Youth Voices: Growing Up as a Chinese American [BLOG]

This edition of Youth Voices is written by Helen Zhao, a graduate of University of California, and now managing editor at Daniel Magazine. She writes about growing up as a Chinese American and coming to terms with her race and identity. 

By Helen Zhao

On Halloween night at the Hammer Museum, the first ever China Onscreen Film Biennial presented the last in its series of 25 films screened in Los Angeles between October 13th – 31st: Painted Skin, the Resurrection—now the highest grossing domestic film in China.

As an audience member at the film screening, I was able to explore Chinese culture, a culture from which I had become estranged, inconspicuous to my western center of gravity.

Ying Ying in Wang Bing’s documentary, The Three Sisters—screened at the Hammer Museum on October 27 called forth the demons that lay dormant and yet haunted my past—purged in a final exorcism such that I came to embody the principles exuded by characters in Painted Skin, The Resurrection—ones my parents used to govern our household, which I vehemently rejected in my desire to assimilate to a culture outside of the one in my own home.

* * *

In The Three Sisters, I traveled to a remote farming village in China’s rural countryside, and observed as a ten-year-old girl, Ying Ying, traversed the rugged landscape, each day single-mindedly committed to the tasks necessary for basic survival. Though uneducated and without refined manners or speech, she carried herself with monumental nobility.

Her gestures oozed magic—wielding an ax to chop wood or another apparatus to gather crops, scrubbing her own clothing under an icy jet from an outdoor water spigot—seemingly tedious affairs made wondrous before the camera lenses.

In her image, I relived a period in time my father had attempted to reconstruct through stories whose grim realities could never truly penetrate a mind shaped by sheltered bliss.

I saw my parents laboring in China’s countryside as peasants during the Cultural Revolution—simultaneously conjuring a context of poverty, countrywide corruption, and death.

As a child, my dad watched his own father dragged out into the streets and beaten by Chairman Mao’s men, for the supposed threat he poised to the government.

He had mentioned witnessing corpses in the streets—some days after having drowned.

He had made frequent comparisons to life as a peasant in the countryside, where he and under urban youth served as peasants, under Mao’s orders.

The eggs, bananas, and steamed bread known as mantou that stocked our kitchen had been uncommon delicacies in his childhood, he said.

From the comfort of our suburban home in Southern California, these allusions to various harsh realities went in one ear and out the other.

Becoming in touch with the harsh circumstances from which my parents sprang imbibed their actions with a valor and nobility I previously overlooked growing up in the West, disconnected from their history.

It reinforced a conscious decision to develop a deeper awareness of the heritage of which I was a recipient—born of the blood, sweat, and tears of my ancestors whose undying work ethic, self-sacrifice, and resiliency paved the way for my life in the United States.

Growing up, I saw my Chinese upbringing through a western lens—as often contradictory to the whims and enjoyments of mainstream American youth.

Ying Ying’s world—lacking in first world comforts or entertainment—fostered a single-mindedness in purpose that often wanes and fractures into a million whims and desires given abundance and on demand gratification.

It reflected the culture that my parents brought with them to the United States after growing up during the Cultural Revolution—when goods and privileges I considered common were either banned or in very short supply.

They discovered those resources in abundant supply amid the American dream. However, a history of hunger and rationing supplies lived with us—one noticeably absent from the households of my friends.

My parents avoided all frivolous expenditure that distracted from life’s essential pursuits: the acquisition of knowledge and maintaining good academic standing within school as means of ensuring survival in an information age.

The year that I pleaded with Santa Claus for an American Girl Doll, I unwrapped a computer program that taught lessons in math.

It gathered dust on a shelf in my room, not once moved in over ten years, save for the instance in which I hurled it against a wall in a tearful rage.

I feared vocalizing this sentiment out of shame—as illustrated by an instance in which I timidly expressed my interest in purchasing a rolling backpack, for they had just gone into vogue.

This inflamed my mom, who called me a “party girl,”—what she saw as a strain of flirty and frivolous American adolescents who cared more for fun than academics.

I understood such a label as indicative of a cheap and immoral existence—with features that remained intoxicatingly alluring.

I stood fixated on the sidelines, as best manifested in my unrequited fascination with the world of American Girl, a company responsible for an overpriced doll series among endless other contents—previews of which arrived in the catalogues delivered to our mailbox, full of the books, dolls, and endless outfits and accessories that I yearned to embrace.

I knew such expensive toys had no place in our household—a longing for which was better not expressed.

* * *

In middle school, the differences between my Chinese upbringing and American households became strikingly obvious for me.

My parents did not have patience for the themes of American coming of age – styles, crushes, rendezvous, and parties.

I developed a sense of self-hatred and hostility toward those I deemed responsible for the alienation that also manifested itself on a surface level as my classmates in each grade taunted my Chinese facial features.

It seemed a fate I was inherently resigned to, as encapsulated in a comment made by a ninth grade classmate in reference to Asian girls: “There’s one hot one in a million.”

I envied the good-looking, well-adjusted girls groomed by more liberal western families.

However, I soon joined their ranks—made possible by a splintering of the family unit after years of internal warfare between my parents.

My parents’ divorce soon caused the cultural stronghold at home to collapse—each of us drifting into our separate corners.

My parents struggled to fend for themselves, leaving my brother and I free to drift—swept away by external currents.

I transformed in accordance with the dominant culture, beginning in high school with extreme physical alteration—losing twenty pounds, and proceeding to dress in a fashion forward manner. However, the constant self-evaluation transformed my world into the sum of its flaws in an empty pursuit of perfection.

My pursuit of self-improvement began to exist only for its own sake—its end goal only the remediation of a dissatisfaction that could not be alleviated.

It spurred an ongoing eating disorder throughout high school and much of college—consumed by my own distorted self-image.

* * *

In high school, I touted “Asian pride” as a celebration of my absorption into the culture at large—a newfound confidence and acceptance of my ethnic identity based upon its “white washing”—coated in the styles and mannerisms of popular American culture.

Rather than appreciate unique content of my culture, my “Asian-ness”was simply an affirmation of white American acceptance and diversity.

It culminated in that while hosting a talk show as a student at UCLA, a listener responded and said, “You’ve mastered the Asian white girl voice.”

I had positioned myself as an “approximation” of the white ideal—inherently a second rate citizen.

On that Halloween night, I was once again extremely aware of my parents’ sacrifice for my brother and I.

Never self-indulgent, they invested all their energy and resources into creating a better life for their children in the United States.

I was given a free ride to the land of opportunity—a place other children dreamed of gaining access to, often through higher education—a potentiality then not without its cultural and language barriers.

The sense of privilege was pronounced when visiting China and declaring to others my country of origin.

It was evident even when traveling within the United States through my association with Southern California.

I owed my privilege to my parents and their unwavering work ethic—which rarely if ever took a break to satisfy vain urges or personal desire.

Instead, they did everything in their power to secure a comfortable future for me and my brother—the center of their universe.