Compared to Japanese people, Taiwanese people ask a lot more questions. Since I landed one day ago, I've been bombarded with the same sets of questions multiple times. Are you visiting Taiwan? How long will you be here? Where are you from? Why can't you speak Chinese if you look/are Chinese?
The last one is especially baffling to them, similar to the reactions I got in Japan. (Except then it was: Why don't you speak Japanese if you look Japanese?) The conclusion? Asians don't look nearly as different as certain types of Asians think they do. Once again, I've been tempted to pin a sign on my back that screams: NOT ALL AMERICANS ARE WHITE, OKAY? Except that would be deemed politically incorrect and possibly a little hostile. It just goes to show how invisible Asian Americans are in mainstream media, especially in Asia itself. How many people here would guess that Lucy Liu is actually Asian American, not Asian? How many people even know who she is?
I never thought I had a strange background growing up, but I guess it seems pretty weird to people in Japan and Taiwan. I am the first-generation daughter of two Chinese immigrants who, shortly after the disaster that was the Cultural Revolution happened, found themselves in New York City and then in a small, unassuming suburb close to San Francisco. I was born in New York but grew up in California and have only been to China once, when I was 13, on a family trip that I remember being unbearably hot and painful on the legs.
Cantonese was my first language; I didn't learn English until I entered preschool. Afterwards, English quickly became my dominant language and I stopped speaking Chinese at home with my parents. For whatever reason - lack of time, financial resources, whatever else - they did not enforce speaking Chinese at home and didn't send me to Chinese school like the parents of many of my Chinese-American peers. As a result, I can still understand most of the Cantonese I hear but don't speak it very well. I cannot read the majority of Chinese characters. I didn't learn Mandarin until I went to college and chose to study it of my own accord, although at the time, I didn't take it very seriously and focused more on listening/speaking than on reading/writing during the one year that I took the courses (mainly because rewriting those characters over and over again was time-consuming and served no immediate purpose in my mind).
After I graduated university, I interned and tutored for awhile before deciding to move to Japan to teach English. Since spending a month in England as part of a travel-study program, I have always wanted to live abroad. My time in England, short as it was, was my first taste of true independence outside the U.S., and I couldn't wait to experience it again. When I got the job in Japan, I jumped at the opportunity. It was my first full-time job post-graduation, though I think working 30 hours while being a full-time student comes close to (maybe even surpasses) the physical and emotional gruel that a full-time job poses.
While in Japan, I tried to study Japanese outside of work hours and was not very good at it. Basically, I prioritized sleep, travel, and reading during my free time. Though I did learn hiragana, katakana, and some basic Japanese grammar, studying Kanji reminded me too much of learning Chinese characters back in college (which essentially are the same thing) and once again, I resisted. However, there was a big part of me that lamented not putting in the time and energy early on, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it a regret. After all, it wasn't as if I spent those hours in college slacking off - they were merely put towards doing something else useful.
So why am I deciding to study Chinese now? I guess that's the million-dollar question, and the one that many would ask if they actually cared about my life story (which, admittedly, I'm sure most people don't). I've asked myself this question a number of times, and I have come up with some acceptable answers. One is definitely practical. Mandarin is a useful language used by millions of people in the world. It is the primary (or one of the primary) language(s) in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Most people in Hong Kong can speak it (whether or not they want to is another question). Even in California, where, yes, Americans reside, knowing Mandarin is useful, especially in Chinese-dominant communities. Essentially, if you know Mandarin, you can communicate with a great number of people, which is useful no matter what career you get into, but especially useful if you want to get into international reporting, which I have always thought about doing.
Reason number 2 is more personal, though not as personal as reason number 3. Since living in Japan, I've thought about my ethnic identity more and more - mainly because I never had to question it as much as I did living in Japan. While in America, and in California especially, I was surrounded by Asians of all different kinds of backgrounds. My high school appeared to be dominated by them; my university was renowned for attracting them. Consequently, being Asian-American, while important to me, was never something I thought about in a conflicting way. Japan definitely changed all that. All of a sudden, I felt like I wasn't "Asian enough" or even "American enough" to satisfy anyone's curiosity.
What did it mean to be Chinese-American? More importantly, what did it mean to me? Was I more American because I grew up in the States or more Chinese because that's where my parents are from? (Japanese people place a great deal of emphasis on bloodlines in terms of ethnic identity - doesn't really matter where you were born, since where your parents come from seem to trump all.) I was both annoyed and intrigued by the confusion that these questions imposed. There were times where I felt ashamed for not being to read and write Chinese, and even more times where I really wished I had someone to speak Cantonese with. The two times I visited Hong Kong during my stay in Japan, I felt more comfortable there than I did going back to my hometown in the States. Cantonese reminded me of where I had come from. I wanted to investigate the Chinese side of my identity more, and if it were more readily available, I might have decided to study Cantonese as opposed to Mandarin. Since they use the same writing system, however, studying one is not necessarily independent of studying the other.
The last reason is the most personal to me. Since my sophomore year in college, I have become highly captivated by the field of mental health awareness. I volunteered and participated in a group that promoted mental health awareness on my campus and wrote an article about suicide and depression in the Asian American community that greatly affected me. Though I have always been interested in psychology, it wasn't until college that I really found an outlet for my interest: through writing and reporting. I really believe that even now, mental illnesses, such as depression, is still a taboo topic in the Asian, as well as Asian American, community. I witnessed it at school and I definitely witnessed it in Japan. Such controversial issues have always been a part of my own life. I have suffered depression in the past, as have people I care about, including friends and family members. Multiple people have told me that they want to commit suicide. I know several people who have committed suicide. And yet it is a topic that most people, especially those in my community, do not readily talk about.
I have talked about some of these issues with some of my Japanese friends, but I found that communication was sometimes lacking when we only used English. Unfortunately, since I never took to studying Japanese at a serious level and could only communicate in rudimentary fragments, English was all we had at our disposal. And it was not enough to have a serious, in-depth conversation about the topic, one in which both parties could participate equally. I couldn't meet them halfway.
I hope to do things differently in Chinese. Mental health awareness is something I'm deeply passionate about, and I want to continue to participate in efforts to promote awareness and action concerning issues such as depression and suicide. With other Chinese-Americans (and the world at large), I can use English, particularly in my writing, which I am most comfortable with, but with Chinese immigrants such as those in my parents' generation, I doubt that English is enough. How can I make it okay to talk about these issues? One is by talking about them myself, and if I can become fluent in Mandarin, that drastically increases the number of people I can talk to, and write to.
If something is wrong with your kidney, you go to the doctor to treat it, ask questions about it, and try your best to maintain a healthy and full life despite the problem. If someone you care about asks how you are, you tell them; you're not 100% but hopefully you will be okay. Why not the same attitude towards depression? Both are health problems beyond one's control; both are treatable. Yet depression and other mental health issues involve a stigma that often prevents those afflicted from ever seeking help in the first place. It exists as a secret that we like to pretend doesn't affect us. I believe this is unwise. If you don't care for an ailing kidney, you will eventually lose it. We constantly worry about being physically healthy, especially when something goes wrong, but I'd like to argue that mental health is just as important as physical health. It's hard to live a full life while ignoring such a fundamental part of existence - that is, our emotions and our brains.
But how to change that conversation?
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