Born an American, a citizen of the United States of America, but raised in China for the first and most influential years of life? I would perhaps consider myself an immigrant de facto only because of those early stages, but ultimately I am an American-Born Chinese. The real immigration story begins with my parents.
A common belief in Chinese culture is that the offspring will make more money than the parents and will ultimately support the parents in old age, as compensation for the parents’ support in childhood. The way my parents attempted to abide to this belief is by moving to the United States, as most Fukienese—people of the Fujian province in southeastern China, did in hopes of making a greater sum of money for about the same amount of labor. The idea was logical, the aspirations were huge, and the pecuniary results were satisfying, but the emotional stress was just as pronounced.
My father came to America first, on an airplane sometime in the 1980’s, back when the United States was more lenient about Visas and Permanent Residency cards. His first stop was New York City, where he had childhood friends who were already situated in America and had connections for him. The easiest job available was cooking in a Chinese restaurant, and, as the youngest in a poor, rural family with seven children, his love for food debuted. He trained and worked for a couple of years, then returned to his province in China when he had enough money to marry. My mother is seven years younger than my father, so when they married, she was only 20 years old and without much labor experience besides buying groceries on a budget, cleaning around the concrete house, and cooking three meals a day for a family of five. They came to America shortly after their honeymoon around China and after my sister was born in China. By this time my grandparents on both sides who lived in China had stopped working at their respective jobs, and, because they now had to support three families—my father’s parents, my mother’s parents, and their own family of three—my parents began a more permanent life in America. By the time my mother was pregnant with me, my father had ownership of his very own take-out restaurant and shared a house in Nyack with a few of his young nieces and nephews who were studying English at the nearby community college.
Although my father picked up some English training at other Chinese restaurants, it was not the most correct and well-understood English. He studied vocabulary and invested in Chinese-English digital translators, but the grammar and pronunciation remained and still remains an issue. My mother, having even less experience with English in her past, struggled as cashier in the beginning. Her pronunciation was better than my father’s, but it took several mistakes and angry customers for her to become comfortable dealing with people in a language that sometimes choked and still chokes her. Going to mandatory parent-teacher conferences in a mostly Caucasian community was a troubling thought, and going to see a movie in theaters was something they never thought about—because why watch something you can’t understand? A blur of words coming from strangers’ mouths makes anyone wonder if they are belittling and judging you, or simply trying to take advantage of you by fooling you to buy something. Now, my sister and I are there to help handle certain transactions and expand their comfort zones, but no matter how many more words they can now understand and spell, the vestiges of that initial, complete embarrassment of being at a loss for words and at a loss of comprehension still emanate from time to time.
Luckily for my parents, they had some outside help before my sister and me. It was enough help for them to obtain driver’s licenses, open the restaurant, sell a house, buy an apartment, a house, and a car, and pay for insurance and taxes. Help came mostly through bilingual Chinese agents, old friends, and even younger family members who studied English more intensely, especially cousins. Downstate New York has been my parents’ home for over twenty years now because of its diversity and proximity to New York City—namely Chinatown. Our suburban house is where it is now because a Chinese-speaking agent lives about a 10 minute walk away, and Chinatown is about a 45 minute drive away. Up until I was 16 years old, my version of “the city” was confined to the area consisting of Canal Street, Grand Street, Eldridge Street, and Mott Street. We could not find authentic Asian food and goods anywhere around Rockland County, so my father would make weekly trips down to Chinatown to buy fresh vegetables, fish, noodles, and other Chinese staples that brought him a drive closer to home. Although we still make those trips sometimes, we go to our neighborhood Shoprite more often now. Breakfast, which used to be always congee or a bowl of noodle soup, now includes the options of cereal, bagels, and pancakes.
My parents honestly did not think about the long-term effects that being immigrants would have on their lives. The goal was to make money to support elders back in China and make sure that their own children would not have to live below the poverty line like they did. Little did they think about the little social interaction they would have here with other Chinese people; whereas back in China they could have walked to a friend’s house and understand every single sign they were passing, in America they have few friends and some family members scattered across the nation and bilingual acquaintances who were already settled and busy with the American lifestyle. Indubitably it’s been a lonely score year with being at the restaurant 12 hours a day, international phone calls to China every week, bootlegged Chinese dramas to pass the day, and a Chinese newspaper to keep in touch with the world. Their journey is still in the process, and mine is slowly unraveling.
