When I was younger, I liked to watch birds with my friends. We made fun of the ugly ones, gray and brown pigeons that hopped narrow-mindedly from foot to foot, and laughed as we scared them off, running and yelling. But unlike those bound to the ground, the ugly pigeons could take to the skies, soaring until they could no longer hear our taunts, basking in the bliss of ignorance, free.
My next memory was when my family moved from China to the United States. Even at four years old, I felt alienated; I could traverse the new plains, from Kroger to twenty-lane freeways, but I would only disappoint myself in the smallness of not belonging. I desperately longed for the security and familiarity that laced my home in Shanghai.
A few months after moving to America, my pre-kindergarten teacher gave my class a drawing prompt. It was written in large, neat letters on a poster in front of the group of fidgeting toddlers I was situated with, as if I could be anything akin to these booger-eating, drooling little hooligans who couldn’t even count to a hundred. Yet it was I who sat there dumbly as the others around me worked in their notebooks, busily scribbling whatever their soaring imaginations had conjured in response to the prompt. It was I who, rather than following the prompt, instead meticulously copied down the words just as neatly as the teacher wrote them, hoping that if I did a good enough job, the teacher wouldn’t mind if I couldn’t understand what the prompt was asking me to do. It was I who was tentative as I followed the bumbling children up to the teacher’s desk to show her my work.
She looked at my paper, furrowed her brows, and asked me something. I stared at her blankly, feeling downright stupid and on the verge of tears, because of course I had no idea what she had just said.
Smiling exasperatedly, she started drawing on my paper, and sheepishly, I connected the simple curves to be lackluster images of birds. I hurriedly drew a double-curve bird of my own. My teacher looked up and handed back my notebook—her countenance this time was one of relief—and I trudged back to my seat to finish my drawing.
At that moment, as I sat back down at a table with children who ignored me because I had no choice but to ignore them, I wanted to be one of the birds in my notebook: simple, free, belonging somewhere. And even when I returned to the teacher with a satisfactory page full of birds and she drew a sky-blue checkmark in the corner of my paper, I wanted to travel to the limitlessness of the sky and never return to this place where I didn’t understand anyone and no one understood me.
I read in kindergarten that the national bird of the United States was the bald eagle. In fact, it was one of the first books I picked up, vibrant with the red, white, and blue flag on the cover. I cocked my head to the eagle, sharp and witty, being puzzlingly misnamed under an unfitting adjective like “bald.” But the irony slipped my mind within minutes; a name meant nothing more than just a name to a five-year-old.
The feeling of not understanding dissipated as I grew fluent in English. I could communicate well with my peers, and to me, that was a source of freedom in of itself; I was no longer bound to what I could express through frustrated yelling or crying. Instead, I embraced the language as a part of me and poured everything into it, this language that had brought me so much dismay and yet, now, so much joy. I spent my waking hours planning and drafting stories and poems and studying new vocabulary with fervor. When people praised my work, I felt like an eagle: valiant and majestic. American.
I started reading chapter books in second grade. The thicker the book and the smaller the font, the more accomplished I felt. To me, reading was a miracle—a vesicle through which I could find myself again. And the more I indulged in this gift, the more I consumed each word like I was starved. I read everything, everywhere: the nutrition facts on a cereal box, the instruction manuals of unbuilt furniture. I never got anything other than a 100 on spelling quizzes. To all my classmates, I was the English genius with a Chinese accent.
My teacher applauded my expansive vocabulary and brought me a crate of books from the local middle school, and although I had little interest in the complex themes and 3-D characters, I read them all within the semester to chase her affirmation. I hunkered down and forced my way through To Kill a Mockingbird without understanding what anything meant. It was dreadful, but at least my peers looked at me in awe when I held that book.
But the more I assimilated into Western culture, the more uneasy I felt. That muffled nausea hacked away at my hard-earned aerodynamics until I stumbled against the ground, every flap of my wings heavier than the one before. To peel away my Asian skin and don wings of red, white, and blue was easier said than done. My foreign food and clothes and face turned from a deeply integrated aspect of myself into something I made a point to reject. I bought revolting school meals instead of bringing my mother’s homemade cooking. I laughed along with my classmates’ teasing about the shape of my eyes, agreeing that they were indeed hilarious, even when they were—needless to say—not.
My teachers advise that the only thing you can control in your life is yourself, as if I could save myself from oppression. It’s so easy to succumb to lashing out when the reaction is gouged out of you by everyone around. The external and internal connection is ruggedly inextricable. Sure, all this loneliness may look internal to you, Mrs. Jones, but you don’t know every time I mumbled the Pledge of Allegiance because I didn’t know the words. I wasn’t born knowing it. I wasn’t born American. I’m sorry.
My family visited China the summer I turned eleven. In the lobby of our hotel, I was fidgeting in an armchair, and my mother was at the front desk; I didn’t know what she was doing, and I wasn’t old enough to care. There was a group of white tourists swarming the space next to me like familiar bees in a foreign hive. One of them, a college-aged girl with wavy blonde hair, said “Hi” to me with a classic American grin. Just before I could return the greeting, her companion—Chinese—told her that “She can’t understand English.” “Oh,” the blonde girl said, turning away from me. I only had the guts to stare at her back, then, and silently bear the weight of her “Oh” on my heart. Three years later, I thought I would scream and force them to acknowledge that I can speak English, I can speak English. Maybe then they would look at me, at the American clothes I was wearing, at this American face that just so happened to be born Chinese. Ironically, I’ve now regressed into a sullen state of acceptance: for her to have so easily seen through my American disguise must mean that I cannot rip away my Chinese roots, no matter how hard I try.
