Separated by Two Cultures and I am Still a Complete Person

This essay is composed only based on my own personal experience. Please do not apply and generalize it to all/most Chinese families.

I will get to present and perform my poems to the public,” I called my aunt and grandparents, trying to say what I wanted to all in my mother language, Chinese. “I didn’t even get this kind of opportunity back in China in my first 15 years there… And this time, I will be the creator—the producer—in another language and another culture!”

“Oh Tongtong (my nickname), we are so proud of you!” The first generation of Chinese immigrants studying abroad in the USA in the 1980s and living in the states, my aunt successfully figured out my key point from a salad of mixed English and Chinese phrases, translating the good news to my grandparents, who are completely outsiders to the English world.

“I don’t care about winning—all I care about is the process of performing literature as an elegant art. I…” I was stuck. I wanted to say “cherish” in Chinese, yet I was blank. I knew it started with “zhen” and had two syllables—what was the second one?

“I just zhen-gui this opportunity so much.” I mumbled, doubting, as if speaking and asking myself about the right syllable, opening and closing and opening again my mind-drawers containing my first 15 years of memory. I knew it did not sound right.

“Zhen-xi.” My aunt corrected me. Over the other side of the line, I heard Grandma impatiently pressing Aunt. “What was she saying? What is zhen-gui (in Chinese, zhen-gui usually describes something physical and tangible that is expensive or valuable in price)?” And I realized that I must have slipped in some English phrases unconsciously again.

This is a typical phone call I have with my grandparents. What if my dedicated Aunt is not there bridging our communication—such as when I am skyping with my parents? Well, situations may get a little complicated…

“I bought the worst instant meals I’ve ever bought in the grocery store that…”

“What g…g…store? What are you talking about?”

It was not until then that I realized I had said “instant meals” and “grocery store” in English within this short half of a sentence.

People often say how the early years can significantly impact a child’s learning, cognition, understanding, and insights on the world around them. The coming-of-age episodes, usually unforgettable and permanently-stored in mind, set the very first stage of a child’s realization of who they are at present—as well as their construction of who they might be in the future. A five-year-old kindergartener does not tend to have the mother language largely impaired or inhibited upon getting to a foreign land.

I spent my first 15 years in China. I attended good elementary and junior high schools. I was well educated as a 15-year-old Chinese school girl before coming to the USA for high school. Yet, within the four years I was away from home, my “chatting” with my family members has become a series of my riddle-posing and their puzzle-solving based on all kinds of contextualized assumptions. Sometimes, the two language systems are noisily, mischievously, and vigorously competing in my brain, with me being at a loss for words or speech. Sometimes, English wins, making me produce streams of English-sounding phonological expressions. If I get “unfortunate”, which could be most of the times as I’m talking in Chinese, I would find out I have spoken to the wrong person: “Oh, never mind. Ignore it.” “Are you talking English?” They would talk with their eyes wide open, thinking I must be showing off.

Language can be meaningless labels or nonsense Yet, most of the time, it can become so important. It is the key to unfolding thoughts, the framework to scaffold world views. It is the essential vehicle to directly experience ideology and culture wrapped beneath. In this sense, language can be an embodiment and a token of a belonging—an inclusion that is engraved on one’s body, in one’s mind, in one’s memory, stretching towards an identity, a plasticity, one’s myriad known and unknown.

Normally, language acquisition is innate for babies. It tends to grow increasingly harder as years pass by. On the contrary, what I have experienced is a fast and critical acquisition of another language for both daily use and literary creation—the latter I have barely accomplished in my mother language.

Why does Chinese keep receding impatiently beyond my grasp and capture?

Why are my 4 years of learning English (or rather, the critical analysis of English) even more outstanding than my 15 years of Chinese learning?

What makes my Chinese language especially susceptible—this preservation especially effortful?

What makes my English acquisition compelling (obviously, my brain is not naturally born for “English”)?

……

What on earth did I learn in China?

At least four or five rounds of a “course improvement project” were launched by the National Department of Education during those years. This high frequency made no difference to me: history was still history; math was still math; chemistry was still chemistry—Chinese was still Chinese. If there was anything that was changed, it would be the difficulty level—or “weird level”—of each exam. One thing about “literature” in China’s education system that I consider remarkable is that there is one and only one right answer to each question asked. Essays should have a “positive” and “correct” perspective, which formed the consistency of the notions that were accepted and encouraged by mainstream culture.

I didn’t find a “correct perspective” in literature analysis inappropriate, or worked against the principle of humanity at that time—after all, everyone eventually found their way through it. I felt appalled and resentful, since it worked against me. Debating to my inner self, I decided I was the one being wrong along the way.

Luckily, my Chinese teacher at elementary school gave me some encouragement. “You have your own opinions. I can see it in your essays.” She told me, “Do not lose them.” As if forgetting something important, she promptly added, “They might make your Chinese study more effortful in the future. Yet, do not lose them still.”

As I had risen to junior high, I felt the magic of literature was receding. I felt the world was settled. I felt everything I had learned was within grasp.

My studying did become more strenuous. As the long list of class rank is perpetually posted on the front board every time after exams—as it turned out that I became the fall-out again in Chinese—I was almost convinced that I might be destined to be an outlier, an outlier who would have to meet teachers to talk through the “failures” and their high “expectations” (exaggerated or not, they behaved in that way from the perspective of a child) after school when peers had gone home, an outlier who would have to face parents’ bleak blaming for not performing well on exams after arriving home.

Yet, as a kid, my sometimes-frustrating-grades didn’t impede my curiosity.

“Why do we never explicitly learn China’s contemporary history and literature in class?” I asked my parents when I was an eighth grader, “why is it always about the ‘historic 5000-year’ from elementary school till now?”

