Bilingual Benefits

 I was cooking dinner and my daughter was playing with playdoh. She was talking to me as I cooked. 

S: Mommy, look, I made a wok!

Me: A wok? I turned around to look. 

S: No, a wok! 

Me: A walk?

S: No! A wok! 石头！

Me: Oh! A rock. 

S: Yea, mommy. I made a wok. 

Not the same “wok”…but that’s when I pulled the camera out. 

I chuckled to myself but didn’t correct her. It would happen eventually. She was still only three. I was just glad her comprehension in two languages was good enough that she could translate to convey. 

That’s impressive. 

I secretly kinda wish she had made a wok. 

Elephant and Piggie

I first discovered Elephant and Piggie at the library a few years ago when I would check out books. I purposely searched Chinese books at the library and would pick from what they had. One of the books we checked out was an Elephant and Piggie book. I didn't even realize it was an entire series until one of my student's parents saw the book and recognized it. At first I thought she had read it in her native language, but then she told me it was a popular children's book series. 

That's when I realized there was a whole series on Elephant and Piggie. This series can be slightly controversial because the "quality" of the books is debatable. Some people argue that they're not great books because the language is simple and there's no real point to the books. For an English book, I might agree. There are other books in English I'd rather my children read. So no, I would never buy the series in English. Library? Sure, why not. Buy? Nope.

I did enjoy the one we checked out. In English, it would have been Are You Ready to Play Outside? I enjoyed reading this book to my daughter in Chinese because I could actually read most of the characters. There were a few I had to look up, but overall, it wasn't bad. 

The first Elephant and Piggie book I discovered, in Chinese.

At the end of last year, I found an entire set of them in Chinese I could purchase for a reasonable price. I bought it, almost no questions asked. It shipped quickly, and I was so excited to open them after they arrived. My daughter loves reading them with me and I love being able to read most of the text. 

A few of the books in the series have words above my vocabulary so I started out reading them with my phone next to me to look up words I didn't recognize. Thankfully, I understand stroke order and the dictionary handwriting recognition is very smart so it's a pretty quick process. 

The "quality" of the books doesn't bother me because I don't believe it contains anything that is necessarily  bad. Sure, the grammar is simple and the book itself is pretty basic, but since it is in Chinese, I would be happy to read it to her knowing we would actually read it. I am not against having more quality Chinese books, but the problem is I cannot read half of it easily. If I can't read it easily, I'm less likely to pick it up and want to read it, and it is less likely to captivate my daughter. The few I do have, I've had to work really hard reading multiple times to become familiar with the text and recognize more of the difficult words. 

I will probably need to study up and learn new words as I read to my children in the future. Let's hope my kids have the patience to wait for me, too. 😅

Ugly Delicious

After my son was born, an auntie dropped off food for us. One of the dishes she brought was ketchup shrimp. It was delicious. I hadn't had this dish in years and tasting the sauce on the shrimp reminded me of my childhood. After that, I looked up a recipe.

The recipe I found was from The Woks of Life. I read the recipe and kept the page open on my iPad for over a year. It would be one of my 5+ tabs open at any one time, and it stayed there for a long, long time. Why didn't I try making it? After all, we have shrimp at home almost at all times. I think it was mostly fear and a couple of other excuses.

- Fresh shrimp tastes better than frozen so you get more flavor out of it.

- I love head-on shrimp. If I'm going to take the time to make a beloved dish, I was going to go all out. 

- I'm not a big risk taker so if it's a new recipe, I have to mentally prepare myself first.

One afternoon, I went grocery shopping and decided on a whim to buy head-on shrimp. We used part of it during hot pot after the kids went to sleep so we could eat in peace. We haven't done a hot pot meal at our house for nearly two years. It was a lovely at-home date. For the rest of it, I decided to go for it and make the ketchup shrimp recipe.

I really love their blog and the recipes they post. I've learned a lot of Chinese food from their blog, so if there's a dish you enjoy and are curious how to make it, chances are it's on their blog. 

My ketchup shrimp turned out beautifully. 

I love head-on shrimp. I just can't explain. I know it grosses out a lot of people, especially people who didn't grow up with food that's beyond chicken and potatoes. But the extra flavor you get from having the head on is worth it. 

Let me tell you, this dish brought me back. If a flavor inside your mouth could transport you back to a distinct memory, this one did it for me. I felt like I was a little kid again sitting in our kitchen table at our old house with yellow-flowered wallpaper, propping my chair up on its back legs and leaning against the window ledge. The sauce combination in this dish was so distinct to me as a flavor I loved and hadn't had in so long.

Anyone else have that one dish which brings them back?

How Are You Doing?

My daughter and I were taking a walk around the neighborhood yesterday. When we were looping back around to go home, we passed one of our neighbors out working. We've seen this neighbor many times before and said hi to each other. Then he asked me how we were doing. I replied the same, "We're good." like I usually do when asked. Being that my neighbor and I only interact with each other when we both happen to be outside at the same time, I didn't think much about it, but then he looked at me questioningly and asked again, "You sure?" I hesitantly said yes again, my daughter was saying something about his car, the moment was gone, and we parted ways.

And then I started thinking, and I couldn't stop. I started thinking about the current events. I started thinking about what was happening around us. I started thinking about the world. I started thinking about my past experiences and happenings. And suddenly, I saw everything with a new light. 

***

About 10 years ago now, I was at a friend's house with her and her husband. She was Asian American, although more American, and he was Caucasian. I was single at the time, and he was telling me about how white guys loved Asian girls and how I should go date a white guy. I politely declined, and he kept going about how a lot of white guys out there would kill to be with an Asian girl. I was pretty confused by what he was saying. I'd never felt like a white guy wanted to date me and I never had a desire to date a white guy. 

