I’ll always remember the day I ran home from school crying because a boy had pulled back his eyes to ridicule my Chinese eyes and called me “chicken chow mein.” My mother urged me to return to school, pull my eyes down, and call him “hot dog.” I did, and incredibly, he never teased me again. However, the incident made me realize I was different from everyone else.
I am grateful that my two sons, Tai and Kim, who are half-Jewish and half-Chinese, have never encountered bigotry. Take one look at today magazine ads, television, sports stars, and super models, and it’s obvious that multiracial and ethnic is cool. Mass culture has embraced multiculturalism and elevated it to the mainstream.
As a parent, there is nothing I want more for my sons than for them to fit in. Having often been the only Chinese child in my school, I know that feeling different can sometimes be painful. Happily, my sons don't question their place among friends, in school or in society.
While their assimilation fulfills certain hopes I have for them, it also concerns me. The paradox of the melting pot is that the blending of cultures can become the obliteration of cultures. Unless my sons marry Chinese women someday, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for their children to have any sense of being Chinese. My great grandchildren may look a little exotic, but have no inkling of the great cultural heritage they came from. This makes me sad, and I imagine that parents from many cultures and religions share this sadness. Our heritage is being diluted.
Having an understanding and feeling for your culture grounds you and gives you pride in your identity. An appreciation of roots can strengthen family ties between members of different generations. Adding another culture can also enrich your life and provide different values and alternate ways of thinking about it.
Attempting to maintain a balance between your culture and mass culture requires making tough choices at every juncture in your child's busy schedule. And it gets harder and harder as your kids get older.
I struggled for years to have my sons learn Chinese at home, brought them to Chinatown regularly, cooked Chinese food, and exposed them to Chinese movies. We took an extended family journey to China when they were young, which made a deep impression on them. When they went off to college, both chose to continue learning Chinese. My older son spent his junior year in Beijing and fell in love with China. And now, having graduated, he has returned to travel and work in China, a place where he feels completely comfortable and happy. While I miss him, through him I feel that a part of me has finally gone home.