Life of an ABC

Well, I guess my mind has been in a reflective mode lately. One thing I was thinking about was how typical my life has been of someone born and raised in a Chinese family. I know most people who read this blog won't relate to what I'm gonna write about, but maybe at least some will be interested in hearing about what it's like to grow up as a Chinese kid in America.

And I don't know how much of this stuff applies to other Asians, but I know that almost every time I talk to a Chinese friend, something will come up in the conversation that he/she will definitely know about because they are "American-Born Chinese" (ABCs, and yes that is actually a commonly used term in our community). This is even more true for Taiwanese folk, who happen to be the most intelligent and physically attractive of the various Chinese groups.

The first thing that all Chinese parents do is try to teach their kids the Chinese language. They'll speak Chinese to their kids when they're little, probably send them to some sort of local-run Chinese school at some point, and maybe bring them to Taiwan in the summer to hang out with their FOB cousins (FOB = Fresh-off-boat, yes, another commonly used term) .

In some cases it works better than others. Most of the time, ABCs end up knowing enough Chinese to at least understand what their mom and dad are saying to them. Sometimes, they actually speak Taiwanese better than Mandarin because that's what their parents and grandparents speak more.

* side note FYI - The Taiwanese language is kind of like the "ebonics" of Chinese, the way I look at it. Usually, the more hardcore and ghetto Chinese people speak Taiwanese, like when you go to the street markets or tell a taxi driver where to go. For that matter, most of the major curse words I know of are in Taiwanese. Mandarin is more of the official language, which you hear on TV and in more professional places like department stores and corporate offices and stuff. *

ABC's also tend to screw around in Chinese school, so in the end, all they know how to write in Chinese is their own name, and maybe some basic characters like "Me (wo)", "You (ni)", "Friend (peng-yo)", "Teacher (lau-shir)", and "Good (hau)".

For me, my dad was a real nazi when it came to learning Chinese. I guess he saw that the ghetto Chinese school at my church wasn't gonna really cut it, so he'd collect Chinese newspaper clippings and make me study them. Then he'd print out like 16X12 grids on sheets of paper and make me write each character over and over until I learned it. But actually, that's how people learn to write Chinese, like in Taiwan, grade schoolers have to copy each word hundreds of times in order to remember it. One summer, my mom and dad sent me and my sister to a Chinese school in Taiwan called "guo-yu-re-bao" (it was actually run by a local news company), which was kind of like a month-long boot camp for ABC's to learn Chinese. Some Taiwanese people might know what I'm talking about.

Anyways, between all the stuff my Dad made me do, "guo-yu-re-bao", and living in Taiwan for a year, my Chinese is actually pretty good. It was really miserable at the time for me, when all my other friends were out rollerblading or at the swimming pool while I was at home for hours copying the same Chinese word over and over, but right now I can say that I'm definitely glad I did.

After the "learning Chinese" mission, the second most important goal a Chinese parent has for their kids is to make them learn a musical instrument. For about 95% of the ABC's I know, the musical instrument of choice is either piano or violin. In my case, it was piano, for my sister, it was violin. Again, it works better with some kids than others. I did ok, taking lessons for about 6 or 7 years before quitting. But compared to some other Chinese people I know, I flat out suck at piano.

My best friend as a kid was one of these guys whose mom and dad were obsessed with making him the best piano player ever. They shelled out mad dough to take lessons from the awesome teachers. They'd make him practice at least 2 hours a day (an eternity when you're a kid), and then send him to recitals and contests all the time. They didn't let him play basketball because they felt it was bad for his fingers. I'm not sure if he ever made it to the Young Performers thing they show on Channel 11 every year, but he was pretty damn good. Other Chinese people I know of who are really awesome at piano are Dennis (at least that's what I hear), and my super-smart cousin in Taiwan (but actually he's a FOB so he doesn't count).

It was kinda funny, now when I look back, and I remember how our parents would talk to each other about me and my best friend. My mom and dad would be like "wow, David is so good at the piano, he works so hard and wins all those trophies and ribbons, if only Joseph could be that good". Then his mom and dad would be like "wow, Joseph is so good at Chinese, he wins all those speech contests and stuff, if only David could be that good." And that's pretty much what Chinese parents do when they get together with other Chinese parents.

