yet I never hung out with the Asian kids. They were generally cliquey, and I never shared any interests with them. This just doesn’t apply to Asian people. I’ve seen the phenomenon in so many other groups of people. People always banded with others who were of the same race because the familiarity and similarity makes them feel comfortable and safe. It always bothered me when others tried to latch onto me because I was Chinese (like when someone wants to be a project partner or a random person sits next to me on the bus).

I always hung out with people who shared the same interests as as me which almost all the Asians I knew never did. I always loathed people who would try to make me join some Asian culture society at school. These are the same kind of people who hang out in the same Asian clique. I have no objections for sharing my heritage and celebrating my culture, but it seems silly when all the attendants just happen to be of the same culture. I was never taught racism when I was growing up. I never inherited it from my parents. I had to learn it from all the social situations I was in. My social confusion screwed me up for a long time, before I learned how to just be myself. However, the exposure I had to other people showed me that we really aren’t that different if you strip skin color away. Character — what people said or did to me good or bad — always struck me more than anything.

I only ever really dated one girl who happened to be Korean. Her past boyfriends were all white (if I remember correctly). She came from a white suburb and grew up in a different setting than most other Asians I knew. However, she was not the kind of girl I would date again. It had nothing to do with physical appearance at all. Her character just didn’t cohere with mine which is why I broke up with her. My cousins have married various people of other races (Italian, Korean, Spanish), and there are no issues with race with anyone there.

I have met some really great and nice people throughout my life. It didn’t matter what race they were, because I knew them as individuals instead of abstracting them into a global group and personifying that. Taking interracial dating so seriously is dumb. The people who do that probably have some insecurities they need to take care of. In the end, people should do whatever makes them happy regardless of race.

Some people use language to define part of their identity. For me, language defines a small part of who I am and how I grew up. My life began around two languages: English and Chinese. The more my life progressed, the more English weeded out my “native” tongue. Chinese remains more personal in identifying who I am because it provides background to my family and life. With Chinese, I feel a connection between the language and my identity. I view English as only an adaptation to communicate with the people around me. I do not speak Chinese to speak with others at all. To me, Chinese only represents a way to establish part of my identity while English does not.

I was exposed to both English and Chinese ever since I was born. My parents, both Hong Kong emigrants, primarily spoke Chinese for the first few years of my life (and my siblings’ too). Every day our mother would yell the same commands to us such as “brush your teeth,” “wash your face,” “eat dinner,” “go to sleep,” and “wake up.” If we did something bad, my mom would yell at us in both English and Chinese. You could tell that she was really angry when she started using Chinese; her speech and expressions became louder and faster. However, I spoke far more English and almost always used it to communicate with my family. I would usually respond with English to anything that my parents would say in Chinese. I knew what the Chinese meant, but I did not know how to reverse the translation. That is usually the case whenever any Chinese person speaks to me.

A lot of relatives on my father’s side had also immigrated to the United States and settled in the same region. Whenever a first generation relative had a birthday or when a big holiday came around, our families would gather in one house and have giant dinner parties that would ending late into the night. All the immigrants usually spoke Chinese (in loud expressive shouting no less) while the young children spoke English to each other. If there were something one of the adults wanted us to do, they would say it to us in Chinese first and then English if we did not understand. The children would almost always speak English to the adults. As years passed by, I noticed that a lot of the Chinese is dropping among our family and that English is starting to become more dominant.

My cousin once noted that the oldest child in a family always knew the most Chinese while the youngest knew the least Chinese. My assumption is that it is a result from being a minority in a largely English speaking society and the need to adapt. Since no one lived near any Chinese speaking community, English was the only language that anyone else spoke. The oldest child would be exposed first to language outside the home and would bring that language back and spread it in-house. As younger siblings arose, the presence of English takes the effect of a snowball rolling down a hill. I have noticed that there is almost no more Chinese in my house. The only people who speak it are our parents. Our adoption of English has been an adaptation to society’s need for a language spoken by the majority.

Even though English is used between me, my siblings, and my friends, we still resort to Chinese to say some things we cannot in English. If there were some word or concept that my friends could not express in English, they would use Chinese. Offensive phrases or words would also be translated to Chinese rather than being said in English. English was not necessarily a foreign language when we were growing up, but others who did not understand where we were coming from saw our language as foreign. This usually led to taunting and isolation, and Chinese was used as a way to preserve identity among a community that did not understand. This is probably why most communities contain just one large ethnic population.

