What Kind of Chinese Are You
How appropriate that approximately three weeks before the first day of the Lunar New Year, I finally figure out what kind of Chinese I am. Having done this explains much about why I could never understand the long beloved American stereotype of a Chinese woman being ultra-compliant, subservient, and exceedingly willing to please. The opinionated, strong-willed women in my family threw those images to the fire, and I watched them burn to a loud crisp each time I heard them express unedited joy and anger, stand their ground during a heated argument, and each time I winced in pain as one of their strong, cockroach-killing hands gripped me by the wrist and admonished me for unacceptable behavior.
I am the descendant of Toisanese people.
Not that of trendy Cantonese and swan-necked Mandarin speakers from the well-to-do big cities, but of people who spent their days under unrelenting sun to work the land. Also known as "peasants" to the cosmopolitan folk.
I spent a few years wondering why the Cantonese I was so desperately trying to learn only sounded faintly familiar but did not quite resemble the words I heard after school as a kid at Grandma's little railroad apartment on Bernard Street. Lacking the crisp, clean sounds of Cantonese and the sweetly melodic intonations of Mandarin, Toisanese is a rough village dialect that makes most conversations sound as if the participants are preparing to engage in a battle to the death. Eye contact is fierce and posture tends forward, as if one can't wait for the other person to hear what one has to say. Hand gestures slice through the air definitively and defiantly in short, intensive bursts as the speaker becomes ever more sure of the validity of his or her points made throughout a conversation. With all of this ardent, concentrated effort in articulating any number of sentiments, spittle will fly. And it does. Freely. A tool for survival, it's been written that the fervency of the Toisanese language arises from the need to stay alive. To warn of imminent, life-threatening danger imposed by man and nature. In more modern, diluted terms, speaking with a Toisanese is like sitting in the front row of an Off-Broadway play - where one may experience all of the spittle, but not quite all of the passion.
Jay Wong always returns from his frequent trips to China complaining about the country chicks from Toisan with whom occasional well-meaning relatives will try to set him up, and how they annoy him with their weird spitty language, bad teeth, and what Japanese refer to as "daikon-ashi" - also affectionately known to Americans as "cankles." Well, those legs weren't meant for sitting around a fancy courtyard all day under sheaths of finely woven silk - that sort of lifestyle was for the lithe, porcelain-skinned girls of the North whose survival did not depend on daily dealings with the earth.
Now I know why my father's Cantonese is so bad. It's not Cantonese. It's Toisanese. A language of peasant farmers. A language of perseverance. A language of the uneducated. A language of diligence. A language of survivors.
Such as it is when one is a bonafide ABC. Sometimes understanding the intricacies of where you come from, having been lost for decades under the cloak of assimilation, come to light just at the time when they will make the most sense.
I am the descendant of Toisanese people.
Not that of trendy Cantonese and swan-necked Mandarin speakers from the well-to-do big cities, but of people who spent their days under unrelenting sun to work the land. Also known as "peasants" to the cosmopolitan folk.
I spent a few years wondering why the Cantonese I was so desperately trying to learn only sounded faintly familiar but did not quite resemble the words I heard after school as a kid at Grandma's little railroad apartment on Bernard Street. Lacking the crisp, clean sounds of Cantonese and the sweetly melodic intonations of Mandarin, Toisanese is a rough village dialect that makes most conversations sound as if the participants are preparing to engage in a battle to the death. Eye contact is fierce and posture tends forward, as if one can't wait for the other person to hear what one has to say. Hand gestures slice through the air definitively and defiantly in short, intensive bursts as the speaker becomes ever more sure of the validity of his or her points made throughout a conversation. With all of this ardent, concentrated effort in articulating any number of sentiments, spittle will fly. And it does. Freely. A tool for survival, it's been written that the fervency of the Toisanese language arises from the need to stay alive. To warn of imminent, life-threatening danger imposed by man and nature. In more modern, diluted terms, speaking with a Toisanese is like sitting in the front row of an Off-Broadway play - where one may experience all of the spittle, but not quite all of the passion.
Jay Wong always returns from his frequent trips to China complaining about the country chicks from Toisan with whom occasional well-meaning relatives will try to set him up, and how they annoy him with their weird spitty language, bad teeth, and what Japanese refer to as "daikon-ashi" - also affectionately known to Americans as "cankles." Well, those legs weren't meant for sitting around a fancy courtyard all day under sheaths of finely woven silk - that sort of lifestyle was for the lithe, porcelain-skinned girls of the North whose survival did not depend on daily dealings with the earth.
Now I know why my father's Cantonese is so bad. It's not Cantonese. It's Toisanese. A language of peasant farmers. A language of perseverance. A language of the uneducated. A language of diligence. A language of survivors.
Such as it is when one is a bonafide ABC. Sometimes understanding the intricacies of where you come from, having been lost for decades under the cloak of assimilation, come to light just at the time when they will make the most sense.