Which brings me to another part of being raised by Chinese parents. They are constantly comparing you to their friends' kids in every little thing possible. Not only in things like piano skill or Chinese ability, but they compare how well you do at school, how polite ("li-mao") you are to adults, and how tall you are. I can't emphasize how big of a factor height is, especially for boys. Every single time a group of parents happen to be in the same room with their sons, they make the sons stand next to each other to see who is taller. Every single time, with no exception, I swear. I personally suffered a lot because I was around 5'1"-5'2" until about sophomore year of high school.

You might think they would stop this comparison business by the time you are older, but trust me, it never stops. You get to high school, and you'll get plenty of news reports from mom and dad about who was a National Merit Scholar and who wasn't. You hear about so-and-so who got a 1600 on the SAT, was valedictorian last year, and went to Harvard. Oh, and it doesn't matter what the US News rankings say, every Chinese parent's ultimate dream is for their kid to go to Harvard. Princeton, Yale, Stanford are ok too, I guess, but Harvard is gold, without a doubt.

If you don't go to one of those schools for college, you have one of two options: Engineering or Pre-med. Seriously, a ridiculously high percentage of the ABC's I know went one of those two routes. For me, it was EE at U of I, following in the footsteps of about 5 or 6 of the older guys at my church. For Olivia, it was GPPA Pre-med at UIC, and she's currently in the same classes as my friend David who I mentioned before about the piano thing. Dennis and Cindy were ChemE at U of I. Other commonly acceptable roads are CS at U of I and the HPME Med program at Northwestern. If you choose one of these majors, it's guaranteed to make your Chinese mom and dad happy.

Sadly, very few Chinese parents are supportive of their sons/daughters who want to pursue the fine arts. It's kind of ironic actually, considering how much they push for their kids to learn piano or violin as a child. But if you tell your parents you want to be an art or music major, a lot of them will consider it a huge tragedy, like they wasted 18 years raising their child. I'm not kidding about that at all. Either Chinese culture simply doesn't value the artistic expression (which I don't think is the case), or they just want to know for sure that the son or daughter they worked so hard to raise is going to come out of school with a steady and well-paying job.

One thing I should also talk about is friends. My white readers can correct me if I'm wrong, or hopefully back me up on this, but when you're white, your best friend is usually your next-door neighbor or the kid that sits alphabetically next to you in kindergarten. This is not the case when you're Chinese. As everyone knows, Chinese families typically aren't very socially active in the neighborhood. Many Chinese parents also discourage you from hanging out with the white kids down the block, because they play too much and might corrupt you.

So, when you are born to Chinese parents, your best friends usually end up being the sons/daughters of their best friends. I talked about my best friend David, his dad went to grad school with my dad, and we happened to be born 10 days apart in the same hospital (Hinsdale). Though we went to different schools, him in Woodridge and me in Downers Grove, we were still best friends from, as he likes to say, "ages zero to six". Later on, his family moved 50 minutes away to (interestingly enough) Palatine, and eventually we drifted apart because of the distance. But even then, our families would get together for my birthday, his birthday, my sister's birthday, and his sister's birthday.

By the way, my sister and his sister were also best friends. And another thing to note about Chinese parents is that starting the exact moment their son or daughter is born, they keep a keen eye out to observe all their friends' children. Noting whose kid is about the same age and opposite sex of their own kid, and hoping that you hook up and get married with one of them when you get older.

Because the fact is, all Chinese parents want their sons or daughters to marry someone Chinese. Some are more vocal and strict about this, but I really believe that every last Chinese mom and Chinese dad feels this way. My mom and dad have never flat out forbid me to marry a white girl, but I'm pretty sure they'd be disappointed if I did. I guess it works out, cause I don't have the desire to date any white girls anyways.