“Well, it’s impossible to test on the contemporary work on exams,” Dad replied.

“Why?”

“It’s controversial.”

“I know there is more than ‘Mao is a great chairman’. I know people cannot on the other hand say ‘Mao is not a great chairman’. They fear.”

“Hush! Don’t say that!” Whatever Mum was doing at that moment, she would stop and turn to me with a serious warning look.

“It’s controversial,” Dad would continue his unfinished lines, “Mao did do something faulty—profoundly faulty. Yet, everyone makes mistakes, right? Mao’s mistakes cannot prove him as not being a great chairman, and a great man…”

I skyped with my parents after calling Aunt due to the time difference between China and the US, telling them that I was selected to be a finalist in a creative writing contest.

“You took part in a writing contest? And you are a finalist?” Dad was doubly-surprised.

“Yeah, I submitted three poems to the committee, once. A month ago, I guess.”

“I’m so proud of you, Tongtong!” I heard Mum grabbing the microphone, “We sent you abroad with the hope of changing your shy and quiet personality a bit—and now, you have been more confident… Just... you should tell us about the contest earlier, next time.”

“I’m not being more confident. I’m just being who I am.”

“What? We can’t hear you.”

“Oh,” I realized: I spoke English.

Upon Mum’s request, I translated one of my favorite poems to Chinese and emailed it to her the next day.

“It’s beautiful. Elegant. I can imagine the scenery vividly.”

“It’s not about scenery.” I said in Chinese.

“It is beautiful. I wish you could write more lovely and positive prose like this piece.”

“I’m not being beautiful or lovely or positive.” I said in English silently. Hanging up the call, I realized Chinese might be my language for daily trivia; English is my expression of a critical being.

Perhaps due to my parents being so loving, or my being so cruel, the segregation between us gradually grew. In spite of my effort to control myself to not talk about anything “sensitive” to my parents, it was still usually futile.

I received a message from a classmate from my Chinese junior high school this Chinese New Year, inviting me to take a questionnaire on “setting off fireworks and air pollution in Beijing”.

“Where will the result of your data go?” I asked her.

“Nowhere. We just made it up for survey homework.”

I took the questionnaire. The questions were misleading in a way that tended to guide the questionnaire takers to choose the “intended” answer, which was in favor of limiting and prohibiting setting off fireworks in order to rescue the air quality.

“This design is ridiculous. It’s horrifically ridiculous.”

“You can’t say it like this.” Mum said, “You don’t see how messy the streets are due to the remnants of fireworks. And people have to wear mask to go out of the house!”

“Well, people are wearing mask not because of fireworks. How about all the big factories and manufacturers that produce tons of all forms of pollutions every minute day and night?”

“But fireworks do produce pollutions as well.”

“Yes, in an extremely inconspicuous amount. Setting off fireworks is what Chinese have done for 5000 years.”

“Well, your classmate’s intention is good.”

“I’m not talking about intentions.”

“Their intention is positive, and there’re always some people thinking fireworks do make the difference…”Now, it was Dad’s turn.

“I’m not talking about intentions. I submitted the questionnaire. I supported her work.”

“…and you should allow others to think in their own way…” He continued.

“I’m not prohibiting anyone from thinking their own thoughts!”

“Tongtong, sometimes I worry you are going too far.” It was Mum.

“I know.”

“You don’t know. Listen to me finishing my sentence. You are going too far…”

“I know, you think I betray.” I said it in Chinese.

The transition was abrupt. If time had molecules, they must have been all halted and suspended.

“Yes.”

Does language accomplishment—comprehension and production—necessarily entail the ultimate insight of its culture and the possession of its identity?

Is identity an object that one can possibly possess?

Am I un-fastening my identity—as a Chinese female young adult—via being more skeptical during my studying in the USA?

Where does my 15 years of exposure to Chinese and China’s marvelous 5000-year history lead me to?

Do I suppose to call those 15 years “suicide”, or the recent 4 years “assimilation”—or, on the other hand, “transcendence”?

……

As I pondered, I recalled my elementary and junior high years back in China—those years of debating “if I was right or the system was right”. Even though I was guided to accept and believe in mainstream ideology, I still struggled to retain my vague sense of criticality.

In this way, being skeptical has nothing to do with identity or the sense of belonging—it emerges as a temperament, developing into a personal quality; it is a way of thinking. During my four years studying abroad—on this land encouraging individuality, I see English foster my intrinsic criticality, unfolding and crafting my thoughts and insights that were suppressed during my learning in Chinese

Really, who is being assimilated?

“Don’t think American ideology is always righ There are lots of things you don’t know. The USA is not so democratic as you think…”

“I leave the judgment on me to you. But I am not saying America is a utopia—its media information can be quite biased and skewed from source to source. Each country always satisfies and maximizes its own interest at first place—so does China. A nation of complete harmony (he, meaning harmony in Chinese, which means “unanimous in opinion”, is always on the top among all the traditional virtues)—in a political sense—does not exist.”

I immediately regretted my blabbing this last sentence. It was Chinese New Year.

Even though I did lose something precious—something memorable during my years in China—I am fortunate that my skepticism is evolving. Isn’t this capability a way to prevent being misled? If we treat criticism as a form of living awareness and consciousness, then I might be closer—if it can be described in this way—to my authenticity and mother culture.

Rather than segregating cultures and worlds, the experience of studying in the U.S. makes me see a more integrated picture of myriad lives. I can be both Chinese and a critique, both a research scientist (I’m a biology major working at cancer research labs) and an artist, both a young adult female and a non-conformist.

No fall-outs. No panic. I am undefined. It is myriad possibility…

…and all these enable a long journey of going beyond infinity, a path of traveling back to an origin…