Have Some Dim Sum! (Annotated Bibliography)
As I began college, I’d never expected to be surrounded by so many colorful perspectives and cultures. There is the good, there is the different, and there is the bad when it clashes. As I made my first — and once closest friend — I realized that she and I express our plurality of our identity differently, as she had been mixed and I spent nearly half of my life in China growing up. As I sat down during lunch one day late August, my college friends were discussing the nature of white privilege, everyone nodded in a line one after another with the notion that it doesn’t exist — including her. That is, until it reached me. I froze and wondered whether or not I should just go with it, like how I once went with my friend in junior high school that called me a Twinkie. But I didn’t conform, because of my self of myself, and to agree would be contradicting to my identity. I wonder, even till this day, what the difference is between the girl today that did not conform, and the girl who once stayed silent after being called a Twinkie.
Forget Chineseness : on the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification
Chun, Allen John Uck Lun. Forget Chineseness : on the Geopolitics of Cultural Identification. Albany, New York : SUNY Press, 2017.
“You’re such a Twinkie!”
Said one of my friends in junior high school.
Not knowing what that means, I laughed it off, insecure that my lack of knowledge in American pop culture would show through and fearing to be considered one of those uncultured “fresh off the boat” immigrants.
That night I went home. Laying wide awake on my bed, what my friend said came to my mind. With my friend Google by my hand, I looked it up. Shocked by the results, I was not only baffled by what she said but also by what prompted it.
Is it me? Did I do something? Is there something wrong with the way I act or present myself? Is there something wrong with “acting” white?
I asked myself. Then I started inspecting myself. This begun my year-long rabbit hole that I, till this day, still wonder about.
What is my identity?
“Chinese” or “Asian/Pacific Islander” is the box I check, where I will be thrown into a category with others alike, where I will be reduced to nothing but a label, an identity so broad that it merely resembles anything of me. “Chineseness” is a very all-inclusive concept. The broad concept of Chinese fails to recognize the Chinese societies, such as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, and communities overseas. And I still struggle with my identity.
As the author of the book suggests, “the Chinese never had a concept of identity, only a concept of Chineseness, of being Chinese and of becoming un-Chinese”, identity crisis a keyword for our times, argued that it was not just a marker of personal status but relations of “sameness” in a group.
Thus, Chineseness, “involves in sum the construction of meaning and its relevance to the strategies of life choices in relation to groups and values.”
Presumed cultural affinities and shared historical interactions usually form the basis of categorization and comparison, but as Chun argues, to lump together “Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and overseas Chinese communities or to define their shared characteristics and fate as Chinese-speaking societies would invite easy criticism”. Objectively speaking, culture and traditions has formed the Chinese ethnic identity, yet decades of assimilation in the western culture has formed another geo-political identity for Chinese overseas. I wonder if years of trying to fit in, I somehow, have given up my values and traditions in which identify me.
At Home in the Chinese Diaspora : Memories, Identities and Belongings
Kuah-Pearce, Khun Eng, and Andrew P. Davidson. At Home in the Chinese Diaspora : Memories, Identities and Belongings. Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Before I can examine myself, first I had to examine my origin.
My maternal grandparents moved from the remote countryside, where they had no access to electricity, education, or even indoor bathroom. My maternal grandmother(婆婆), knew in her heart that she wanted a better life despite my great-grandparents(曾祖父母) telling her otherwise.
They say that she is just a woman, they say that she should stay home, they say that she should get married and have kids and that venturing out the city is a man’s job.
Growing up in Communist China in the 1950s was never easy, but “not easy” wasn’t something that ever deterred my grandmother from her dream.
Chasing that dream, she moved to Taishan(台山), a port city near Hong Kong where she will meet my grandfather and remain there for decades to come. She ventured out to the city and found a job at a Dim Sum(点心) restaurant, a traditional Cantonese tea brunch where my family and I spent and is still spending numerous hours together enjoying our meal. It’s one of the only thing remaining that still reminds me of my home in China. No matter how long my distant family members have seen each other or how far they have migrated from “home”, we will always reconvene with this delicious meal like we never even separated.
Collective memories located in communal places — like the restaurant — are sites that connect to memory and often “transcend generation, culture, and spatial boundaries”
Kuah-Pearce offers perspective on individual and collective diasporic Chinese memory and identity construction in an examination of how memories and various senses of belonging have affected the notion of Chinese migration experience. With examination of Chinese experience in Australia, Asia, Europe and the U.S., Pearce explores how memories play an essential role in the formation of migrant identity. With most of my family’s memories belonging in their homeland, this work has helped me understand how that has shaped our identity. My memories are hybridized, consist of flashes of the past, in China, and present, in the U.S. Just as Pearce suggests, memories are subject to transformation thorough the passing of time, so is the sense of self, as “identities are fluid and subject to the process of hybridization.”
