Perfect Chinese Daughters
Preface:
I am a second-generation Chinese American who’s relatively assimilated into American culture while still relatively Confucian at heart. I’m fortunate enough to be more or less fluent in Mandarin Chinese (enough to hold a limited conversation, not enough to get into debates) with decent reading/writing skills when it comes to Simplified Chinese, less so with Traditional. I grew up in the Midwest, where most of the Chinese families knew each other, and go to school in California, where there are Asian Americans all over the place.
I’m writing this post for the third Asian Women Blog Carnival.
I’ve meant to submit posts to the first and second Asian Women Blog Carnivals only I was unable to do so at the last minute. This has been for a variety of reasons. A large part is that I’m lazy and I procrastinate. I blink, and the deadline’s passed and I’m too late. A decent part is because I have many things I want to talk about, many events in my life and personal details I want to lay out before you and say, “This is what I have been through; am I the only one?” It is hard for me to choose just one.
And then there’s when I look at what I’ve planned and realized that I’ve revealed too much and I’m not comfortable with opening up quite so much.
This is not what I meant to write about when I started out, but it is something I have meant to write about for a while, so it will have to do.
The Perfect Chinese Daughter Syndrome
I imagine most Chinese American kids like myself know what the Perfect Chinese Son or Daughter is. Surely it's not just something I've observed.
It's the child who gets good grades in school, performs well at math, music, and/or debate competitions (more "and" than "or"), who gets into and goes to a good college (and by "good college" here I really mean Ivies + Stanford, MIT, and maybe Northwestern-calibre schools but that's kind of pushing it) with some sort of scholarship. After you graduate, it's about getting a job that pays highly so your parents can say, "I feel so inadequate, you know, my son just graduated from undergraduate and he's making more than I did after ten years of working and a higher degree." [Real quote, paraphrased and translated.]
It's about being amazing enough that your parents don't even need to brag about you because everyone in the community's heard about you already.
I should note in passing that in this aspect I've relatively failed because my school isn't good enough, my grades aren't good enough, my major isn't practical enough, and my post-graduation plans are currently nonexistent. (I don't mean this as a condemnation of myself, but merely an assessment of where I stand compared to the hordes of other Chinese American children whose parents my parents know.)
But that's only one half of the Perfect Chinese Son/Daughter role.
There's also the Manners.
That's when you put on the super-polite face and whip out your best Chinese and make nice with the parents. That's when you say 奶奶好, 阿姨好, and do your Confucian thing by helping them through doors and asking after their health and their family and their kids. (There are other markers of respect, like offering them food first, and asking them to make decisions and choices, and never disagreeing with them.) It's when you field questions about your accomplishments with grace and ease, with the right amount of modesty, turning away compliments just the right way. It's about turning down gifts exactly the right number of times and knowing exactly what to say each time, and knowing how to actually turn down a gift if necessary, and how to gracefully give in.
This facade can be harder to don than a "Business Professional" attitude because this one requires fast thinking in Chinese in a culture that I've always been well-versed but never fluent in. I know that I should turn down the gift at least twice more, but somehow I never manage to make it past the first two times. I know I should compliment the food, but my vocabulary limits me to the most basic "阿姨,你做的菜太好吃了."
I'm actually relatively decent at this aspect. Not as good as some I've seen (such as the Perfect Chinese Daughter (tm) I met this past weekend who was simply amazing at wrapping the Chinese adults around her finger -- though granted, it was her home turf and these were parents she'd known all her life), but I can be quite charming in Chinese if I want to be, if I keep up the meaningless prattle and crack a few jokes.
But that's not all. If you're a Perfect Chinese Son, you've finished your job and can sit back and relax now but the Perfect Chinese Daughter needs to go that extra mile:
Cleaning.
This ranges from offering to help clean up to putting your dish in the sink to washing it and putting it away to washing all of the dishes in the sink. It's helping wipe down the table, offering to help wash the fruit, helping to clean up, helping to set up, helping out.
In short, everything I hate.
My mother's classmates in China were joking about how they wished they had a daughter because when their niece visited, the niece helped clean up everything, and was so much more helpful than a son.
Then they turned to me and asked if I was a help around the house to my mom.
I said, "No."
And that's the truth. This is the one part of the Perfect Chinese Daughter Role I won't give any effort. I take full advantage of the fact that people usually say, "Oh, I'm fine, you go along" when you ask if they need help, so I can seem helpful when in reality I know they won't take me up on it. I dawdle when possible; I only do what I have to.
This is where I fall short. And I'm okay with that.
--
Endnote: I should probably explain that I spent this past weekend with my dad's old classmates and their children and it was perhaps the first time in my life I'd been so out-performed by so many Perfect Chinese Daughters. And that kind of inspired this.