I think this kind of thing is especially true for Chinese people, because I know that Chinese culture stresses being proud of your own heritage, maybe more so than any other culture. Even though China is no longer a world superpower, we still call ourselves the "Middle Kingdom". When I was in Chinese school, they would always brag about how the ancient Chinese had 4 major inventions that contributed to human civilization: paper, gunpowder, the printing press, and the compass. At the time I was like, "big deal", but I still can't help but feel a lot of pride to be Chinese today. And to be honest, I think that when I have a son or daughter of my own, in my heart I would rather have them marry someone Chinese too.

Another note about marrying Chinese, there's this thing in Taiwan for college-age ABC's that they call "Love Boat". Officially, it's a program for people like us to go there for a summer, tour the island of Taiwan, and learn stuff about Chinese culture like calligraphy (mao-bi-ze) or kung-fu. In reality, it's a big meet market where ABC's hook up. The application process for this thing more or less involves just sending a picture of yourself and a copy of your parent's tax information. To me, that basically means they'll let you go as long as you aren't butt ugly and/or poor.

Anyways, the program wasn't officially titled "Love Boat", but it was nicknamed that because after the first few years, a lot of girls were coming back pregnant. You'd think that parents would stop sending their kids to this thing, but that's not the case. I guess some of them are just that worried about their kid getting married to a whitey. My mom actually wanted me to go a few years ago, but I don't think she knows about the pregnancy stories and all that stuff. I didn't go cause it sounded dumb and I didn't want to be in Taiwan all summer, but I have plenty of friends who did. They would probably tell you pretty much all the same things I just wrote.

A blog entry about childhood as an ABC wouldn't be right without talking about video games. Every Chinese boy loves video games. That's probably why we all have glasses, too. Whenever me and my friends got together, that's what we did, was play Nintendo. From the early days of the original Mario Bros., all the way to college with Tekken 3 on Playstation and Starcraft on PC.

A funny thing about the old school 8-bit Nintendo, the truly hardcore Chinese kids (like me) had "Chinese Nintendo" (which was actually Japan's Famicom). Only certain Chinese people will know what I'm talking about here. Instead of the American version, which is gray and loads games sideways, Chinese Nintendo is white with red trim and loads from the top. And unlike American Ninendo, its controllers were permanently connected to the machine, and only player 1 had the select/start buttons. But, some versions had a microphone built in to controller 2 which let you talk through the TV speakers. Ah, that was hours of fun.

Other than that, most of the games were the same for Chinese and American Nintendo, like Mario, ExciteBike, Pro Wrestling, and Hockey. Except they weren't interchangeable between systems, and sometimes the games were in Japanese so you had to guess what they were saying. The cool thing about Chinese Nintendo was that you could go to Taiwan and get these bigger cartridges from street vendors that had like 31 games on one cartridge. Most of them were crappy games, but the concept was cool.

Anyways, I could write way more on this subject, like stuff about using the fat guys and skinny guys in Hockey, or "A Winner Is You" in Pro Wrestling, but I think I've already lost all but one or two readers by now. Maybe one of these days I'll devote a blog to old school video games. Or if anyone else wants to write one, I'll definitely comment on it.

Well, that was a pretty freaking long blog. Hopefully it was informative and/or thought provoking though. It's not the complete story either, I tried to limit it to just the major stuff. I could seriously write a whole lot more but I decided just to talk about the major stuff. I didn't even mention anything about mah-johng, Chinese New Year, hot pot, Chinatown, or visiting relatives.

But yeah, I hope at least maybe one person out there got something from reading all that besides me. Any questions please feel free to ask.... hahaha

Moving Out

As I get ready to move out from my mom and dad's house later this week, it's starting to slowly hit me that I'm gonna be essentially "on my own" in the real world for the first time in my life. I mean, ever since I was born, there's always been the "parental umbrella" over my head to protect me, but up until this point, I've never truly and completely stepped out from under that umbrella.

I look back on the past few years, and in many ways I could say that I've already been becoming more independent throughout the years. The way I view the whole thing is like it's climbing a flight of stairs. At the top of the staircase is the "real world" and complete independence. As you move forward in life, you climb these steps one at a time until you reach that top level. Some people climb them faster than others, but most of us eventually get there one way or another.