“The sense of self is made up of past memories and future anticipation in connection to an ever changing present.”
Eventually, my grandmother moved to the U.S. along with my parents and I to join the rest of our family. She has held her past memory dearly. The migration has not made her sense of identity volatile as it is to most migrant communities. The images and memories of “home” will never cease to be. Till this day, she would call me from and ask me how I am, how am I doing at school, and whether or not I am eating okay because “American food isn’t delicious”. She often brings up “home” and ask me whether or not I miss “home”.
“But grandma, I haven’t lived there since a decade ago,” I would say to her.
“It’s home to me,” she would always reply.
Dim Sum Traditional Favourites and Innovative Creations
Hei, Chan Chen. Dim Sum Traditional Favourites and Innovative Creations. Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Cuisine, 2005. Web.
My maternal grandmother (婆婆) struggled to find a job when she moved to the city from the countryside. Being a single woman in the early 1970s, living in a reformed Communist Chinese society, life wasn’t easy. At the early age of 20, most people are just figuring out what to do, with youth and opportunities still ahead of them. For Americans, 20 year olds are enjoying some of their best times in college, with the leisure of time figuring out who they are or what they want to do, and finding romance. But the experience of a twenty-year-old from the Chinese countryside is vastly different. As she doesn’t have the leisure of time to figure out what she wants to do, the freedom of doing what she dreamed, or the family and money to support her when things have gone bad, yet she followed her will and worked without ever complained a word.
My grandmother took a bus to the city with her friends one morning, without any family to support her but instead with her determination.
Without a dime and without a college degree, her options were limited. Eventually she would find a stable job at Dim Sum restaurant and would work there for many years until eventually meeting her husband. She never complained once throughout her life. She silently pushed Dim Sum carts, serving customers with delicious treats and became one of the restaurant’s best worker. She is one of the strongest women in my life that stood up and said no to her barriers, whether it’s socially or economically. Without her, we wouldn’t be here today.
Dim Sum, according to Hei’s book, “means touch the heart in Cantonese, is probably the most often enjoyed culinary fare and offers an endless assortment and variation of dish choices”, and it certainly touches my heart. This book features all of the items that my family enjoys and some, my father can skillfully make.
Despite inevitably gaining my freshman 15, she would say I looked thinner and that I must eat more.
“Have some Dim Sum!” she would say.
Every now and then when I’d visit her, we always gravitates towards eating. It’s something that we’d never get tired of.
The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas
Pan, Lynn, and Chinese Heritage Center (Singapore). The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1999.
My paternal grandparents(爷爷奶奶) and their daughter, my aunt (姑妈), have been in the U.S. since 1986. They lived in a small apartment, rats and roaches infested, in Brooklyn, New York, where they were accompanied by other fellow Chinese Immigrants. With the hope of American dream in mind, my aunt Margaret, started her first restaurant at U.S.
That same dream to strive for a better life, even if it puts her in a foreign land that she never stepped in before and no way of knowing whether or not she will succeed, will ultimately help her little brother, my father, and his family migrate to the U.S. despite years of legal complications and VISA delays.
Initially during the research, I tried finding records of my family, tried tracing my lineage, and attempted to use Ancestry.com, but it was all unfruitful. So I decided to zoom out instead of zooming in and with the help of UGA’s library system, I found this book. I think it’s very helpful that to see we all have a similar push factor — whether it’s better life and opportunities abroad or reuniting with family overseas — and understand my migration as a whole in order to write about it while adding my personal narratives.
Through examining the panoramic view of past and present overseas Chinese communities worldwide from this book and my personal experiences, I find one common factor — the will power and the dream of immigrants. From our “history through our arrivals as laborers in the British colonies, gold rush, and the construction of the railroads”, the vast “Chinese emigrants have carried the experiences of China to other continents and civilizations”, and in the process, modifying and enriching them.
From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express : A History of Chinese Food in the United States
Liu, Haiming. From Canton Restaurant to Panda Express : A History of Chinese Food in the United States. New Brunswick, New Jersey ; London, [England] : Rutgers UP, 2015. Asian American Studies Today. Web.
