My grandmother came to America 60 years ago, her methods unclear.
She knew some English, but had forgotten most of it since. She plays mahjong with her provincial association (同鄉會) friends, and she hates Panda Express.
Popo never made it out of Chinatown.
Assimilation is a privilege for the rich and the powerful of her generation, she said. Those who were fresh off the boat with wealth and status go on to marry someone like Mitch McConnell or Sun Yat-Sen. The rest of us are all third-class citizens packed in little Chinatowns across America, hoping that their children or grandchildren would one day overcome that invisible fence.
I wondered what warrants such insecurity and self-hatred. Referencing the age-old argument, I replied, “If you hate it here so much, why don’t you just go back?”
She replied, with slight disdain and disappointment, that I will never understand.
When I was a child, my aunts took me to a fortune teller to read my "Bazi" (Eight Titles of Destiny). She told me that my life would resemble a winding stream: vast oceans merging into a flowing body of water, ambitious and imaginative, yet never remaining constant, never settling down.
I have known for most of my life that I was going to move to America after high school, but I did not have a clear idea of what that meant exactly. All I knew was that moving to a foreign country, specifically the West, is exciting and worth flaunting. That US Passport, or UK, or Canada, is your golden ticket to success. Classmates would have conversations about having family in Canada or planning to immigrate to the UK. My relatives told me that if I were a boy, Chinese “chicks” would run to marry me like flies to honey for that green card. And I knew that it was harder to immigrate to the US, so I would wear “Chinese-American” like a medal of honor. Immigrating is cool. Having foreign citizenship is cool. Being as far away as the idea of being Chinese is cool.
That was my perception of my Chinese-American identity before 2019. We Hongkongers pride ourselves on being colonized by the UK: we want the world to know that our adoptive mother was not an abusive commie, that our unique culture was bestowed upon us by Western civilization. I carry an average amount of internalized Sinophobia within me, that I don’t hate being Chinese, but I despise being associated with the PRC. I enjoyed studying Chinese history and ancient literature, but I never understood the significance of knowing them. All I knew was that China has always been a very backward and conservative country, and that Confucianism has poisoned our collective consciousness that the preference for sons over daughters pertains to this day.
In 2019, a protest movement in Hong Kong shook our faith. The incident resulted in tighter national security laws, and the US declaring Hong Kong no longer autonomous from the PRC. I thought I was immune from politics and the struggle for freedom; I was not. That was the last blow to the joy and pride we once owned, the last golden light of the fight for freedom coughed its way out, and the city fell into the Dark Ages. Leaving Hong Kong was no longer a boastful privilege, but an escape plan. Young Hongkongers with college degrees spent their life savings to work as cashiers and delivery drivers in London, parents who swear they love China rushed to send their kids overseas. I used to laugh and mock how silly that is, how white people must be laughing their asses off of how much we idolize the West. But now, it is just plain tragic.
大江東去，浪淘盡，千古風流人物。
- 蘇軾 念奴嬌·赤壁懷古
To the East Sea flows the Yangtze River,
washing away forever, in tides of times,
all the heroic souls of the past we remember.
-So Shi, “Charm of a Maiden Singer”- Remembrance of the Tale of the Crimson Cliff
Gatsby had a point. I spent the last couple of years boating against the current, chasing vestiges of my past. I held on to what I had lost, like double-decker buses and pineapple buns, longing for my high school years of triumph and glory.
Soon, I learned about the historical weight of what it meant to be Chinese American. The combination of ethnicity and nationality paints the picture of diaspora: every immigrant carries a story of leaving their homeland and escaping political turmoil, a sentiment likely shared by Koreans and Vietnamese.
America is steeped in hypocrisy. The American Dream propagates the notion that hard work can lead to success, regardless of origins, under the condition of being white. America, a country built on stolen land, dares to judge who is worthy of being legal. The construction of America's largest railroad system, the very foundation of modern American trade, was built on the death and labor of thousands of Chinese workers.
The issue isn't about the ability to assimilate; it's about the worthiness of assimilation. Behind the term “Chinese American” is decades of courage and determination, to be recognized as Americans of Chinese descent and not just Chinks. The invisible fence was never about language, it was about the fight for our place at the American table.
Still, the ambition of "making it, no matter what" motivates millions of people to strive for a better life in America.
I have been to the Bruce Lee Memorial Museum twice. I was aware of his legacy as the first great Chinese American martial artist in the US, specifically the scene in a movie where he said the famous words, 「你地記住，中國人唔係東亞病夫！」(Let it be known, the Chinese are not the sick men of East Asia!). He garnered respect from both the East and West, becoming that bridge of culture before the age of the internet.
Bruce Lee had taken both Chinese and Western cultures and combined them into his distinctive vernacular. In archival footage of his interviews, I was taken aback by the distinctively Cantonese accent in his fluent English. His letters to home reflect his internal elegance, with his calligraphy resembling that of an elite white man, cursive twisting and swirling however he pleases.
In his famous interview, he explains his philosophy:
“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
He puts it so well. To be water: to adapt anytime, anywhere.
Like millions of immigrants before and after me, this profound grief for my homeland fuels the resilience and strength that shapes my new identity with each passing ripple. I wish to be water, moving and bending with the currents, flowing with ease according to the shape of my surroundings.
A lady I met at my apartment building asked if I could teach her daughter Cantonese. The girl, an eleven-year-old, could barely articulate to her grandparents. She disliked Chinese school, and would much prefer speaking in English and making her mother translate for her. I want to teach her more elementary, everyday phrases like “josun” and “nei sik jor fan mei”, hoping that Cantonese could impress her, and she would be able to impress her grandparents with these simple sentences. “Cantonese is a dying language,” I told her mother, “I hope Sophia would grow up being proud to be Cantonese and thank you for making her learn it some day.”
I come from a position of privilege. I was born right on time for the internet, where I get to learn the good ol’ American English from YouTubers and pirated movies. I was given by my Northern Chinese ancestors with the tall nose bridge, not to let strangers assume I’m Eurasian, but to conquer the cold weather of the North. My parents blessed me with 18 years of life in Hong Kong, so when I left Hong Kong, Hong Kong never left me.
I suppose that I have made it out of Chinatown. But I now understand what Popo meant.
Assimilation, pushing and pulling like tides, with one generation aspiring to be more American, and the next wishing to be less.Be water, my friend.