Learning Other APA Cultures: Trials and Tribulations

APA Heritage Month

I am still really embarrassed to remember the day I burst into my college Japanese language class shouting, "Happy New Year!" to be answered by a perplexed silence. After an interminable moment my confused Japanese language instructor figured it out: "Oh, it’s Chinese New Year. Happy Chinese New Year."

But I thought it was Japanese New Year’s, too. Don’t all Asians use a lunar calendar? It wasn’t until years later that I learned that the Japanese switched to the Gregorian calendar over a hundred years ago, during the Meiji era, and now celebrate New Year’s Day on January 1. Oops.

We grouse about how little non-Asians know understand Asian or Asian-Pacific American (APA) cultures and histories, but I often wonder how much APAs really know about each other. As the Arts and Culture editor of Asian-American Village, I feel I really should know more than I do. However, the more I learn about Asian and Asian Pacific American history and cultures, the more I realize how little I know.

Part of it is that I am Chinese, I majored in China Studies, and I have been raised from a Chinese perspective that historically and culturally places China in the center of the universe—China is called the Middle Kingdom, after all. Chinese history books only talk about how Chinese influence spread throughout the world (much to the chagrin, I am sure, of those other countries, who no doubt affected China too).

The other part of it is that I am an American who was never taught anything about Asia or Asian Pacific America in school. Both my high school U.S. History and U.S. Politics classes went up to World War II and then ran out of time as the term ended. I have always had a very blurry understanding of the Vietnamese and Korean Wars, not to mention the Civil Rights movement. I am learning more now, but it comes only in bits and pieces, nothing comprehensive.

So over the years I have made gaffes both large and small, assumed we had more in common than we do. I have just learned to hide my ignorance better, and still I blunder on.

The first time I went to a Japanese restaurant, I assumed we would eat family style like in Chinese restaurants. I remember convincing my very hungry date that we should just order one dinner and share. I thought one dinner was so expensive, it must have been intended for a group. We shared the sushi off a common plate, but I was really confused when only one tiny bowl of miso soup and one small bowl of rice came. How do we share this? Good thing it was not a double date, I suppose.

My cousin Tom once told me about how grossed out his Japanese-American wife was about the way Chinese people ate family style, serving ourselves with our own chopsticks instead of using the serving spoons. I was surprised because I thought since they were both APAs there would be no culture gap between them.

I think we assume that since we are all Asian Pacific Americans, we should have some sort of "natural affinity" or understanding of each other and each other’s cultures. We are supposed to know because we are all Asian. (And Asians are supposed to be all the same, after all, right?) Certainly there is comfort in the obvious similarities and historical intersections, but sometimes the differences still hit us forcefully.

Before I went to live in Nepal for four years, all I knew was that Nepalis eat rice. No problem, I thought, I eat rice, too. Non-Asian friends complained about having rice for breakfast every day. Rice for breakfast I could handle. However, they also eat curries, which are by definition, slowly stewed for a long time, and yellow from turmeric. Chinese food is stir-fried for a minute or two, and contrasts in color and texture are important. I remember watching in horror one time as a Nepali friend cooked her spinach for 20 minutes and joking, "How could you do such violence to it? What did that spinach ever do to anyone?" Nepali friends were surprised that it only took me 20 minutes from beginning to end to prep and cook dinner, whereas it took them 20 minutes to cook one dish. (They did not want to eat my food every day either.)

Last summer, after reading Andrew Lam’s article waxing poetical about a steaming bowl of pho, Vietnamese rice noodle soup, I was so inspired that I found a recipe, went to the Asian grocery store to buy Vietnamese rice noodles, and tried to make it myself. Of course, I had never had pho before and I never follow recipes exactly, so my pho was not pho at all, but had turned into Chinese noodle soup with rice noodles. Then I discovered a Vietnamese pho restaurant at Cupertino Village called the Super Bowl. I thought here was my chance to try the real thing. However, when I sat down and looked at the menu, everything was foreign to me. I was so confused that it took me 20 minutes to order and all I did was pick the "Super Pho," a combination dish with everything—seafood, meat, chicken. I thought with embarrassment, I am just like those people I complain about ordering Chop Suey or "Special Lucky Combo #1" at Chinese restaurants.

When the noodles came, they were great. But they were not a lyrical wonder to me as they were to Andrew Lam. A week later, I found that poetry in a bowl of equally steaming Chinese beef noodle soup, and I realized that as good as pho is, I will always compare it to Chinese noodle soup, and ultimately, Chinese noodle soup is what I want because it comes laced with memories.

So although our hurdles to understanding other Asian cultures may be smaller than the hurdles non-Asians have to jump, they are still there. Sometimes, despite all my good will and experimentation and study and consulting of "experts," I feel like an imposter teaching others about Vietnamese and Korean New Year when I feel I can barely get a handle on my own culture. I very much believe in starting at home and starting with what one knows, but we cannot stay there.

In America, we are not just Chinese or Laotian or Indonesian or Pakistani, we are also "Asian American" – a new, political, fundamentally American entity. In this, May gives us an opportunity to reach out and learn more about each other’s cultures so that this becomes our month to really showcase and celebrate our separate heritages. (And hey, someone has to do it.) It also gives us a chance to recognize the actual similar experiences and histories and traditions that can be a common-ground for us as APAs. The trick is to discover the commonality, not just assume it.

Yes, I admit that I sometimes have been less than generous about non-Asians’ misunderstanding of Asian culture with their Chinoiserie and their Orientalist stereotypes [links below], but in some ways I have been just as guilty. As I confess openly here to all my secret faux pas and ridiculous ignorance, I hope you will be kind—to me, as well as to others who are trying to learn more about us during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

Be kind like my Tibetan landlord, who smiled gamely as I tried to build rapport by telling her I was Chinese. I was thinking, "Hey, we are both Asian." At the time, I did not know how the Chinese massacred the Tibetans and forced them to flee their homes. Luckily, she saw the real connection we had, that both our families had fled Communist China, and she said, "That’s good, you got out in time." She knew enough to connect the dots, even if I did not.

But now, I’ve learned something from her about where she came from, where I came from, and along the way found a path that we will take together as Asian Americans in the future.