Shoulda Known

So... I had this great idea for family photos since we haven’t had one with my mom and dad since almost four years ago, before I had my third and fourth child.  I was about five months post partum and we were going to go visit her in a week once school is out for my kids.  I thought she’d be excited and thankful for my brilliant idea, and I sincerely thought it was a great idea! After all, Asians LOVE taking photos!  

"What do you think about family photos when we come in May, Mom?"

“Well, maybe we should waiting until you lose the baby weight.”  That was her very as a matter of fact response. 

I wasn’t offended.  I think I chuckled before agreeing with her suggestion.  She must have sensed I was a bit offended... because then she said, "well, think about it, these photos will be FOREVER, so of course you have to be skinny for it."  

2013: our last family photo..
includes my brother's ex who Mom still hopes will become her other daughter...

Oh Mom.  

So honest.  Sometimes too much so.  Overbearing.  Almost always so.  Difficult.  Never have I known life otherwise.  You know, when it's your mom, you just learn to live with it, to adapt, to compromise, okay who am I kidding?! to give in!  Love your mom and be a good daughter.  

It doesn’t help that my mom is Chinese, always justifying every odd rule, too strict regulation, or completely insane input as her simply being Chinese.

From a young age, my mom repeatedly reminded me of my duty to be the good Chinese daughter.  I know because I am to respect my seniors, which means I loudly acknowledge all adults in my presence with the proper Chinese greeting, even if it means once on my own accord, and then once again when my mom tells me to in front of them.  I know every stranger with black hair and yellow skin who speaks Chinese words is an “auntie” or an “uncle” because that is the polite and right way to greet someone.  I know to respect everyone older than me because I have spent hours burning incense, folded paper gold bars, paper money for the dead, and even miniature paper homes with furniture to be burnt to honor and respect my dead ancestors, and then bowing in front of an elaborate spread of fruit, steamed buns, chicken, and cooked greens by their framed photos.  I know because I have done every good Chinese girl activity from playing an instrument to doing Chinese knotting to traditional Chinese dancing with ribbons, fans, and even chopsticks.  I have abided by the expectations of good grades (even in PE!), strict rules (no dating while in high school... in college, it just became a blurred non-sequitur and then all of a sudden, it was when are you going to get married?!) and endured.  I’ve grown up always feeling like I’m never good enough, that there’s always something more I can do, someone I can be better than, and somewhere I ought to be instead of what I’m doing, who I am and where I am. 

And yet I love and express extreme gratitude to my mom.  I’m not sure where I’d be without her.  She’s one of my best friends.  I talk to her almost everyday.  And yet, when my skin is breaking out in a heat rash, I know to avoid video chat.  When she tells me I need to start doing chin exercises (because I'm not holding my ipad or iphone high up and the angle is all wrong), I just laugh it off.

I’m grateful for my mom.  I’m not always happy with her, in fact more often than not, I’m furious.  I don’t get it.  I don’t get her.  She fails to show any form of logic or reason and I just don’t get it.  But there’s also a large amount of respect for the effort and dedication to her Chinese ways, albeit not all correct, all taught me something. 

The difficulty for me was not realizing I was any different since I grew up in a sheltered Asian community.  For the most part, all my friends were Asian immigrant children as well.  The few times I befriended Americanized Asians and white people, the cultural disparity was shockingly obvious and painfully scarring.  This is normally when my relationship with my mom is magnified as one step away from a bi-polar breakdown.  Despite her teachings being the backbone of sound principle and judgment, tradition and family, they also became the reminders of being different, insecure, and alone.

As a grown adult, I work with a lot of similar immigrant children, coaching them in public speaking.  Along the way, I find myself mentoring them, reminding them that their immigrant parents mean well and the non-emotional Chinese ways of love through over bearing criticism and blunt feedback (you looking fat, why do you grades being so bad?) are not truly representative of them or their intentions.  I know our American friends would not understand the mild eating disorders and body image insecurities our immigrant parents have instilled in us.  I know our American friends would also not understand the unwavering financial support our parents continuously provide despite us being grown adults or the brand new cars they bought us at the young irresponsible age of sixteen.  Love is defined differently by Chinese moms.  It’s providing a meal, an education, material goods, and advising you on your shortcomings, no matter how hurtfully honest.  My mom and I hug when we see each other now, but it’s not reminiscent of my childhood nor is it comfortable or familiar.  But when my mom buys me facials, nice shoes, or takes me out to a nice meal, I feel warmth, a sense of belonging and sweet outpouring of love. 