I am a second-generation Chinese American who’s relatively assimilated into American culture while still relatively Confucian at heart. I’m fortunate enough to be more or less fluent in Mandarin Chinese (enough to hold a limited conversation, not enough to get into debates) with decent reading/writing skills when it comes to Simplified Chinese, less so with Traditional. I grew up in the Midwest, where most of the Chinese families knew each other, and go to school in California, where there are Asian Americans all over the place.
I’m writing this post for the third Asian Women Blog Carnival.
I’ve meant to submit posts to the first and second Asian Women Blog Carnivals only I was unable to do so at the last minute. This has been for a variety of reasons. A large part is that I’m lazy and I procrastinate. I blink, and the deadline’s passed and I’m too late. A decent part is because I have many things I want to talk about, many events in my life and personal details I want to lay out before you and say, “This is what I have been through; am I the only one?” It is hard for me to choose just one.
And then there’s when I look at what I’ve planned and realized that I’ve revealed too much and I’m not comfortable with opening up quite so much.
This is not what I meant to write about when I started out, but it is something I have meant to write about for a while, so it will have to do.
The Perfect Chinese Daughter Syndrome
I imagine most Chinese American kids like myself know what the Perfect Chinese Son or Daughter is. Surely it's not just something I've observed.
It's the child who gets good grades in school, performs well at math, music, and/or debate competitions (more "and" than "or"), who gets into and goes to a good college (and by "good college" here I really mean Ivies + Stanford, MIT, and maybe Northwestern-calibre schools but that's kind of pushing it) with some sort of scholarship. After you graduate, it's about getting a job that pays highly so your parents can say, "I feel so inadequate, you know, my son just graduated from undergraduate and he's making more than I did after ten years of working and a higher degree." [Real quote, paraphrased and translated.]
It's about being amazing enough that your parents don't even need to brag about you because everyone in the community's heard about you already.
I should note in passing that in this aspect I've relatively failed because my school isn't good enough, my grades aren't good enough, my major isn't practical enough, and my post-graduation plans are currently nonexistent. (I don't mean this as a condemnation of myself, but merely an assessment of where I stand compared to the hordes of other Chinese American children whose parents my parents know.)
But that's only one half of the Perfect Chinese Son/Daughter role.
There's also the Manners.
That's when you put on the super-polite face and whip out your best Chinese and make nice with the parents. That's when you say 奶奶好, 阿姨好, and do your Confucian thing by helping them through doors and asking after their health and their family and their kids. (There are other markers of respect, like offering them food first, and asking them to make decisions and choices, and never disagreeing with them.) It's when you field questions about your accomplishments with grace and ease, with the right amount of modesty, turning away compliments just the right way. It's about turning down gifts exactly the right number of times and knowing exactly what to say each time, and knowing how to actually turn down a gift if necessary, and how to gracefully give in.
This facade can be harder to don than a "Business Professional" attitude because this one requires fast thinking in Chinese in a culture that I've always been well-versed but never fluent in. I know that I should turn down the gift at least twice more, but somehow I never manage to make it past the first two times. I know I should compliment the food, but my vocabulary limits me to the most basic "阿姨,你做的菜太好吃了."
I'm actually relatively decent at this aspect. Not as good as some I've seen (such as the Perfect Chinese Daughter (tm) I met this past weekend who was simply amazing at wrapping the Chinese adults around her finger -- though granted, it was her home turf and these were parents she'd known all her life), but I can be quite charming in Chinese if I want to be, if I keep up the meaningless prattle and crack a few jokes.
But that's not all. If you're a Perfect Chinese Son, you've finished your job and can sit back and relax now but the Perfect Chinese Daughter needs to go that extra mile:
Cleaning.
This ranges from offering to help clean up to putting your dish in the sink to washing it and putting it away to washing all of the dishes in the sink. It's helping wipe down the table, offering to help wash the fruit, helping to clean up, helping to set up, helping out.
In short, everything I hate.
My mother's classmates in China were joking about how they wished they had a daughter because when their niece visited, the niece helped clean up everything, and was so much more helpful than a son.
Then they turned to me and asked if I was a help around the house to my mom.
I said, "No."
And that's the truth. This is the one part of the Perfect Chinese Daughter Role I won't give any effort. I take full advantage of the fact that people usually say, "Oh, I'm fine, you go along" when you ask if they need help, so I can seem helpful when in reality I know they won't take me up on it. I dawdle when possible; I only do what I have to.
This is where I fall short. And I'm okay with that.
--
Endnote: I should probably explain that I spent this past weekend with my dad's old classmates and their children and it was perhaps the first time in my life I'd been so out-performed by so many Perfect Chinese Daughters. And that kind of inspired this.