Where I Come From
In three weeks JJ and I will be in Beijing, China. It will be 9 at night instead of 9 in the morning. All of the people will look like me, and if I want to, I can talk like them. But I don't think I'm going to fit in. My parents are taking us on a tour of China. They have paid for the tickets, made the hotel arrangements. JJ has taken the vacation time. I will be between semesters. So we're going. First to Beijing, then to Xi'an, then Guilin, Suzhou, and finally we will end up in Shanghai. JJ barely has enough vacation days to go, so we will be coming back early and will not get to see much of Shanghai. But we will see the place where they filmed scenes in the movie Hero, and we will see the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall. We will see the life and ways of my past, the ways that my parents brought overseas with them, and tried to impart on my brother and me. We will see years of history and experience an entirely different culture. For JJ, this trip is exciting. He's never been out of the country so excitement is surely mixed with eager anticipation. But he is a true tourist. There is nothing riding on this trip for him. He will go over to China, and come back, and he'll still be American. He'll still be the boy from Perry, Georgia, the one who has been a journalist for the last 20 years of his life, the one who loves Steelers football, the one who loves TexMex food, steak, and soda. He'll be the same. But I don't know about me. For me there's a lot more to this trip than a leisure vacation. The last time I was over in that part of the world I was only 18 months old. My brother was the size of a large kidney bean. My mother had found out she was pregnant with Bryant the day before we flew to Taiwan. And at that age, there's video of me banging on walls in a Buddist temple, and running around in a diaper, and having what looks like a great time. At that age there was no pressure, no desire, no questions. I didn't know exactly who I was or who I wanted to be. But now, I've hit a point in my life where I might not know exactly who I am yet, but I know exactly who I want to be. And what that means is that this time, when I go back, even though I'm going to be a tourist, I will be looking for me over there. I'll be looking in the culture and the history, and learning where I came from and why I am the way I am. I'll be looking at the Terra Cotta soldiers, and the Chinese countryside, at the people, at the customs, and wondering how much of that is still in me, how much of it have I remembered and how much I have forgotten. You see, I've been blessed to be a Chinese-American all my life. But growing up in the United States, I've always been more American than Chinese. My schooling was American, I celebrate American customs like backyard barbeques and shopping malls, the 4th of July and Memorial Day, and I believe in independence and freedom like an American. Now I have a chance to see how much of me is Chinese. How much of me is still Chinese, and how much has been overshadowed by the American in me? I don't know the answer to that question. If you asked me whether I'd rather find more Chinese me in me or more American, I wouldn't be able to answer that either. I believe in a lot of things that my mother and father don't. And a lot of these things that I disagree with have been cause for anger, strife, and argument in the past. I don't want to be exactly like my mom and dad. Not only that, but I believe that they came here, to the U.S., so I wouldn't have to be. I believe that they came here to give me opportunities that I couldn't have if they had stayed. But because of the chance they took to come to the U.S., and because of the chance they took raising me as a Chinese-American, rather than just as a Chinese daughter who happened to be born in America, I perhaps identify myself as more American than I do Chinese and I'm not sure that that's okay. Up until now I've been able to plead ignorance, or at least I've been able to plead mostly ignorance because I've lived my whole life here. This trip might not change a thing, but I expect that I might feel different when I come back. How, I don't know. But I expect something to happen during that 13 day tour. So I'll be watching and waiting to see what happens, because when we go to China, I will be a tourist, but maybe, just maybe, I'm hoping that when I get off that plane, I'm going to feel like a native.