I am American, born Chinese. I suppose this is one of the reasons I love English punctuation: because just two very small tweaks later is American-born Chinese, a phrase all my Chinese-American friends loudly proclaimed as children. But they are not confused; they are simply Chinese people born in the United States while I have gruesomely stripped away my Chinese roots and plastered on American layers. American, born Chinese. Still, we are birds of a feather—whether American, born Chinese, or American-born Chinese, the result is still ABC, as easy and intuitive as the English alphabet. We flock together. I’m American, we tell the world. Don’t look at my face. I’m American; I’m sure of it.
It was not until the pandemic years when a video game, of all things, finally shone a light on the beauty of culture. In the whirlwind of the Black Lives Matter and Stop AAPI Hate movements amidst a newfound drive for unconditional inclusion among the youngest and most progressive generation, a game called Genshin Impact rose to the surface, and like many others, I was drawn into the story and graphic design. Made by a Chinese company but labeled by many as Japanese due to its “anime-like” character design, the game featured seven different nations that each represented a real-life country. “Liyue” symbolized China. The “Lantern Rite Festival” emulated Chinese New Year. Chinese opera singing was admired rather than ridiculed; Chinese food was made to look gourmet and authentic rather than Japanese or Korean. It was the first time I saw my culture celebrated in its unabridged form. As insignificant as a video game sounds, Genshin Impact is the turning point in my perspective of Chinese culture. I fell in love with the way I recognized traditions from the game, and I started studying my language again. The way Genshin Impact portrayed Chinese culture was so different from what I’d been taught—my traditions felt like something people should see as important and meaningful instead of questionable. It allowed me to readopt and rediscover my Chinese identity, not just Chinese-AMERICAN.
Yet everything still induced this begging myself to become more American, whatever that meant. Was it the exaggeration of each syllable as people speak to me, even when I had thrown myself into English and away to be fluent? The “What. Would. You. Like. To. Or. Der.”? I think, I hope, that if this is true, I would want no part of this place, this culture that alienates children like me with more melanin than they’re used to.
Eventually, I changed my name. Like Matoax, who changed her name to Pocahontas and then Rebecca, I was desperate to assimilate. Every year before the summer I made the change, on the first day of school, when the teacher paused during roll call and squinted at his paper before belching out a horrible “Yeh-MANG,” I would know to raise my hand and reply, “I go by Sherry.” Even when I had a Chinese teacher, perfectly capable of correctly pronouncing “Yimeng,” I would insist on being called by my English name. After all, my classmates would always make fun of “Yimeng.” It was such an exotic name and something they couldn’t understand. It was embarrassing. So, I changed it, although when the judge in court asked me for the reason for change, I couldn’t quite give a concise answer. Because I understood then the weight of the name, that the title one would announce as his identity should not be wasted on impulse. I look at “Sherry” with a little bit of melancholy now.
My peers still make fun of this name. They lightheartedly tease “Sherry” by rhyming it with “berry” and “cherry” and “marry” and so on. Often, I’m hit with a horrible sense of deja vu and it seems like nothing has changed—and yet it has, because “Yimeng” has been wholly destroyed and regenerated as “Sherry.” It should mean something that my face, my name, my culture can no longer represent my identity. Rather, identity is the unknown, the inexplicable, the incomprehensible. It is a never-ending story of interpretation and reinterpretation; the birth of a newly changed person every single moment; the dynamic self and all its nuances.
If this intricate identity in all its anonymous glory belongs to America, the land of freedom, bald eagles, and all things good, then so be it. But if this same America taunts me, me who is bound to the ground and unable to fly even with the wings of red-white-blue that this country has so graciously given me, then so be it. I have already replaced what I once was. After all, destruction is the prerequisite for regeneration, and what is regeneration if not this bruised, patchwork culture of mine? What is regeneration if not the cause of hard-earned tolerance?
Tolerance, though, should always be declared with a grain of salt. Just last year, at a debate summer camp, my friends and I were discussing foreign relations and threats of war, probably some sort of argument. It was late into the night; my eyes drooped and my tongue felt heavy; perhaps I can blame my twisted, treacherous mouth for pronouncing “torpedo” as “torbedo,” just a silly mistake. But my friend, teenaged and probably high, burst into raucous laughter, slapping his knee as if I were a clown that had told the funniest joke he’d ever heard, as if this unveiling of my vainly American facade was just so, so hilarious. I knew he didn’t think any of that, that the dangerous combination of sleep deprivation and the excitement of being with your friends meant that anything was funny, but I also knew that ignorance can plague anyone without experience. The rest of the night is history: a blur of tears, locked bathroom stalls, and apologies. I’m sure he has long forgotten the incident, but since then, I have spoken with caution. I couldn’t let anyone else discover my lie through another slip-up. No one could know that I was a Chinese alien pretending to be American.
This uncertainty is what I see when I look in the mirror. Should I do Douyin makeup because I have Chinese features or American makeup because, well, isn’t that what I was? But perhaps the malleability of my identity is exactly what makes it so beautiful. I am Chinese because my first language will always be Chinese and I will always love Chinese cuisines the most. I am American because I can only write in English and I will never turn down some McDonald’s. My life has been a rollercoaster of Chinese-American; American, born Chinese; Chinese and American—but through those loops and jarring bumps, I am still buckled into my seat, reveling in this spectacular feeling of flight.
The little sagacity that is bottled in these experiences has taught me much. Identity is translucent the same way my teachers were impatient but at least tried, my peers were ignorant but sans animosity, and my friend hurt me without intention. And, then again, taunts thrown carelessly from rambunctious children failed to sway even ugly pigeons, and if they could still take to the skies, then I, beautiful in my identity, too can fly.
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