Like, I think, most immigrant parents, mine have instilled in me a healthy paranoia about the world. In spite of raising me in a very safe and relatively affluent neighborhood, mom and dad never let me go outside unaccompanied. Even stepping to the mailbox could result in me getting kidnapped.
So when I told my mom that I was planning a trip to Prague with some friends this summer, her first response was, "Don't go anywhere alone! I read a story in the newspaper about a Chinese girl who got kidnapped while she was traveling there." Similarly, when I was in Pittsburgh for a conference, my mother said, "Be careful! I just read a story about a Chinese girl who was on vacation in L.A., and then somebody killed her and dumped her body in the hotel water tank."
Perhaps my mother is particularly morbid, but my aunt launched the exact same warnings when I told her about my travels. Perhaps they're subscribed to a Dead Chinese Girls news feed or something.
All jokes aside, these incidents are indeed real, and being a petite Asian woman does mean I have to exercise caution. The trick is to figure out what amount of caution I should apply in my day-to-day activities. In fact, as of this moment, I'm waiting for a guy to pick me up on a date. I am now thinking that I should have planned to meet him at the art museum we're planning to go to. I should probably take a picture of his license plate and send it to some close friends in case he decides to kidnap me, chop up my body, and dump it in the river.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Fung My Valentine
I began this Valentine's Day with an email from my dad:
Hi Kids,
I just came across an oldie that I haven't heard since teenage years. It's like finding an old friend. It still sounds so good. Check the lyrics too if you have time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Dad
While I grew up loving much of the music my dad listens to, I can't say that I'm a fan of this particular ditty. But I can see why the refrain, "It's true, good timin' brought me to you" speaks to my dad. He has always said that it was precisely timing that brought him and my mother together. Dad's visa was expiring, and he had yet to secure a steady job. Meanwhile, his mother was dying in Hong Kong, so he knew that he had to leave the US and risk not being able to come back. The prospect of having to live in Hong Kong, a place he had always hated, terrified him. Through family, he met my mother, who had a green card. After a 3 month courtship, they got married in Reno. He went to Hong Kong, saw his mother's passing, and then returned 3 months later to begin his new life. My father likes to say that he met my mother just at the right time, and that saved him from a life of misery.
My mother doesn't talk much about how she met and married my dad. But the pieces I've gathered of her side of the story make their courtship an utterly unromantic one. She had never wanted to come to the US or get married. To this day, she says that the happiest year of her life was when her ailing parents had been sent to the US by her sisters, leaving her alone to live as she pleased. Immigrating was very traumatic for her. A shy and sensitive person to begin with, she never could get over her inability to speak English and adapt to American culture, which she regarded as hostile. I don't know if she left behind a love in Taiwan. My aunt says she cried herself to sleep every night for a year. By the time she met my father, her life was confined to taking care of her parents, a duty she never complained about but must have also longed to escape. My dad, a graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, looked like someone who could provide for her. With encouragement from her family (who probably worried about what other prospects a 30-year-old woman with little educational capital would have in a strange country), she agreed to marry my father. I've long known that their marriage was based more on security than love or romance. When I ask my mom what prompted her to get married, she says, "It was timing."
I often think about how much of my own life has been indebted to timing and countless factors beyond my control. The fact that my parents could settle in an area that they would not have been able to afford were they starting their life now, the fact that I went to college at a time when tuition was still affordable, the fact that my job opened up just at the time I was finishing my degree, the fact that interest rates were low at the time I bought my first home... All these things led me to where I am now, and they all have to do with timing.
When it comes to matters of the heart, however, I've never given timing much thought. I've had relationships end because I discovered that the person wasn't right for me. My own stupidity, rather than timing, led to those heartaches. Recently, however, I fell in love with a very good man who, due to what could be called "bad timing," had a harder time figuring out where I fit in his life. I may never find out if we could be very good together if timing were better, or if he would have turned out to be the wrong person for me regardless of the timing. Should either be true, I suppose I can try to find consolation in telling myself that the right person at the wrong time is still the wrong person.
