When I go to get facials in SF Chinatown, I hear the facialists chatting merrily away in Chinese with the other customers about things that always seem amusing. They speak animatedly, they laugh... they can hardly speak English. So while they're working on my face, we're silent. Every now and then they try to tell me something about my face, but it seems to be a struggle for them to find the right English words. They sigh and give up. I try hard to guess what they're trying to tell me, and sometimes I get the gist. (I have sensitive skin that turns red easily.) But most of the time, even the gist is lost. (Why would I want to pay more for that other type of facial?)
After my facials, I dive into a small restaurant to pick up dimsum items. And there, the usual cat and mouse game of
point and nod, show fingers, ask what is that, shake head, and do the hokey pokey ensues in place of quick and easy conversation. It's uncomfortable. I force them to speak in their pidgin English, and they force me to feel embarrassed and ashamed of my inability to speak Chinese, in spite of being half-Chinese.
Seems like a little thing, but it really isn't. To some Chinese people, it's a shame, a notable shortcoming, worthy of silence and ostracism and disapproval. And in this day and age, it's career-limiting.
It's too bad that my parents never taught me their first languages. By the time I realized how bad, I'd gotten used to blaming them for the deficiency. But at some point, it stopped being their fault that I can only speak English. I could've chosen to take foreign langauge courses in college and beyond. (Actually, I tried to take Chinese 1A one semester at Cal, but I had to drop the hefty 5 unit course because every Chinese person in it was sandbagging - they already knew how to speak Mandarin - and the pace of the class was too fast.) It's still
my fault that I can't speak Chinese.
So when, if ever, should I make my attempt to learn Chinese? It would be fucking hard to learn now. Don't I have other more important things to learn first? By when do I need to have learned it? What's the worst case scenario if I choose to never learn it?
It doesn't help that Babe's parents are Chinese, and seem to... dot dot dot. There is that whole first trip out to Maryland that I took in December that I haven't said anything about yet. I'm glad I gave myself time to just, oh, get over it and decide not to ever write about it. You know, these trips are always extremely bilateral for me. There's the external trip, and there's the accompanying internal trip. And I'm trying to change the subject...
How about this... Instead of thumbing through the latest College of San Mateo course catalog in search of Chinese classes to take, I quit letting people make me feel as if not knowing Chinese is a severe handicap, a dishonor to my ethnic background. I minimize my exposure to people and places like Chinatown, that aren't English-only-speaker-friendly.
There are more of us here than you, and we will prevail. This is America, damnit.
Maybe I'll try to learn Chinese after I have a child. We could learn it together.