The restaurant business is typically occupied and associated with Chinese immigrants, and for some cases, it has been the family’s life and blood for generations. When you think of Asian owned businesses, you would typically associate it with nail shop or Chinese restaurants, and I embrace that stereotype as it’s no small task and takes plenty of effort. As Liu states, the restaurant business informs us about how Chinese migration began, who the first pioneer Chinese immigrants were, what their social background was, and how they participated in and contributed to American society. Many existing scholarly and journalistic writings from that time “ described early Chinese immigrants as illiterate peasants and greedy “sojourners” driven away by hunger, poverty, and social unrest from a poor, conservative, and backward China” while European immigrants were shaped in a light that they seek liberty and freedom. However, in refute to that early statement, Liu refuted by stating that “pioneer Chinese immigrants were men of wealth and ambition”. My paternal aunt(姑妈), Margret, although lacked wealth but fully equipped with ambition, fully represents the spirits of the early pioneers. Maintaining and operating a restaurant is certainly not an easy task, and certainly difficult for a woman who just freshly migrated to the U.S. without her family.
From being a single woman migrating to the U.S. alone, to a woman opening her restaurant business alone, to a single mother struggling to sustain her business and raise two children. This is the story of Margret Chau, my dear aunt. At the age of 29, Margret has always refused strict, traditional social norms despite her father (my paternal grandfather) overpowering her with traditional and communist ideals. In the U.S., 29 is an age when you settle down, when you get married, and when you start your transition from your fun-loving 20s to your stale family life in your 30s. For many it’s a closing of a chapter, but for Margret, it was a beginning.
She has always wore pants instead of skirts, argued and fought with her brother(my father) instead of bending down to men like her society has taught her to, and chased her dreams despite her family pushing her towards marriage, regarding her as an “old maiden”.
When your destiny calls, you follow.
So she migrated to the U.S. in pursue of something more and something grander. After years of working hard and saving up money, moving to America has costed her a fortune. With the remaining money, she decided to open up a Chinese restaurant. And there, she begun the first chapter of her journey.
Chinese Women, Living and Working
McLaren, Anne E. Chinese Women, Living and Working. London ; New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004. ASAA Women in Asia Ser. Web.
This book presents significant new findings on new domains of employment for women in China’s burgeoning market economy of the 1990s and the twenty-first century. Since the end of the 1970s, with forces sought to reform the previously existing state of socialism, “China has experienced a continuous period of rapid economic growth, and dramatic social change”. In twenty-first century China, women take on “managerial roles in the private sector, acquire technological skills in the professions, and attempt to enter the innermost sanctums of political power.”
The wave of influence of the western era of women empowerment had finally rippled the edges of Asia. It soon clashed with Southern China’s traditional, patriarchal society. It is a complex picture of opportunity, challenge, and disadvantage. It is in this exact picture that Margret lived in. After moving to the U.S., she soon started her small, Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn, New York. For years to come, she single-handedly prepared the food, tended the cash register, and bused the tables. Margaret soon joined forces with her soon-to-be husband and fellow restaurateur while supporting her family back home. But when her husband unexpectedly passed away, she was left with a restaurant and a five-year old daughter to support. She moved to a small town in norther Georgia, called Dalton, GA , that is known for its country’s largest carpet production. The migration 850 miles down the continent was accompanied with the second opening of her restaurant in a stable, small town.
Fast forward years later, this tough woman, Margret, was finally able to bring her family to the U.S. Not only was she not hesitant to wear a hair net and do the dirty works, she was also not hesitant to make my parents work the day after they arrived from China, as it has now subsequently after their immigration, became a family business. There is where exactly landed me, right at Dalton, GA.
Laws Harsh as Tigers : Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law
Salyer, Lucy E. Laws Harsh as Tigers : Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law. Chapel Hill ; London : The University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
After immigrating to the U.S., my aunt Margret soon proved her strength, despite being a husband-less, single woman with no one to support her along with parents and a little brother back at home as her baggage. She was grateful that she had the opportunity to take her parents to the U.S. in pursue of the American dream.
The immigration law has always been tricky, and definitely not favorable for Asian immigrants. Despite the growing notion of a Chinese and American identity, Chinese and other Asians in the United States were denied the right to become naturalized citizens until after World War II with the 1952 McCarran-W alter Act, which ended racial restrictions on citizenship. Salyer argues in the book that “the struggles between Chinese immigrants, U.S. government officials, and the lower federal courts that took place around the turn of the century established fundamental principles that continue to dominate immigration law today and make it unique among branches of American law”. The problem with immigration has long existed before my parents’ generation and we are alive now to go through it.
