A Tale of Two Nations

My parents both grew up in China in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. Life in the villages was harsh and messy and required a collaborated effort to make ends meet. People were assigned tasks – women and children generally performed household chores and farmwork, men tilled in the fields and the elderly cooked in large communal kitchens. While each family had their own homes, it was modest and served only its practical function. Poverty ravaged the land, so much that my father quotes: “If you were hungry, you’d rip a potato out of the ground, brush it off and wolf it down”. The day started at dawn and ended well into the night.

My father had tried his hand at many different odd jobs, from recycling to selling foods to repair work but decided to travel elsewhere for opportunities. His first stop was in Mexico where he worked in a restaurant and found a life-long friend. He saved up some money and with help from a few relatives, went to New York City. Although he arrived here without a high school diploma, spoke no English and carried only $300 in his pocket, he strove to make ends meet.

He lived with a few relatives in an apartment in the Lower East Side and worked many fortune cookies. Lunch consisted of discarded cookies, cheap bread and coffee. The spartan life was hard but he persisted, knowing that one day he would be bringing my mother over too. Little by little, he saved up a sizeable amount, borrowed heavily from relatives and bought an old house in Brooklyn. He fixed it up himself and when it was done, sent for my mom.

My mom grew up in the same village as my father and shared the same hardships. She spoke no English, did not have a middle school diploma, and only had the skills she learned back home. When she became pregnant with me, she stayed home to look after me while my father found a better paying job in Florida, albeit still stuck in the low wage, Chinese patronage jobs. He would visit every 3 months for the first few years of my life.

Growing up, while I had a much easier time meshing in with American culture, my parents had a hard time adjusting. The language barrier held them back from holding better paying jobs and with this sense of being an outsider, settled in communities with large Chinese populations. In Brooklyn, they chose Bensonhurst, which even then had a burgeoning Asian population and in Manhattan, they chose Lower East Side, which was close to Chinatown.

My dad worked in restaurants for many years until he started taking English classes and landed a stable janitorial job. While working there, he became acquainted with the pizzeria owners and learned a bit of Spanish. My mother worked in a garment factory for a time, which was essentially a sweatshop with the meager pay and long hours. My mother did go on to learn a bit of English to pass her citizenship test but that was the extent. Despite having spent so many years in the United States, they never truly assimilated into American culture. They felt most comfortable within the Chinese community bubble, where they continue to stay.