I have no regrets or resentment towards my mom, only love and appreciation for her efforts and awkward navigation through our cultural attempts at assimilating to the American culture.   

饅頭 (Man Tou) Chinese Steamed Bun Recipe

I have been wanting to learn how to make man tou for the longest time.  When I went away to college, it was one of the few staple frozen items I dared try to squeeze into my dorm fridge (ice cream just doesn't fit!)  Whenever I was feeling homesick,  I'd take one out of the dorm fridge, microwave it for 30 seconds, and then eat away my sadness in what I'd like to describe as fluffy heavenly Chinese wonderfulness.

Flash forward to my current life with kids.  My three kids absolutely LOVE the soft tenderness of man tou and we often come home from the Chinese supermarket with some frozen ones.  They're always bummed when we run out, and we have been known to wipe clean the little basket of man tou at the local Chinatown Buffet whenever we care to visit.

I just knew I had to learn how to make man tou at home.  It was the easy and obvious answer, plus I'm always searching for ways to preserve my Chinese culture and introduce my kids to more Chinese traditions and food, this seemed like an obvious thing I should learn.  I hesitated only because well... I'm really not very good at cooking to begin with... chances were it wouldn't even turn out.  Bleh.

Well, with Chinese New Year coming up, I finally decided to get off my slothful Chinese butt and try making them!  Plus, I was too lazy to drive with my three kids to the local Chinese super market.

I'm still trying to figure out the elevation adjustments with living in Salt Lake City, but these turned out pretty dang fantastic.  I may or may not have consumed three in one sitting since I am starting another round of the Fast Metabolism Diet tomorrow...

Ingredients
wet ingredients:
1/2 cup warm milk
1 cup warm water
T active yeast
2 T vegetable oil
dry ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of unbleached flour (or bleached if you want it super duper white) - I just kept pouring flour on until the mixture became dough-y.
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix wet ingredients starting in order listed, mix and let sit for yeast to activate
Meanwhile, mix dry ingredients.
Slowly incorporate the wet mixture into the dry mixture, until it becomes a ball of dough.  Knead for about 5 minutes, cover in a bowl and let sit for 1 hour to rise.
Knead again for about 2 minutes, let sit for another 1 hour to continue rising.
Roll out dough with a pin, then roll it up, cut about 1 inch pieces, put in steamer lined with parchment paper and continue to let rise for 30 minutes.
Steam for about 10-12 minutes until cooked.  Remove lid slightly to let steam escape but continue to let cool for another 5-10 minutes.
Snap a photo of the beautiful creation made, then proceed to consume in one sitting.

I actually used this video.. but I'm not going to lie, her accent really bugged me and made it hard for me to repeat - so I'm sharing her video and detailing the recipe above so I can just link to my own blog for future reference.  Enjoy!

I Wanted to Be White

For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be white.  I blame much of that on my own ignorance and assumptions based on watching TV and just the lack of Asians in the media.  I can recall the moment I watched Boy Meets World and an asian girl was on the show.  I'd later find out she was actually half, but even that was sufficient for me.  My best friends all felt the same.  She was the most beautiful Asian girl we had ever seen.  To this day, she's the only true celebrity I follow on Instagram and I still absolutely adore her (it's Lindsay Price for inquiring minds, she'd later go onto Beverly Hills 90210 also).

I think part of the desire to be white rang even louder for me because I was so Chinese in every sense.  I learned Chinese as my first language, we watched Chinese soap operas and sitcoms at home, and we ate Chinese food every single night.  My immigrant parents had moved us from St. Louis to the suburbs of Los Angeles in an effort to be with more like-minded, black hair, brown eyed, Chinese peoples.  Even when we ate out, it was mostly at a Chinese restaurant, where they cooked fancier stuff like lobster noodles, crabs, and fried dim sum or other delicacies that my own mom would not waste her time in the kitchen on.  Looking into the white person's world was so foreign to me.  The only taste I'd get was an occasional spaghetti from Bob's Big Boy or a hamburger from McDonald's.  It wouldn't be until I was older that we'd go to an American restaurant (or non-Chinese) every Friday as a family to venture out into the world of food from other cultures.

