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As a Chinese-American, I am categorized as an ABC (American Born Chinese). While this is technically accurate, I have found that it does not necessarily capture who I am. Despite technically being Cantonese, I only know Mandarin at a rudimentary level. When spoken to in Chinese, I can understand and/or piece together a general translation of what someone is trying to tell me. However, whenever I attempt to reply in Chinese, either my American accent and English phrasing makes the Chinese sound rather odd, or I end up like Raj Koothrappali from the Big Bang Theory trying to talk to women. As amusing as that may seem, it is a part of me that I tend to struggle with. There is always that one person who seems to think that because I am Chinese, I automatically speak and write it fluently; someone who would ask me to translate any random Chinese that he or she encountered. Though I simply direct them to the nearest fluent Chinese speaker, these encounters often leave me thinking about who I am.
While I am proud to be Chinese, it also has the potential be a double-edged sword for me. For example, I remember my elementary school routinely pulling me out of my math class and sending me to a supplementary English class along with another one of my classmates just because our parents were ESL (English as a Second Language). True, my mother was ESL, but that doesn’t mean that my father, who was born in America, couldn’t help her teach me English. In addition, I am already culturally immersed in English since I have lived here my entire life. This type of encounter is not just limited to America. If I were to visit China, I would probably be looked down upon by locals due to my very broken Chinese. Depending on how open minded and/or polite they are, they would most likely think or say the English equivalent to: “He is Chinese, yet he does not speak his own language” or “Your Chinese is funny”. That’, at least, what the locals said to each other in Chinese about my family members during their visit to China when the locals did not think that my family couldn’t understand them Yet who can blame these people? To them, being Chinese meant growing up learning the language and culture. This cultural immersion is what I feel that people are generally aware of when it comes to learning a new language, but may not completely understand. Many of the Chinese I know either immigrated here at a relatively young age and are ESL, are ABC and visit China or Taiwan every so often, or have parents and close relatives that primarily speak Chinese. Thus, they are in some way already immersed in Chinese culture and have that advantage when it comes to retaining our culture that some ABCs may not have.
My family was not that immersed in our culture. My father, like me, is also an ABC. He was born in Northern California and was one out of the three Chinese families in the entire area. As a first-generation ABC, his first language was English. His parents had just immigrated to the U.S., so they were learning English as they taught him Chinese themselves at home. While he practiced Chinese holidays and to some traditions, his use of Chinese was limited to within his family and occasionally the trip to San Francisco’ Chinatown. My mother’ family was from Indonesia, a country with a history of anti-Chinese sentiment from both the government and civilian sectors. Though her family had been in Indonesia for some time, her parents sent her and her siblings to a Chinese speaking school for their education in an attempt to keep Chinese alive in their family. However, the Indonesian government essentially banned Chinese culture (everything from speaking Chinese to the use of Chinese names was prohibited) when my mother was in grade school. She remembers having to leave her school campus one day and go to an Indonesian one when the government forced the Chinese schools to shut down. As a result, she did not get as much exposure to Chinese culture as she could have.
Although my experiences are not as extreme, I did not have much contact with other Chinese speaking individuals growing up either. My elementary/middle school didn’t have any Chinese speakers, so I didn’t have much luck there. I went to the Saturday Chinese school for several years during late elementary and early middle school, but it was only during the morning of a single day out of the entire week and I didn’t practice what I learned much beyond the classroom and at home. Despite being Christian, I didn’t go to church; if I did, I suspect that my family and I would have gone to the Chinese one in town. There, I would have met my Chinese speaking friends before they formed their groups in high school. Perhaps my Chinese could have progressed further if I had met them earlier and practiced my Chinese with them. My high school did not offer any Chinese language courses, so I ended up taking Spanish to complete the “World Language” requirement. Thus, pretty much the only Chinese I speak is with my family at home and is limited to what we know.
My parents have retained as much of their Chinese culture as they could, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t picked up a few other cultures along the way. During his time in college, my father spent a year studying abroad in Florence, Italy so he often incorporates bits of Italian vocabulary here and there in both his writing and speech. He also cooks some of the Italian dishes that he was introduced to during this time in Italy in addition to his Chinese and American dishes. My mother’ Indonesian tastes are very apparent in her own cooking and she knows where to go for Indonesian supplies as well. In addition, she speaks a mix of Indonesian, Chinese, and English with her side of the family. This makes family gatherings rather interesting as trying to decipher a conversation (and even sentences for that matter) being spoken in three different languages simultaneously has proven to be as difficult and confusing as it sounds.
What I am trying to get at is though I am proud to be Chinese and though I try to carry on as many of my culture’ customs as much as possible, there is more to being an ABC than what the label implies. We live in a world in which the same technology that allows us to travel half way across the planet in hours also allows different cultures to be exposed to each other. My family consists of first generation immigrants and ABCs and yet within that single generation, we have accumulated a mix of American, Italian, and Indonesian cultures in addition to Chinese. We have to uphold our own culture and heritage, yet we must also learn how to balance the new cultures we encounter because as the world gets smaller, we will become more and more exposed.