The community I grew up in is largely Irish. The people there spoke with the r-dropping feature that most Bostonians have. I never picked up the r-dropping feature in my speech. I was taught Standard English since kindergarten and learned how to pronounce words and enunciate. I did not hear the r-dropping for a big part of my life nor did I ever pick it up in my speech. I was not aware of the feature until a teacher in school had pointed it out. After listening more carefully, I began to hear it. One of my childhood friends classified the Boston accent more like an attitude. It is a way to assertively establish and maintain a separate identity (especially against all those tourists and college kids) and to show off how deeply rooted we are in our home city. This is no different than how my family uses Chinese to establish ourselves among those who are different.

The absence of Chinese in our family feels like a loss of identity. The dominance of English in our family grows with each day, even if we sometimes speak it with choppy grammar or with the r-dropping feature. My cousins have tried reintroducing Chinese into their new families. They taught their spouses all about our extensive family, about our customs, and some Chinese phrases to help them understand us. The children have already developed the brain patterns to decipher English, even though Chinese is used here and there to preserve identity and cultural background. My cousin’s daughter once used English to correct her mother for naming something red in Chinese. Even though she completely understands the Chinese word for red, she does not acknowledge that Chinese is part of her identity.

My identity is tied to my origin – Hong Kong. I visited Hong Kong twice, once when I was very young and a second time when I was 15. I spoke English both times I visited, but I definitely spoke more Chinese my first time (due to my early upbringing). I did not speak any Chinese my second time because I did not know how to say the things I needed to say. I felt isolated even though I was walking among my roots. Even though there was a language barrier, the workaround was to use English. I was both surprised and disappointed to discover that everyone knew English. The experience felt cheapening but it sure helped a lot. Most people (even the tourists) could tell that I was a tourist, but they still assumed that I was a native to Hong Kong and that I belonged there with them. English was a way to fit in with others who were different, and Chinese was a way to fit in with those who shared the same background.

Chinese is the language I use to identify myself, and English is the language I use to communicate. English is a tool, a way to find a solution in communication. I do not consider it or the r-dropping to be part of my identity. In the past, I have been accused by one person who said I was not Chinese because I didn’t act like it (nor did I speak it). I guess to him “Chinese” meant acting more like the mix of pop culture on television, reciprocating the Western influence in the Eastern hemisphere, and speaking a slight variant of the African American Vernacular English. To me, being Chinese is about the culture, the customs, and the history. That is what the language represents to me. It feels natural because of the connection I have had since childbirth. It is a portal to the past and everything that is Chinese about me. That is something that English could never do. With English, I can only observe the connections in the present with the people around me.

Our family sits in a new restaurant, one we had never been to before. It was originally located in Chinatown under the name New Shanghai; now it’s located in a suburb called Wellesley just off of Route 9 bearing the name CK Shanghai. Aside from the employees, there are almost no other Chinese people. The ones I saw earlier have left, and the mass of people at the entrance continue to grow due to lack of waiting space.

Employees bustle about delivering dishes to tables, taking orders, retrieving empty plates, and refilling glasses. I take a sip of my water while eyeing the environment. The yellow wallpaper, the hanging ceiling lights, and the small bar make me feel like I’m in a different restaurant. The decor doesn’t feel typical for a Chinese restaurant, at least not the ones I’ve been to, but the random Oriental adornments around the wall make up for the contemporary look.

I place my napkin on my lap, and set my chopsticks in hand. The first set of dishes arrive at our table. My family digs in to the food. Chopsticks reach across the table. Plates are passed to help gather food into a meal. A communal sharing of what lies before us. This is the way Chinese people eat. This is what “family style” eating is.

I make a quick glance to the neighbouring tables. The people on my left are talking about colleges with some mention of MIT and patents. The two tables to our right keep staring in our direction. I don’t know if they’re staring at us, our food, or at something else. Paranoia sets in. I keep my head focused on my plate to ignore them, yet all I can think about is how delicious the food is.

More dishes arrive. People at the big, round table on our right continue to look at us with an alien expression. To me, the way everyone else is eating is foreign. They are ordering single dishes as their own. Eating real Chinese cuisine isn’t like the single-serving combo that you get at the small, dirty-looking, local place on the corner where you go when you’re too lazy to cook. To them, the way we eat is different despite the fact that this is normal, instinctive, and second nature for us.

That’s not to say that people couldn’t order their own dishes like they typically would in other restaurants. They just don’t get any real perspective of what Chinese food culture is like. I’m not saying it’s bad that non-Chinese people are eating Chinese food. Everyone is just oblivious as to how Chinese people eat, but restaurants won’t tell you that. My point is just that food is more than just what’s on the table in front of you. It’s how you eat it that also counts.