Not Asian Enough

On the long plane rides to France, to Italy, to Spain, to England, and to China, all the places my parents brought me along to travel, I used to lay my head down in my mother’s lap because I could never fall asleep sitting up straight. Her hand would lay gently on my head and stroke lightly a couple of times before she fell asleep, and in the gentle warmth of her embrace, 她怀里, I’d feel maybe regret. Disbelief. Confusion and conflict.

On nights when my mother argued with me, when she refused to give in to my wants and wills, when she refused to let me sleep with the nightlight on even though I had night terrors because I hadn’t practiced piano properly during the day, I would huddle up in my bed and in my resentment, nursing it like a smoldering piece of coal that gave me something that I could feel righteous about. I would harbor that violent anger and resentment for days on end until I’d forgotten everything about the who, what, when, where, and why, everything except for that bitter ember that told me that I should be mad at her, that I had every reason to be mad at her, that she would regret it someday, that I just had to outlast her one more day, one more hour, one more moment, enough to make her realize that she was wrong, that I was the one aggrieved, being wronged. But then I would think with a laugh that since my mother didn’t love me at all, until what day, which month, what year, 等到猴年马月, would I have to wait for that acknowledgement, that apology?

During the moments when I could understand that 成语, that idiom, that phrase, from my experience watching historical Chinese dramas, I would feel validated, as if my understanding where, for others, the others, the whitewashed ones, the uncultured ones, it would pass them by, inherently placed me on a pedestal that was a step higher than them. In a system that ranked my “purity” and “authenticity” on my familiarity with Chinese culture, the Chinese language, I had beaten them by one point.

During the moments when a disappointed veil dimmed the excited spark in their eyes when I’d understood a reference but missed the next, when I could only stand off to the side without comment when they chatted about things that I should’ve understood but didn’t, I felt a violent alienation. All of my life, I had thought that because I had the unique perspective of being one of the few Chinese people in my grade, I would always be the last say on what meant Chinese culture. Coming up against people who knew more than I did, who were more right than I was, I lost that sense of what made me unique. I felt like I wasn’t unique enough, “not Chinese enough,” as if my heritage bound me by a blood oath to have to be the reference, the reliable source, yet I’d failed this oath, because I realized that I actually knew nothing, and I wasn’t as unique as I thought it was. If I wasn’t Chinese enough, if I was a fake, inauthentic, then what was my identity actually built upon? What actually made me different and gave me a foothold in this world, this world in which I was at danger of drowning in the sea of people who looked exactly like me without anything that made me different.

I can never be accepted as truly “Chinese.” I will always feel not quite fully Chinese every moment I open my mouth, because of all those barriers that kept unconsciously sweeping me away from learning about Chinese culture that my mother unconsciously set in every word, in every hidden meaning, every piece of advice. It was every time she told me that I shouldn’t waste more money taking dance classes outside of school, besides, she’d initially sent me to ballet classes: she’d wanted me to learn ballet, not Chinese dance, it was a waste of time and money and not to mention the time it took to travel back and forth. It was every time she told me to stop watching those long, time-consuming historical Chinese dramas, they were all stupid and a waste of time. It was every time she told me not to eat that much of that stuff from c-mart that had way too many strange, foreign chemicals in them. It was every time she told me about how exactly the CCP back home brainwashed people, how she didn’t even want to go back to China because of that, how bad it was back there. I always thought that, in my parents, I was supposed to discover my cultural identity, but it feels like, after fifteen years of life, I haven’t come to know anything.

But I could never hate my mother because it was her who gifted me my knowledge, my body, my language, who nurtured me from even before my birth until now. After all, the same person who withheld all that I needed, who refused to fulfill my identity, is also the person who gave me everything I’ve ever needed, even if it wasn’t what I wanted.

Cindy Yang