The other thing was white people seemed to do fun stuff like go to the beach or amusement parks or camping or cabins for the weekend with their families all the time.  My parents definitely took us out a lot on the weekends, but we did a lot of swap meets, malls, and a few parks here and there.  They took me to Disneyland when I was about 2, and we took my brother and cousins once when I was in the sixth grade.  I don't think my own kids can count the number of times we've taken them, but it's not because my parents didn't care, they just didn't find it as fun as we do now.  It was always kind of a drag for them, they still did it though, and later as we grew older, they'd always willingly chauffeur 45 minutes times four to shuttle us to Six Flags or Disneyland with our friends.  We ventured to the beach a few times with family growing up on vacation, but it wasn't a weekend thing, more like a special occasion thing.  The first time I went camping was with Andy after we were married.

I get it, it's expensive and a lot of work, and to be honest, none of it is truly associated with the fact that my parents weren't really American, it was probably more of a do we have enough money to do that or they didn't think it was as important as us doing piano, dance and taekwondo lessons, but as a kid, I just assumed it was because those were American past times that we weren't accustomed to.  It didn't help that my other immigrant children friends all had similar experiences.

Luckily, as I've grown up, matured, and gained new perspective on my childhood as an immigrant child, I've come to appreciate and be grateful for the different experiences.  Despite not loving Chinese school every weekend for 3 hours, I'm glad I speak pretty good basic Mandarin and can communicate in secrecy with other Mandarin speakers as I choose.  I'm grateful for my open and inviting palate and love for different textures, trained by weekends of odd dim sum delicacies like pig's blood, pig's ear, chicken's feet, and stomach lining.  I'm grateful for the way my parents pushed me to excel, even if it was by traditional Chinese means.  I wonder what it would have been like to do a sport growing up.  Or to not get grounded and spanked for getting a C in PE in the seventh grade.  Or to have parents who might say, "grades aren't everything."  But really, it's not so bad.

I still sometimes want blonde hair and blue eyes.  But there's hair dye and colored contacts that can solve that.  In the meantime, I'm grateful for my black eyes and brown hair, but moreover, for my Chinese culture and experiences.  And for my love of fried intestines.  I was a bit in shock when I realized they were actual intestines, growing up I always used the Chinese name and never really thought to translate to English.  I didn't know what actual intestines (in Chinese did), but when I connected the two.. I was a tad bit grossed out by it.  Really I was just sickened by the raw white ones we grilled at an AYCE BBQ with my Asian friends, the fried ones already cut thinly and eaten with salt?  Awesome still!!

The Struggle Was Real

#TheStruggleWasReal #ChineseMomSay #immigrantchild #foblife

One of those uncomfortable “trying to be more American” items I can happily add to my list of Things I Will Teach My Daughters is, “Shave armpit hair upon puberty.” 

I didn’t have a lot of non-immigrant Asian friends.  The only one I did have could never understand my family background and upbringing.  In sixth grade, she invited me to stay for dinner at her house as we finished up a school project.  I was shocked.  It was unheard of to not eat with your own family for dinner.  We might not have sung songs together as a family in the car on roadtrips or embraced in family group hugs, but we did eat dinner together every single night at the table without any distractions except each other.  I was intimidated at first, but I asked my mom anyway, chances are she’d say yes since the school project would commence after dinner.  Plus, she was impressed with my friend because her dad was a surgeon general and they all spoke perfect English without accents.  We barely knew any doctors though we knew many parents who expected their children to grow up and become doctors, so this was a good and impressive relationship to have.  My mom agreed. 

When it was time for dinner, I half expected us to gather around a large table, hold hands, and bow our heads in grace like I had seen the white people do on television.  I was sorely disappointed when I realized their family didn’t even eat dinner together at the table much.  Her mom had prepared dinner and was upstairs somewhere, her dad was still working, her sister was with a friend around the house, and the two of us sat with our dinner and the TV on.  The television!  In our household, my mom had strict rules about television watching.  It was prohibited from Monday through Friday morning.  Once school was out Friday, I was glued to the television until 11 PM.  I’d record Saturday morning shows and cartoons while I was at Chinese school, watch it in the afternoon, and continue my television binging on Sunday.  So here at my friend’s home, watching television on a school night as we ate dinner was unbelievable.  I couldn’t flipping believe it.  What a life she had!  Then she offered me dessert.  In our family, dessert was normally some fruit and we rarely had real sweets like American cookies or cake.  We went out a lot for Thrifty ice cream, especially since it was next door to a coin laundry we used a lot when I was younger, but that was the extent of our dessert experience.  It wasn’t anyone’s birthday, it wasn’t a dim sum morning either (so many sweets like egg tarts and mango pudding at dim sum!), so the idea of having dessert like the characters on television shows I binged off of and lived vicariously through on the weekend, was absolutely glorious. 