But that's not satisfying either, especially when I think about my parents' marriage. I would never want to emulate it-- The differences in their temperaments, habits, and upbringings, would suggest that they were always wrong for each other. But in spite of the tensions in their relationship, they've managed to build a life together for 35 years and raise me and my brother, who both turned out as well adjusted and independent people, in a loving and healthy environment. I would stack up my parents' commitment to each other against any other couple that got together in more romantic circumstances. And while I would want more romance and affection than what appears to exist in their marriage, I have also come to appreciate more and more the loyalty, fortitude, and constancy that sustains their relationship and, in turn, our family.
So is it so much timing that determined their staying power, or the choices they made in the face of timing? After all, my parents could have each submitted to the troubles facing them-- Dad could have returned to Hong Kong and stayed there, and mom could have decided to return to Taiwan after her parents died. And at all the points of trouble during their marriage (the financial crisis of these past few years being one), either one of them could have made the decision to call it quits. Not necessarily for any better or worse, the course of my family history could have been entirely different had timing prompted them to make different choices. I would like to think that choosing to bear things together is, in itself, love.
So perhaps timing isn't a matter of "good" or "bad," but of how one decides to take advantage of it. After all, the person who's willing to stand by you at the worst time in your life could also be the best person to share it with. Maybe that's the upside of the rather depressing circumstances that brought my parents together. I suppose, when the time is right, I'll find a partner in life who will stand by me during good times and bad.
So I wish a Happy Valentine's Day to Mama and Papa Fung, who are always teaching me life lessons whether they mean to or not.
Hi Kids,
I just came across an oldie that I haven't heard since teenage years. It's like finding an old friend. It still sounds so good. Check the lyrics too if you have time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
Dad
While I grew up loving much of the music my dad listens to, I can't say that I'm a fan of this particular ditty. But I can see why the refrain, "It's true, good timin' brought me to you" speaks to my dad. He has always said that it was precisely timing that brought him and my mother together. Dad's visa was expiring, and he had yet to secure a steady job. Meanwhile, his mother was dying in Hong Kong, so he knew that he had to leave the US and risk not being able to come back. The prospect of having to live in Hong Kong, a place he had always hated, terrified him. Through family, he met my mother, who had a green card. After a 3 month courtship, they got married in Reno. He went to Hong Kong, saw his mother's passing, and then returned 3 months later to begin his new life. My father likes to say that he met my mother just at the right time, and that saved him from a life of misery.
My mother doesn't talk much about how she met and married my dad. But the pieces I've gathered of her side of the story make their courtship an utterly unromantic one. She had never wanted to come to the US or get married. To this day, she says that the happiest year of her life was when her ailing parents had been sent to the US by her sisters, leaving her alone to live as she pleased. Immigrating was very traumatic for her. A shy and sensitive person to begin with, she never could get over her inability to speak English and adapt to American culture, which she regarded as hostile. I don't know if she left behind a love in Taiwan. My aunt says she cried herself to sleep every night for a year. By the time she met my father, her life was confined to taking care of her parents, a duty she never complained about but must have also longed to escape. My dad, a graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago, looked like someone who could provide for her. With encouragement from her family (who probably worried about what other prospects a 30-year-old woman with little educational capital would have in a strange country), she agreed to marry my father. I've long known that their marriage was based more on security than love or romance. When I ask my mom what prompted her to get married, she says, "It was timing."
I often think about how much of my own life has been indebted to timing and countless factors beyond my control. The fact that my parents could settle in an area that they would not have been able to afford were they starting their life now, the fact that I went to college at a time when tuition was still affordable, the fact that my job opened up just at the time I was finishing my degree, the fact that interest rates were low at the time I bought my first home... All these things led me to where I am now, and they all have to do with timing.
When it comes to matters of the heart, however, I've never given timing much thought. I've had relationships end because I discovered that the person wasn't right for me. My own stupidity, rather than timing, led to those heartaches. Recently, however, I fell in love with a very good man who, due to what could be called "bad timing," had a harder time figuring out where I fit in his life. I may never find out if we could be very good together if timing were better, or if he would have turned out to be the wrong person for me regardless of the timing. Should either be true, I suppose I can try to find consolation in telling myself that the right person at the wrong time is still the wrong person.