Now I understood what he was talking about: the Asian fetish. Perhaps he didn't mean it that way. Or maybe he was doing it without realizing. This is not to say mixed race marriages, especially those with Asian women and Caucasian men don't work. But regardless, it exists, it's out there, and it's horrible.

***

A few years ago, my friend was hosting a birthday party and she rented a space on the top floor to use. I arrived early to help her set up. When she let me in, one of the first things she said to me was, "There's some guys who are still in the room and they're not leaving." She was paying to use this space, and it was annoying to have to ask the previous people to leave because they were overstaying their time.

When I got up there with her, the first thing I did was ask them to leave because we needed to set up and our time started 20 minutes ago. The guys, white guys, looked at me and gave me this "What's the big deal?" look. I gave them some time to see if they'd start wrapping up and moving. They didn't, so I said something again. And this time, they finally started making motions to wrap up and leave, although it was very slow and not urgent at all. 

They saw us rearranging the chairs and tables in the space and offered to help us move some. Heh. By the time they left it was close to 30 minutes after their time had ended.

***

In light of current circumstances and thinking back on this particular incident, I wonder if things would have been different had there been a guy with us. I wonder if things would have been different if one of us or all of us were blonde hair blue-eyed white girls. 

You know what should have happened? What should have happened in a respectable society without racism, sexism, prejudice, or bias is I would have asked them to leave, they would have apologized for running late, packed their things up, and left or at least moved their conversation outside of the room. That's what should have happened. 

But it didn't. 

***

In Chinese, we have a phrase which translates to "losing face." It's more commonly understood as shame. And we're taught to avoid it. You keep the peace, you don't rock the boat, you don't speak out. I break a lot of these Asian cultures and I do things that would fall under "losing face." But I don't care.

You want to know how I'm doing? You want to know what I'm thinking? I'm very very angry. I'm angry at our culture for unintentionally allowing these things to fester and grow. I'm angry with the ways Asian culture wants us to fit into their mold of what is "good." I'm angry at the ways we were taught growing up because it has secretly been our demise. I'm angry at how Asian culture is so good at putting down each other, itself, when we really should have been putting down racist comments of others. I'm angry that I'm now realizing these things and I understand the weight of it and what it means and I have to teach my children how to live and survive in this world. I'm angry that when I do teach them, it's going to destroy a part of their youthfulness and innocence and happiness. I'm angry at all the times I should have done or said something but didn't because I was trying to be that good Asian person. I'm angry at society and how anti-Asian as well as other racist sentiments are not taken seriously and minimized.

***

I don't curse or use bad words because I don't believe in their power. I actually tried to curse once intentionally as a teenager, and it just felt awkward coming out of my mouth.  I know the power of words comes from their meaning, their depth, their tone. Curse words are just letters like any other word. H. T. I. S. F. C. K. U. 

Tone speaks more than words. And as you read this, imagine that I'm raging and angry and glaring at you with piercing eyes and speaking with a slow, calculated seriousness.

We come back stronger. 

Valid Concern

My Chinese has never been very good, but by some miracle, I've been able to keep most of my speaking fluency and some of my reading abilities.

After my husband and I found out we were expecting two and a half years ago, I made a mental note that I would speak solely in Chinese to my child(ren). I knew early on that my children would only be as good as or worse at Chinese than I was, so I was going to have to work really hard to pass on as much as I could.

Now, there was a second factor into this situation: my husband! Unfortunately, his Chinese skills when we got married were not very good. When people asked about his language skills, I'd have to explain to them that his parents were fluent in too many languages, and because of that, he never got to really focus on anything other than English. It's also just really hard to pay attention in Chinese school as a kid growing up: I'm guilty of that myself. 

One day in the car, this conversation popped up, and it was noteworthy (and funny) enough for me to share it with his permission:

Two years later, I have to say, teaching my daughter Chinese hasn't felt like very much teaching at all because complete immersion is the best way to learn, and she has been completely immersed since she was born. I also have to say I've never actually pushed my husband to learn Chinese from me. Sure, I've joked with him about it here and there, but I've never sat him down and told him straight up: you will learn Chinese and I will teach you. We maybe had one evening when I taught him colors. :) 

Our daughter really started talking and took off with her language skills around 18 months. I will never forget the day I was laying in bed one morning, pregnant with my son, and I see my daughter come walking through our bedroom door to my side of the bed. She came up to me and said very clearly, "妈妈起来.” Mommy, get up. And with that, I was wide awake, getting up, and amazed at how fast my daughter was growing up right before my eyes. 

When she started speaking more, I noticed my husband would ask me what certain words meant as I said them. I would tell him and he'd say it a few times. I'd correct him if it was way off in pronunciation, but for the most part he was close. 

Slowly, he picked up phrases and started saying them more: 洗澡， 吃饭， 睡觉， 过来。

And now he's saying even more phrases and even getting close to using complete sentences: 最后两口， 躺好换尿布， 你的 (object) 在哪里,  穿衣服。

Toddlers learn language so quickly at their young age - it's absolutely amazing. My daughter will say words or phrases during the day and I'll ask my husband, "Where'd she learn that from?" 

And he usually always replies, "I don't even know what that means so she didn't learn it from me!" 

Of course, she learned it from me, but I didn't realize she could remember so much of what she had heard me say. 

There was one day I was speaking to my daughter in Chinese and then I turned to my husband to ask him a question. I almost asked him in Chinese, not having completely switched languages in my head, but I caught myself. 

Unfortunately for him, her language skills will surpass his - they probably already have - and chances are, they will be better than his for her entire life. She's got the advantage of time on her side. However, I am very proud of him for learning as much of the language as he has in the last year two years. However valid my concern was two years ago, I am not concerned anymore. One of these days, I may not have to catch myself to switch languages, and he may even be able to reply (in Chinese!)