It was really fun to have an Americanized friend.  And if it weren’t for her, I might still be walking around with a lot, and I mean a LOT, of armpit hair. 

We were in the sixth grade and during class one day, I raised my hand to answer a question. I was wearing a black and beige knit tank top with black cotton shorts.  It was one of my "cooler" and American outfits we had gotten at Ross, not some hand me down from Taiwan.  My friend gave me a look, one I thought meant you have the wrong answer but I’d later learn at lunch that it was a look intended to say, What the freak is that under your arms?    

At lunch, she had to explain it to me in detail, and I tried my best to feign indifference instead of ignorance as she asked me about my armpit hair.  I think she knew I was clueless, but the little bit of pride I still had clung on to the fact that it just didn't matter to me, but perhaps it should.  I was grateful for her advice, but also mortified.  Had anyone else seen?  It was as if everyone was suddenly whispering and pointing fingers at my hairy armpits.  I grew smaller form the mere thought of it... I was absolutely mortified.  Also.. I was mad.  Why didn't I know?!

My mom had no idea when I came home with the news.   For the first time in my life, I was embarrassed by my mother’s lack of knowledge and American pop culture.  I resented the Chinese soap operas we watched together and all the rice we ate every night.  How could she let me be the pit of everyone’s jokes?  Why didn’t she know I was supposed to shave my pits?  What else was I completely clueless about because my mother was an immigrant?! 

To make matters worse, she told me I couldn't shave.  There was nothing wrong with me, armpit hair was natural.  She even showed me hers, and then said, "see, it's normal to leave it long."  Is it Mom?!  Is it?!  I'm not sure!  Until today, I didn't know any different.  For a second, I thought maybe she was right, but I couldn't shake the lecture I had received at lunch, the over emphasis at how wrong it was to have armpit hair and how necessary it was for me to shave it immediately.  They made it seem like it was a diseased thing I had to get antibiotics for asap.  I might have only been 11 years old, but I sensed they may have been onto something.  At the same time, I wanted my mom to be on board, I had to have her on board, there was this sinking feeling that if she wasn't in agreement with me, I would always be bothered.  

I argued with her.  In many ways, the difficult of being the immigrant child helped me develop a lot of the negotiation skills I still carry with me today.  Silver lining, eh?  

“Asians like us don’t needing to shave,” she told me. “We don’t having lots of hair.”  

My sad eleven year old puberty infested armpits claimed otherwise.  Though I had started applying Teen Spirit the summer before the sixth grade, thinking I was so American and using the brands just like I had seen in Seventeen magazine (years more mature than me!), I missed the memo on a clean armpit free of hair first.  

I persisted.  I begged.  I reasoned.  I told her I’d come home with straight A+s instead of just As.  I told her I’d start tennis since she had been bugging me about it since Michael Chang became a thing.  The violin I quit a few years ago?  I’ll pick it back up!  Anything to shave my armpit hair!  

She didn't believe me and she couldn't be bribed, nor would she even listen to me.  A few times, I paused, afraid she might raise her hand and grab the rubber slippers and lay one on my butt.  I'd continue once I knew she wasn't about to hit me.  The struggle was also within me.  Part of me wanted to be the obedient good Chinese daughter that always received praise from the elders, but part of me just couldn't patiently obey anymore.  I didn't want to be laughed at.  I didn't want to be the fobby girl that didn't know any better.  I wanted to be cool.  I wanted to fit in.  I wanted to be American!! 

“What’s next?  Your legs too?” she asked me.  “No, never,” I told her.  “Good, because it’s forbidden and any good Chinese daughter not shaving her legs!” she said very clearly with a tone of doom if I ever chose to disobey her. 

I knew my mom would never concede to shaving my legs, but there was some hope with the armpit.  It would just take some time. 

There’s this weird Chinese superstition that shaving a baby’s head at one month will guarantee a full head of hair.  All my Chinese girl cousins had the same buzzed hair before we were one.  That same logic was applied to the fact that shaving my armpit or legs meant more hair would come back in its place.   It took me a week of begging and refusing to wear tank tops to school, but I remember it felt like an eternity.  She finally relented and told me I would be allowed to shave my armpits, but only if I conceded to using my dad’s shaving cream and razor with the caveat that if she ever found out I shaved my legs, she would hit me until I died (a phrase often used by Chinese parenting, not meant to be literal, it makes us all respond accordingly).  #thestrugglewasreal

Tears streamed down my face as I used my father’s Barbisal and blue hand held razor for the first time.  I remember staring at the mirror, not quite sure how to do it and wishing I had someone to ask.  I told myself then and there, I’d teach my daughter how to shave her armpit hair when the day came.  This would never happen to my child. I would always be supportive of her desire to shave armpit hair.  Always. 

