Bridging the Gap: A Chinese Immigrant in America & An Expatriate in China
Growing up Chinese with immigrant parents in the US meant there were many moments in my child-and-adulthood when I struggled to fit in. We emigrated from China when I was just under three years old, and while I don’t remember much of those first years in the US, I know I didn’t have any friends because we moved around so often and because I didn’t speak English.
At eight years old, my parents sent me back to China to live with my grandparents so I could relearn Mandarin — I’d forgotten my native tongue almost as quickly as I’d learned English at the age of five. My grandparents were strangers to me. I arrived in Shanghai, greeted by two adults, foreign to me, whom I had no relationship with and attachments to; it felt like I’d been kidnapped.
We drove through the cramped, chaotic streets of Shanghai littered with people, bicycles and trash. I cried myself to sleep every night for two months and protested to my parents, in letters, about how tiny and crowded everything was — from my room, to the apartment, to the streets — and how everyone, everything, every place was so disgustingly dirty. I begged them to let me come home.
