It's Dai Time

Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Tag: chinese

Day 219: yellow

September 18, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Katie and I went to see Yellow Face tonight, which is a play about Asian-American racial identity, among other things.

It was interesting.  I don’t spend all that much time thinking about the fact that I’m an Asian-American, and I haven’t really dwelt on the advantages and disadvantages that this label/community confers, but I do feel like I’ve always been aware of it my entire life.

That, and a recent splashy Newsweek cover article labeled “Is Your Baby Racist?” got me thinking.  How much of my Chinese heritage will I impart onto my child?  How much can I?  How much should I?

Ideally, I’d like to give my baby the best parts of being an Asian-American and spare him or her the worst, but is it really up to me to decide which is which?  Do I even know?  And how good of a teacher will I be anyway?

As I’ve grown, I’ve felt less and less Chinese.  I hardly speak the language anymore.  I can’t read it at all.  I can’t speak too intelligently on most Chinese culture and history.  When I visit the country itself, I feel like a tourist, not like I’m returning home.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a part of me, that I was born there, that I lived there for the first four years of my life.  I like that I’ve Chinese, I’m proud of it.  I guess I’m just not sure what it actually means to me or my unborn child just yet.

Day 162: monkey king

July 23, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I have a thing for the monkey king.

monkey-god11

Part of it is because he’s one of the early superheroes I remember from my Chinese youth.  Much like young American children were excited about Superman or Batman’s next adventure, I still have a graphic novel of the monkey king from my youth, even though it’s entirely in Chinese and I can’t read any of it anymore.  Imagine if instead of the Marvel and DC universe, your pantheon of superheroes was limited to essentially one major character.

I dressed as the monkey king one year for Halloween, even though I had to explain it to everyone I ran into.

I went and saw the mediocre children’s movie The Forbidden Kingdom last year because it had the monkey king as part of its main storyline.

I bought the relatively good graphic novel American Born Chinese after flipping through the first few pages and seeing references to the monkey king.

It’s one of the few Chinese childhood things that I distinctly remember.  There’s one especially vivid memory I have of riding in the back of my parents car, reading a monkey king comic.  I started feeling extremely nauseous and eventually barfed on my book.  I was very upset and loved the book so much that I didn’t want to throw it away, despite the fact (or perhaps my childhood mind couldn’t process) that the book was soaked and would always smell a bit like vomit.

That’s the power the monkey king had (and still has) over me.

Day 114: learning a new language

June 5, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I have a phrase a day calendar that teaches me a German phrase that I usually forget by the next day.

Katie wants to learn Chinese to become more Asian.

Do either of us have any hope? Is it possible to learn a foreign language when it isn’t a requirement (because you live or are moving to a foreign country in the near future) and when it is only something you think about briefly and/or sporadically?

Is there an easy way to try and get ourselves in a better mindset?  Software like the Rosetta Stone?  Free podcasts we may find online?  Enrolling in a local community college class?  Moving to Germany or China?

It doesn’t look too promising with how busy our lives are.  I don’t often come home from a long day of work looking to learn and practice German, and that may be the root cause of why it won’t happen easily.

It may also be because I spread myself too thin.  If I focus on less things to learn at a single time as opposed to trying to acquire German, guitar, novel writing, and various other work skills all within the span of a year, I may have more success.

But where’s the fun in that?

Day 38: topics of conversation that chinese people find not at all uncomfortable

March 21, 2009 / / 0 Comments
  • Your weight, especially how you look like you’ve gained some since the last time they’ve seen you
  • How much you spent on purchasing your house/plane tickets/purse
  • The small ways in which their child is not living up to their potential
  • The large and specific ways in which their child is doing things much better and more important that you could ever hope to
  • Your future, especially when you plan to have children
  • How hungry you must be, and how you need to eat more, despite how much weight you seem to have gained
  • Paying a restaurant bill, and how there’s no way they’d let you pay for this meal
  • How much money you make, and certain jobs they’ve heard about where you could make more

We’re off to visit my mom soon. She was doing quite well yesterday, although she seems a bit overzealous in terms of getting off any medical assistance and getting back to normal. She probably won’t be able to return to normal work for a few weeks, even after getting out of the hospital, but she’s such a trooper that I wouldn’t be surprised if she were already worrying about the things she needs to do when she gets back into the office.

We’ll probably grab some lunch on this side of the bridge before we head over. Does anyone have specific NY places we should try to eat at before we leave town?

We’ve got another show tonight that my mom booked for us (a preview of an off-Broadway Hamlet, I believe), so it looks like it’ll be a pretty full day. The big win today would be if my mom can finally get some solid food. She’s been keeping down her jello and chicken broth, so fingers crossed!

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