It's a funny story when I look back at it now, but at the time, the emotions were a lot more raw and real.  I know my mom still has some influence on me, especially since years later, I've still only shaved my legs about 20 times my entire life.  To be honest, it's because the hair is so light and thin, nothing at all like my armpit which would endure surgery to remove a cyst, multiple ingrown hairs, and three even four follicles of hair in a pore.  The doc who removed my cyst told me I should never shave my armpits (guess mommy dearest was right), but instead have it waxed or professionally removed by lasers.  Yes.. it's that bad.  Perhaps that's also why it was such a big deal when my friend saw my armpit full of hair back then.  I suppose my other immigrant child friends never had any issue because their armpits always had light typical Asian hair, light and hard to see, much like the ones on my legs. 

 I often wonder why I never asked my likeminded immigrant child friends about their armpits.  I think it's because I was too embarrassed.  I asked my BFF once about how she knew to shave her pits and legs.  She learned from the magazine ads in YM and Seventeen which seemed to convey it was necessary, and she also can't remember her mom shaving.  In fact, she's pretty sure she never told her mom she was shaving, if she did, her mom probably would have forbidden her to do it.  She's Korean though, so maybe it's an Asian immigrant child thing.  Who knows.  

Typical Chinese Mom

I've been trying really hard to lose the baby weight I gained from having three kids.  I finally made some progress, took a photo of my backside (in a kind of loose shirt so the mushroom top didn't look so bad), and sent it to my mom in anticipation of some praise.

She called me back.  This was it.  I was going to hear how awesome I had been.  I had thought about cropping my face out of the image (I did a selfie with the mirror in the back), but the lighting was bad anyway - she'd hopefully ignore it.

"You look skinny!  But what is going on with your face?  You look tired.  You can't just be skinny and not take care of your skin.  Skin is very important.  Have you been using the masks I got you every night?  You look so much older!"

.   ...

.....

I told her I was really busy and I had to go.  Thirty three years of this, and I have learned not to get mad.

"Oh, don't get mad," she told me.  "You just need to taking better care of your skin!"

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And that is my typical Chinese mom.

There you go.

Just Hand Me Some Sun-In Already

Obedient Chinese daughters shall...
1. Never used Sun-In in their hair

In middle school, I once asked my mom if I could put Sun-In, a spray in hair lightener, to turn my hair from black to brown.  “Why do you wanting to look more like American?” she asked me. Her voice hadn't gotten louder, but from the intent look in her stare, I knew she was furious and upset.  "Your black hair is beautiful!  Don't go ruining it with that artificial hurting your hair stuff!"  

I hadn’t really given it much thought.  All the Asian girls were doing it.  I liked the way it looked.  And, it would make me so much cooler.  Who didn't want their hair to turn brown?  

"Well, if you really want to do something that is natural, try using beer," she told me.  

"Beer?"  Was she serious?

"Yes, your Yi-Ma and I both did it when we were younger.  Making hair look beautiful.  Silky, healthy, beer good for hair, might turn it a little lighter naturally."  

"Would you get me some beer?" I couldn't believe I was asking my mom to buy me some beer, not to consume, but to wash my hair with.

"Yes, we'll get you some beer.  No Sunning-In"  

I'd never been one to go against my mom's wishes.  Sure, I talked back all the time.  But never anything too offensive, in my defense, I was just a curious child.  

How badly I wanted some brown hair against my tan too dark skin.  Beer it was.  Maybe I'd even try a sip of it.  

A few days later, we finally got some beer for my hair.  It smelled like expired pee.  How could anyone drink this stuff?  I poured it over my hair, stopping to take one small sip, then spitting it out before I could even consume it at the shock of the rancid bitter taste.  

I washed my hair with six cans of Budlight beer in the seventh grade.  My mom ooed and awwed that it was looking so healthy and lighter.  My closest friends just laughed and mocked me, asking me why I didn't just use some of their Sun-In and then explain that the beer was working!  

To be honest, I was too scared.  Luckily, in light of my cowardice, I withheld from rebelling and stuck with my dark black, now oozing of beer aroma Chinese hair.  As the sun actually set in, everyone's hair turned nice and auburn, but as time wore on it, the auburn turned to a shocking orange and it looked absolutely putrid.  As all my friends wished for their hair to return to its natural black, I secretly thanked my mom for her weird rules.  I guess my mom was right.