Margret immigrated to the U.S. at 1986, leaving her parents and her little brother, my father, behind. After five years and finally getting her citizenship, she was able to get her parents to the U.S. at 1991, yet my father’s quest for VISA continues. It would continue for another 19 years until 2010. The unpredictable nature of the American immigration system had taken over his fate. The addition of 911 further deterred his quest to the American dream. Despite that, life would go on. He would eventually meet my mother, and consequently, I became the fruit of their marriage.’
These restrictions placed on Chinese immigrations were perhaps from the early years Chinese were perceived by Americans as an alien race and basically inassimilable to American society. The idea of presumed homogeneity of Chinese and Chinese Americans is far more implicated by our diverse cultures and diverse experiences. But one thing that we as a whole do face, is the harsh and stern laws of immigration.
Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents : Conflict, Identity, and Values
Tung, May Pao-may. Chinese Americans and Their Immigrant Parents : Conflict, Identity, and Values. New York : Haworth Clinical Practice Press, 2000.
In this book, Tung taps into the dilemma that“ ‘self’ and ‘family’ that both the younger and older generations must face in American society”
Values and traditions are aspects that are valued deeply in a Chinese household. It’s what defines us, what keeps our culture alive. But sometimes, you just got to break them. By refusing to bend down to the social norms and values, my grandma and aunt and other amazing woman alike in my family was able to alter the course and change the outcome of their lives and provided more for their children. The example listed by Tung includes“moving out of the parental home before one is married is looked upon as being selfish” and “visits less than once a week displeases the parents”. These might come off as shocking to those living in the west, but as having witnessed these things first hand especially from my parents, this is considered perfectly normal. Despite being familiar with these ideals and expectations, I, having my view widened by western culture, cannot see myself doing so.
Growing up in a Communist China, my grandparents and parents were taught that family comes first. The common good always trumps personal gains. And born in that setting, that value was also passed down to me. Whether or not that has also been my value is a different story, as living in America for most of my known memories has broadened and shifted my perspective.
Personally, this book is relatable for me, and safe to say hundreds and thousands of other Chinese American alike. There has been always the dilemma between “self” and “family” that both the younger and older generations must face in American society. My grandparents and my parents lived in a society where “we” came first than “I”, thus they migrate from their hometown to better lives for their family and kids.
My parents had done that for me, for the common good, so I can have the opportunity to grow up in the US. The problem arises in the fact that our values often collide, the traditions in which they fear will be lost by me. I have spent the better part of my life in the US. Unlike the collectivistic culture of most Asian societies, the US is very much a dog eat dog world or every man for himself. This is a culture where “I” comes before “we”.
And I have adopted that value for better or worse, fearing that I have lost a part of my culture along the way.
Contemporary Chinese America Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation
Zhou, Min. Contemporary Chinese America Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2009.
The American dream, a mere two words that pushed many of the Chinese immigrants and immigrants alike. Some argue that it’s dead, it’s just a ghost of what it used to be, and to be chasing an empty dream is uncanny.
Despite the fact, it’s not the empty dream that drives my family forward, it’s their ambition and the will for a better life.
I think we have transformed into what my parents envisioned for us, something that my grandparents wanted. Looking back at my trip back to China 2012, despite only living in the U.S. for a few years, I was at awe at the different standard of living. The house that used to seem so big and full of comfort now seems small, dusty, and rather uninviting. The huge park next to the elementary school lined jasmine tree seems smaller than my memories. I looked at the elementary school students leaving the school building as the school day is over. They stood near the gate of the school, wearing their standardized uniform and eagerly waiting for their parents. The bright red scarf around their necks strikes my eye, bold, not only the color but its communist symbolization as well. Growing up in China in a household with grandparents that still believe in the words of Mao, has been a particularly taboo subject as I do not share the same sentiment. As a patriarchal society, my father and mother never once defied him but instead tolerate his values. Whenever I visited my paternal grandfather (爷爷), the small but undismissible framed portrait of Mao always lingered in my sight. The form of government that we now look down upon, placed him to a respectable job as a teacher, and thus decades later, when we were capable enough, placed my family and I in the U.S.
I was named 银河(yínhé), meaning galaxy in Chinese, almost two decades ago by my grandfather, to strive for the stars and beyond. In my quest of pursuing of higher education, I have strayed further and further away from him and his values.