For example, we all started out as babies. We need mommy and daddy for everything: not just to put milk and food straight in our mouths, but also to put us in our crib, to roll us around in our stroller, even to burp us and change our diapers.

Then at some point, we learn to walk. We get potty trained. We figure out how to feed ourselves using spoons and chew and all that stuff. Those being the first steps we take, obviously, and from then on I'm sure you all get the picture.

Well, I guess right now I'm taking this opportunity to reflect on my own life, my own set of stairs, except let's skip a few steps ahead to high school. Now, for most of my later years in high school, my dad worked in Taiwan and me and my sis stayed in Darien. Meanwhile, my mom went back and forth between two countries to take care of her husband on one end and her kids on the other.

During this time, I got a little taste of what it meant to be "man of the house". Such as, being the one to check on funny noises downstairs when it's late at night and mom and sister are too scared to go. Funny but true. Later on, since no one else was around to do it, I would experience the responsibilities of taking care of a house. Teaching myself how to fix the broken garage door, fix up aluminum siding, maintaining the lawn, things like that. Little things, but add them up to a big step for me.

There were the college years, when I moved away to school and lived apart from mommy and daddy for 9 months out of the year. That gave me a taste of the adult freedom that I never knew existed. Nobody forcing me to study, no one telling me where I could and couldn't go, what I could and couldn't do. At the same time, I learned some hard lessons that there were consequences to every one of my decisions. Another big step.

After graduating, and eventually finding a job, I could for the first time consider myself financially independent. Opening my own bank account, depositing it with paychecks earned from my own hard work, and, just a couple days ago, filing my own taxes. Yet another big step, and now I'm close enough to see the top.

Well, come this Sunday, when I move out, start paying my own rent, my own bills, etc., I guess that means I'll finally be taking that last step on this flight of stairs to reach the top. I don't really know what to think about that, the fact hasn't sunk in yet.

I know I'm very grateful to my mom and dad for being there throughout the years. They are the only ones who have loved me and cared for me unconditionally for the past 23 years. They're the ones that have pushed me forward throughout these 23 years and helped me to take each of the steps on my way up to where I am today. And I know that it's gonna be really hard for them to watch me take this last step on my own.

*nerd alert*
As for me, I'm picturing the scene in the beginning of Return of the Jedi. The part when Luke goes to visit Yoda, expecting to complete his training before going to fight Darth Vader and the Emperor. At that point, Yoda dies, and Luke is like "sweet, I guess I'm on my own then. Hope I don't get raped by Darth again." Or, in the Lion King when Simba watches his dad die in the stampede. Suddenly, he realizes that he'll soon be tested to see how he does on his own for the first time.

I guess it's like for the last 23 years, my mom and dad have given me all they can, taught me all they could, and now all that's left for them to do is to watch and hope that it was enough for me to survive without them. Well, I think they've done a more than admirable job of preparing me for this. Because of their hard work, I've had opportunities to succeed where they never did. Thanks to the things they've already done for me, I don't think I'll ever have to worry about survival.

In reality, I'm actually making this whole thing a lot more dramatic than it really is. I tend to do that when I write blogs, but oh well. I'll move out on Sunday, my life will change, but a lot will stay the same. It remains to be seen to what extent things will be different, but I'll just take it all as it comes.

One thing I can say for sure: many more thoughts related to this will follow in the coming days/months, and they will be recorded in this blog for you all to read.

Taxes

I did my taxes today. Got $1389.51 back from the federal gov't and $46.75 from state. For some reason, I didn't feel like $1389 was real money, it's just gonna get deposited into my bank. But when I saw $46 I immediately thought of what I was gonna buy with that money. So in the future, if I just send all my paychecks to direct deposit, maybe I won't spend any money.

Anyways, I was just thinking about what to spend money on. Electronics are the most tempting. The next purchase will either be the Toshiba Pocket PC or a nice little TV for my room. I was picturing that commercial when they have the flat panel and mount it on the ceiling. That would be pretty cool, but I don't think I wanna burn that much cash right now.