But that's not satisfying either, especially when I think about my parents' marriage. I would never want to emulate it-- The differences in their temperaments, habits, and upbringings, would suggest that they were always wrong for each other. But in spite of the tensions in their relationship, they've managed to build a life together for 35 years and raise me and my brother, who both turned out as well adjusted and independent people, in a loving and healthy environment. I would stack up my parents' commitment to each other against any other couple that got together in more romantic circumstances. And while I would want more romance and affection than what appears to exist in their marriage, I have also come to appreciate more and more the loyalty, fortitude, and constancy that sustains their relationship and, in turn, our family.
So is it so much timing that determined their staying power, or the choices they made in the face of timing? After all, my parents could have each submitted to the troubles facing them-- Dad could have returned to Hong Kong and stayed there, and mom could have decided to return to Taiwan after her parents died. And at all the points of trouble during their marriage (the financial crisis of these past few years being one), either one of them could have made the decision to call it quits. Not necessarily for any better or worse, the course of my family history could have been entirely different had timing prompted them to make different choices. I would like to think that choosing to bear things together is, in itself, love.
So perhaps timing isn't a matter of "good" or "bad," but of how one decides to take advantage of it. After all, the person who's willing to stand by you at the worst time in your life could also be the best person to share it with. Maybe that's the upside of the rather depressing circumstances that brought my parents together. I suppose, when the time is right, I'll find a partner in life who will stand by me during good times and bad.
So I wish a Happy Valentine's Day to Mama and Papa Fung, who are always teaching me life lessons whether they mean to or not.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Happy Year of the Snake
When I was growing up, Chinese New Year was always the biggest holiday. In the days up to the new year, my mom would take me shopping to get new clothes. (She said that when she was growing up, that was the one time in the year that she got new clothes.) She would clean the house spotless in order to make room for the good luck of the new year. My dad would warn us of things we shouldn't do once the new year arrives, like cut or wash our hair, because hair symbolizes fortune. We would drive all over the Bay Area to visit the houses of the elders in the family. At every stop, there would be tons of relatives to see and red envelopes to collect. And of course, there was the food, symbolic of (or homonyms of-- Chinese people love puns) wishes for the new year-- noodles (long life), fish (abundance), sticky rice cakes (increasing prosperity year after year), seaweed (fortune), tea eggs (fertility), onions (intelligence), celery (spirit for hard work), fruit (luck), whole duck (healthy family). The new year celebration was an all-weekend affair, and I loved it.
As I got older, the celebrations shrunk in scale as the elders passed on, aunts and uncles moved to the suburbs, kids went away for college, and each branch of the family tree curled into its own nuclear unit. That, I think, is such an unfortunate part of Americanization. I could always count on my immediate family getting together for a big dinner, usually prepared by my mom. But for years now, there are always members unable to attend, because Chinese New Year always happens during the academic schedule and doesn't come with its holiday weekend. For as long as I'll be living across the country, I will always be missing Chinese New Year with my family. And I will always be missing my family the most that day.
I've managed to find friends to celebrate with. And I suppose once I start my own family, I'll construct traditions of my own. I am aware now, more than I've ever been, of the kind of effort it takes to keep a family together. I can only hope that as my cousins, brother and I grow older, and as take the reigns in planning these holidays, we'll figure out a way to maintain the happy spirit that makes these holidays meaningful.
As I got older, the celebrations shrunk in scale as the elders passed on, aunts and uncles moved to the suburbs, kids went away for college, and each branch of the family tree curled into its own nuclear unit. That, I think, is such an unfortunate part of Americanization. I could always count on my immediate family getting together for a big dinner, usually prepared by my mom. But for years now, there are always members unable to attend, because Chinese New Year always happens during the academic schedule and doesn't come with its holiday weekend. For as long as I'll be living across the country, I will always be missing Chinese New Year with my family. And I will always be missing my family the most that day.
