While some may think the hardest part to learning Chinese is the memorization of characters, I beg to differ. I believe the most challenging aspect of the Chinese language is its inherent culture. I don't mean Chinese customs or traditions, per se, I mean the culture of the language itself. There are certain connotations, intonations, and habitual applications that are difficult to teach and often harder to discern, especially if approached from a Western lens. This..."phenomenon" isn't particularly unique to the Chinese language, but it is definitely of a rare breed. It isn't necessarily something that can be taught, rather, it is something that I think is more easily understood by feeling, and stumbling through experiences. It's a bit difficult for me to find the words to describe my thoughts at the moment...but perhaps I'll come across them and expound as time passes...

Lotus Hearts and Mekong Tears

Moving to Monterey has definitely been a challenge for me. It is a different environment that is smaller and much less ethnically diverse than what I am used to. Although there is a relatively significant international student population on campus, there are very few Asian-Americans with whom I can relate with. On a daily basis - from an individual, personal, and oftentimes internalized basis - I am persistently confronted with my identity. This is not to say I am unfamiliar with adversity; much of my life has been colored by it. Here at MIIS, however, I struggle with reconciling who I have come to define myself as with my new environment. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the number of opportunities and amount of space here that are appropriate for the two to manifest.

These thoughts have been playing over and over in my mind for the last two weeks, and became more glaringly apparent as Chinese New Year neared. This was a conundrum, and I was thoroughly perturbed...from the thought of not having family and close friends around, down to the prospect of not getting to go to a temple on New Years day. Luckily, at the last minute, I had the opportunity to be in LA during the duration of New Years festivities. In retrospect, I know a lot of my frustration and anxiety stemmed from an apparent lack of a distinctly Asian-American community with which I could relate to. Everything from mannerisms to fashion to lingo seemed to matter more now than they did before. Even the way my fellow Chinese classmates interact or view me has become more striking. This phase in my life is still evolving, and as I am at this point unsure what direction things will take me, I am also unsure of a definitive conclusion to this entry. Instead, I leave you with a spoken word piece I wrote and performed during my undergraduate career, in hopes it may shed light on the evolution of my identity --

You Wonder Who I Am?

As a small child my soles were already weathered by the storms that
Rocked the leaky boats of my salient ancestry.
Pitter pat...pitter pat...
The drip drip drops of struggle dance and
Mingle with the blood red tears from the Children of the East.
Miles from here sometimes my father still hears the planes
Steel birds that painted the floral a striking orange
And red.
These colors permeate my family lines
Back to a time of revolution and upheaval my
Mother’s parents fled the forcefully inflicted persecution of their culture.
And you wonder why I stare, slightly disturbed and
Bitterly confused at those of you who
Choose to adorn the yellow, blood soaked, oppressive, and over imposing
stars of Mao?
The lines on my mother and father’s foreheads stretch back…
Past the tides that carry poignant stories of plight across
distant coasts and beyond the point where the skies kiss the seas back to the
…bamboo bridges and Mekong beauty.

And still you wonder who I am.

Through my soul courses the delta floods and the sweeping hills
Of a country whose spirit seeps in a hue of valor and in shades of pride as bright
As the hand stitched flowers of my grandmother’s vanilla silk blouse…
Time presides as witness…a sternly present reminder of
The waves of change and upheaval.
Your war, was not the same conflict as ours.
Clinging to their last strands of hope mine were a people
Of many thousand years of heritage…those vivid memories
rooted in Hue’s jade tablets, marbles tiles and dynastic ancestry
a people growing to embrace three yellow stripes not merely as a flag but
As the beat beat beating Heart of a struggle.
It was bigger than a war
Bigger than the hollow shells that littered and penetrated and
Pierced the lives of a generation…
Spilling past the vast depths of Almond eyes…
How would you ever know the price of Lotus hearts and Mekong tears?

And still you wonder who I am.

The child of refugees, mine is the story of hope.
A story of insurmountable sacrifice
A story preceded by the journey of a
Chinese daughter forced to abandon nearly all she knew
and the flight of Vietnam’s son…
whose new beginnings were thirteen separate flirts with death, away
Of two lives
torn apart and brought together
enduring the piercing glares of brash resentment
residing within the chain link and concrete confines…a nation of refugees
Juxtaposed on the brinks of their bridge to tomorrow.
Their soles glanced the shores of the bright city upon a hill…
Embracing a foreign land, stranger to their comprehension but a
Promise of brighter days
A journey embarked upon for the sake of their unborn child, they
Left behind a universe of familiarity
A lingering silhouette of a never too distant past.

And still you wonder who I am…

I am the two tongued descendant of yellow sons and daughters of dreams deferred
I am their vision of better days of
Liquid skies of blue…of a future rising above
Of pride…of a heritage parading past persistent obstacles
The beautiful product of the embrace of two cultures
So how can you take any part of my Asian-America
Away from me?
I am the result of bare foundations of ideals of chance of opportunity… of hope
And you wonder why I love this country?
I wonder why you hate it.

See….
My journey is one that spans proverbial miles criss-crossing and intersecting
the footsteps of who I’ve come to be.
My skin reflects the radiance of the sun
My soul, the flesh of the earth
And my heart, the blood of those before me…
Yet I am of no supreme ego my persistence is of a humble path
recognizing that my possibilities exist not as
Abstract notions of maybe…floating in seas of doubt…
But that my possibilities exist because I am hope
I am opportunity
I am the promise of America.

And still…you wonder who I am?

A proverbial dance

As the week progresses, I find myself contemplating the direction the class will take me, but more importantly the direction I will take in the class. As an Asian-American, I have spent much of my adolescent and adult life discovering and rediscovering my identity. The juxtaposition of an Asian (specifically Chinese/Vietnamese) ancestry and an American identity often plays out like an unflinching paso doble; occasionally they assume the waltz. Growing up, I was lucky enough to hear about Chinese history and classic myths and stories from my mother. The opportunity to continue these lessons, but within the context of graduate school, will without a doubt serve to improve the precision of my proverbial paso doble and the intricacies of the waltz.