Almost everyone born in China is bound to an unspoken vow: to never reveal any aspect of the past that reflects weakness or poor judgment.

My grandmothers and parents all grew up in small villages in Canton, China before immigrating to Hong Kong and eventually, New York City to find work. My grandfathers died before my older brother and me were born; my grandmother on my father’s side raised us while our parents worked to provide for the family.

What little anecdotal details I have about their lives in rural China comes from lectures about our lazy American lifestyles.

* * *

I am now five years old, sitting next to my seven-year-old brother at the dinner table. My grandma places a bowl of tong[1] on the table in front of me. I fidget on the wooden stool I am on. My brother immediately drinks it and goes back to watching “Arthur” on TV. However, I sit there for several minutes, just staring at the cooling dark yellow liquid, forming a layer of what looks like plastic on the surface.  My grandma sees the disgusted expression on my face, and attempts to coax me to drink the tong. I sit with my arms crossed, as I tell her “No.” After several minutes of coaxing, she says, “Okay. If you don’t drink your tong, then you won’t get these M&Ms!” She holds up a bag of regular milk chocolate M&Ms the size of her head.  I remain at the table, still reluctant to drink the tong, even with colorful and tasty M&Ms as rewards. We stare at each other for a while, as if we were determining who could win this staring contest. She shook the bag

several times, and began to take them out, one by one.

“Okay! I’ll drink the tong,” I whined as I pick up the bowl. I drank the whole bowl in four big gulps, forcing myself to think of little M&Ms in my hands and mouth.

“Was that so hard?” My grandma scoops some M&Ms from the bag with a spoon into my eager hands. “You kids growing up in America are getting too American.” I pop the multi-colored candies into my mouth.

“No, we’re not! I can speak Chinese,” I say, mouth full with chocolate.

“Yes, you children are becoming too American and are losing your Chinese values. Too wasteful, and you demand rewards for things you should just do. When I was just thirteen, I had to kill the livestock and harvest the plants to make tong for my family every night. My parents were too busy working to take care of us, so I had to make sure my little sister and brother were healthy. I didn’t get rewarded for doing this; I just did it because I had to. Oh, and now you’re not even listening. These cartoons are stupid. When I was your age, my form of entertainment was watching the fish swim around in the creek.”

* * *

            On May 11^th, 2012, my grandmother passed away. When she passed away, I realized because it was my grandma who raised my brother and me that I know how to be Chinese. She was the one who taught me to use chopsticks, never to waste, and how to speak Chinese. She was the one who taught me that being Chinese has nothing to do with just looking Chinese, but being Chinese is upholding China’s noble culture and traditions. As she gets farther and farther away, I find it harder and harder to preserve my Chinese roots. For the first time in my life, at my grandmother’s funeral, the blood running through my veins felt foreign.

* * *

            The director of the funeral home wrapped a piece of black ribbon around my left arm and secured it with a safety pin. Attached to a bobby pin, was a bundle of blue yarn that resembled a flower[2]. All the women had one in their hair. We were led into the room, in the order of the eldest male to youngest female.

We lined up facing my grandma, and bowed three times together while kneeling on frayed bamboo mats. We were handed three sticks of incense, and were told to bow three times while holding the incense. The director then placed the incense in the pot, where two red candles on skewers and three thick, slow-burning incense sticks were already burning. Wicker baskets were placed in front of us and we were given rice paper to fold. The rice paper, stamped with a square sheet of silver or gold in the center above a rectangle of orange, represented insurance in heaven.

The funeral director taught my brother and me how to fold, and that’s exactly what we did, stopping only to stand up and shake the hands of visitors. After a while, my dad showed us an easier way to do it. We rolled them up and folded the edges in, so they looked like trapezoids from the side. We threw them into the wicker baskets. As the baskets became full, one of us, anyone at the funeral, picked up the basket, bowed three times facing my grandma, and emptied the basket into the fire. We burned paper money; she could spend it wherever she wants, whether it be here in Heaven, New York, or back home in her small town of Canton. At seven o’clock, the six of us kneeled on the bamboo mats and said goodbye.

* * *

            While writing this, have I already broken the unspoken vow? Was I ever bound to it, being born in America? Is my total disregard for my heritage while my grandmother was alive a 17-year lapse in judgment? I don’t know. But I do know that I owe my grandmother everything. I owe it to her to continue Chinese traditions; I owe it to her to teach my children Chinese, boil tong every day, and to celebrate all the Chinese holidays.

My grandmother, me, my mother, and brother at Central Park in 1997

Thank you for being the strongest person I know. Because you didn’t change your last name when you got married, I never considered changing mine. Thank you for fashioning the hard, slightly burnt rice at the bottom of the rice cooker into rice balls for us. Thank you for making endless amounts of red jello with me. Thank you for standing up to me when the neighbors were making fun of my being Chinese. Thank you for making endless amounts of rice cake for school projects. Thank you for asking if my leg was okay even after you’ve been confined to a wheelchair for months. Thank you for still caring when you were in no shape to. Thank you for a lifetime of memories and goals to aspire to. At this point, I could only wish that I would turn out to be half as strong that you were.