The Class Cook Book
The class cook book is simple yet brings along of characteristics from everyone’s cultural background through something we all enjoy — food. I think by doing this exercise, we discover that some recipes, no matter how simple they are, can spark joy in our lives. In a broader sense it represents our culture and identity yet in a smaller scale it all meant something different to us individually. There is nothing that brings a warm feeling to your heart more than the delicious, aromatic food that your mother serve on the table. Everyone has their stable and a dish that’s a specialty to their family, and by passing it down, we preserve our culture and identity in a way that does not require words. My dish I presented was congee (粥), congee is essentially rice porridge and it’s a popular east Asian breakfast item and a stable in Cantonese households. It is often eaten plain with side dishes, but most of the time additional ingredients such as meat, fish, and flavorings are added while preparing the congee. It is most often served as a meal on its own, especially for persons who are ill. My parents would always make me congee when I am sick and unable to go to school. Even till this day in college, my parents would often offer to make me this simple yet delicious concoction dish when I complain about getting a cold. It wasn’t something they learned on a recipe book, the recipe resides in their heart as their parents had made it for them just like how their parents’ parents had and so forth for generations.
At its heart, congee is an ultra-simple dish. Simmer a small amount of rice in a large amount of water for several hours, and you have congee. It’s silky, creamy, and best eaten with a spoon.
This dish is a stable in many Cantonese households. It is also often served at Dim Sum, a Cantonese full tea brunch consist of small plates, which my family and I went every weekend while we were living in China. It’s a dish that you share with your family while eat and share the freshly brewed tea.
Using Personal Narratives to Reposition and Reimagine ‘the Chinese American Experience’ in American Elistory and Culture.
Bodemer, Margaret B. “Using Personal Narratives to Reposition and Reimagine ‘the Chinese American Experience’ in American Elistory and Culture.” Chinese America: History & Perspectives, Jan. 2018, pp. 75–80.
It was a strenuous task for me to trace back my history and lineage. There weren’t many records, if any, at all. Even my last name, the characters that’re supposed to place you into a specific tribe, proved to be rather useless in the research,. My last name Huang(黄) ranked the as the 7th most common surname ,with estimated at more than 30 million, in China and 2 million of overseas Chinese. Much of my family’s history and identity is cultivated by traditions, personal narratives, and old, faded photos in worn out photo albums.
But that itself is useful in a way, the study of personal narratives multiplies the voices that reach us from the past. I was able to connect with my lineage in a way thats more than words, but texture, taste, color, and the other experiences alike that brings me closer in its own way, despite the lack of written facts or documents.
In a way, I am glad that my family isn’t on Ancestry.com and glad that I struggled to find any documents of my ancestor, because I get to interpret my own history and understand it with full sentiments of how it was narrated from my parents to me. Histories never capture all of the diversity of individual experiences, thus psychologists and other social scientists use oral history and life history interviews to generate further data and test hypotheses.
As I am now surrounded by so many different perspectives and backgrounds, I began to see where I stand. As Bodemer states that “identity formation, psychologists tell us, is an essential element of young adults’ maturation and so resonates with college students across racial and ethnic boundaries.” And we’re all“resisting assimilation and stereotyping and finding one’s own identity.”
The Chinese Mother’s American Dream
Fischer, Karin. “The Chinese Mother’s American Dream.” Chronicle.com
Facing the difficulties of immigration, many families overseas choose to send their child instead to chase that dream. The decision they made to send a child across the globe “in search of a better education and a better life is one fused with hope and fear, spurred by motivations that are complicated and sometimes contradictory”. It maybe dissatisfaction with China, the temptation of the U.S., the child’s overall potential, the parents’ resolve, or all of the factors combined. It’s the American dream of the Chinese parent, in a way, for their child to achieve what they could never have.
In many ways, parents in China are facing the same problems as their counterparts in the far west when their child began college, whether it’s choosing the practical major, the affordability of colleges, or choosing the right institution. On the other hand, for many Chinese parents, “the choice of an American education for their child — and almost always their only child — is not just a financial investment. It’s a political maneuver, a personal sacrifice, a bet on greater opportunity abroad.”
This proves further that in the present, the spirits of the American dream was kept alive as countless parents continue to send their child overseas to chase that dream in place of them. And that would be the case for my parents if not for the VISA finally went through after 19 years awaiting. They had planned to make my aunt my guardian, or send me abroad to study despite the huge sum of money that would take in addition to their existing fight for a VISA.
Overall, my identity and my push factors stem from the same root. It’s the will to survive and thrive, despite leaving one’s home land like my grandmother or my aunt, that was passed generations to come. As the only child and the heart and soul of my parents, their will to send me to a better and more opportunity filled environment, in which I was oblivious of, even if it means they won’t be able to be with me and unable to see the place in which they anticipated for almost two decades. I have seldom pondered how lucky I am to be here and often neglect my parents’ efforts. But as I am here now, I embody their years of effort. Even though I don’t recall “home” like my parents and grandparents do, the memories which define us are kept alive in my head. There’s no place I’d rather be.