It's kinda bad, cause this is the kind of stuff that brings more recurring costs. Like if I get a PDA, I'll end up buying memory cards and add-ons and stuff. And if I get a TV, I'll probably eventually get a PS2 or GameCube, or a DVD player, which means I'll buy more DVDs.

Which makes me think, my life is pretty simple right now, and I consider myself a pretty happy person. Do more possessions really add more to life? I remember watching a video in Leisure Studies 100 (which I took one summer and I recommend to anyone still at U of I), and it was comparing people's standard of living in the 50's to how it is today. In the 50's, people were told that the technology advances in the future would eliminate the need for us to work, and that everyone would be able to relax all day.

Well, it turns out that technology is indeed more advanced today, but the opposite has happened to the typical person's lifestyle. Instead of having more free time, we are statistically busier and more stressed than ever. We work more, and make more money, but we also spend more and have less time to enjoy what we have.

What to make of this? Should we live the life of a Buddhist monk, get rid of all our possessions and live on a mountaintop reciting chants all day? Well, I don't think that's the answer either. I still like my possessions. I still love the feeling of opening a new toy. And I don't know any Buddhist chants.

I guess I don't have a point to sum up all this stuff I just wrote. I started out just writing about doing my taxes and ended up writing about Leisure Studies somehow. And now I am too tired to write a conclusion.

Laters.

Jerry Krause resigned today. With the war going on, this SARS business, Columbia exploding, etc., this is by far the best news I have heard in a long time. It's too bad he didn't resign 3 years ago before Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, and Phil Jackson all left.

I didn't know Bone Thugs were Phil Collins fans. That new song ("Home") is kind of catchy but it's just not the same without Bizzy Bone.

Olivia cut her hair yesterday after she went back to school. I'm almost afraid to see what she looks like with short hair. Over the past couple years, I grew more attached to her hair than she was. I have a healthy obsession and a fond love for long black hair. And now it's all gone >:-O

I'm setting this Sunday, April 13th as my official move-in date. This whole thing has dragged out way too long and it's time to nail down a day for good. I should thank everyone who offered to help me move in, but I don't know if I'll end up needing too much help. But if anyone wants to join me for a dinner afterwards, to celebrate a successful move-in, that would be great.

Yesterday I ended up driving all over the northern suburbs. Stopped by the townhouse in Palatine to see my room and measure its dimensions, then went and looked for some furniture. I think I've decided to bring a queen size bed from home, and maybe half of my desk too. Which means one of these days I'll have to rent a U-Haul or something and just take everything there in one trip.

After furniture browsing, I stopped into the Borders by Woodfield and did some book and magazine browsing. It's something I haven't done in a long time and something I should really do more of. When I was younger, there was a Super Crown right by my house, and me and my sis would ride our bikes there during the summer and read for hours. I think the first thing I need to read up on is cooking. Maybe I will buy "Chinese Cooking For Dummies" when I have more time to experiment and stuff.

***

I was looking at pictures from my mom and dad's trip to Italy and Switzerland, and it suddenly made me a little jealous that I didn't get to go. There's so much cool stuff there. The Colosseum, Leaning Tower, Sistine Chapel to name a few. I'm not a big expert in art, but I think the painting in the Sistine Chapel of God and Adam is unbelievable. Michelangelo was a pure genius.



I've promised myself that at least once in my life I will go to Italy myself and visit all these sites. I want to visit China sometime too. It makes me sad that my homeland is today ruled by Communist dictators. China has such a proud history in ancient times but look how far they have fallen. Although I still think Chinese people have preserved the rich tradition and culture throughout the years to be successful wherever they go.

But thinking about how the great empires fell, not only China, but Roman, Egyptian, Mongolian, British, and every single other dominant power in world history, we in America should take it to heart and not be so cocky and act invincible in world affairs. Even though our military power is head and shoulders above any other in the world, it doesn't mean we can never lose our position as the dominant superpower.

Donald Rumsfeld especially pisses me off, it's hard for me to imagine a bigger jackass than him. I can't even imagine if I were living in another country, how much I would hate that guy.