I've managed to find friends to celebrate with. And I suppose once I start my own family, I'll construct traditions of my own. I am aware now, more than I've ever been, of the kind of effort it takes to keep a family together. I can only hope that as my cousins, brother and I grow older, and as take the reigns in planning these holidays, we'll figure out a way to maintain the happy spirit that makes these holidays meaningful.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Fungs Do Not Like Snow
My dad's ticket of entry into the U.S. was his admission into Washington State University, a school he knew nothing about except that tuition was cheap. For a Chinese kid who grew up in Saigon and Hong Kong, to be plopped into Pullman, with its corn fields, red barns, and white faces, must have been quite a culture shock. He experienced snow for the first time there, which was a thrilling novelty at first but soon became the bane of his existence. To this day, my dad attributes his lifelong troubles with arthritis to that first winter, when he played in the snow without covering his 110-pound body, which up until then had only been exposed to 80 degree weather, with the proper attire. He says that the morning after that first frolic, his joints were in so much pain that he couldn't move. His right leg remained swollen for the rest of the semester. Chinese medicine would attribute my dad's ailment to "fung sup," or "wind and dampness," which throws off the equilibrium of your body's "life energy" or "qi." (The opposite would be "yeet hay," or "hot air," which results in a different set of ailments.) It's no wonder that, after one semester in WASU, my dad decided he had to transfer to UC Berkeley. There, still limping around campus, he got referred to a Dr. Lee, a Chinese American doctor, who drained his swollen leg and prescribed a regimen of aspirin. Eventually, the pain and swelling went away, but he always got some flare-ups during cold weather. Two years ago, he had to get his right hip replaced, and he was still cursing that fateful snow day in Pullman.
I just survived my first New England blizzard, Nemo. I sent my family pictures I took while tromping around waist-deep in snow.
I just survived my first New England blizzard, Nemo. I sent my family pictures I took while tromping around waist-deep in snow.
My dad's email reply:
"Holy Shit! It reminds me of Pullman in the winter of 1969. Dad"
Monday, January 28, 2013
Mama Fung's Pep Talk
One of my favorite movies from adolescence is the 1994 version of Little Women. It's a beautifully rendered adaptation of one of my favorite girlhood novels and appeals to my geeky fondness for period dramas. Also, featuring pre-klepto Winona Ryder, pre-grumpy Christian Bale, and classic-cry-face Claire Danes, the movie is so wonderfully 1990s.
The older I get, the more I realize that what I really love about the film is one short scene in which Jo, after turning down a marriage proposal, rails about how she's restless for a life she can't see yet. Marmee (played perfectly by Susan Sarandon) tells her, "You have so many extraordinary gifts. How can you expect to live an ordinary life?" That might be the best thing a mother could ever say, and I realize more and more how much I needed to be told this when I was 14. Should I have a daughter one day, I hope to impart the same message.
My mother has her own version of this advice whenever my life has taken a turn for the unexpected: "A strange girl like you, hard to find someone who appreciates you. Better to be single and free."
The older I get, the more I realize that what I really love about the film is one short scene in which Jo, after turning down a marriage proposal, rails about how she's restless for a life she can't see yet. Marmee (played perfectly by Susan Sarandon) tells her, "You have so many extraordinary gifts. How can you expect to live an ordinary life?" That might be the best thing a mother could ever say, and I realize more and more how much I needed to be told this when I was 14. Should I have a daughter one day, I hope to impart the same message.
My mother has her own version of this advice whenever my life has taken a turn for the unexpected: "A strange girl like you, hard to find someone who appreciates you. Better to be single and free."
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Care Package from Mom
My mom calls me today to say, "I made some Chinese New Year cakes and I will be sending you one in the mail. Also in that package, I will send some tea that helps with constipation. Oh, and it's good for your skin... What's so funny?"
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Life of Fung
I took my parents to see the movie Life of Pi, which turned out to be a fitting family activity, given that this past year has given us both great challenges and great blessings. Afterwards, we had dinner and chatted about what we got out of the story.
Papa Fung: "The story is about hope, obviously. Even when the boy thinks he's going to die, something good happens, and he's saved. I thought the movie had a very positive feeling."
...
Mama Fung: "That is what marriage is: being stuck on a boat with a tiger."
END.
Papa Fung: "The story is about hope, obviously. Even when the boy thinks he's going to die, something good happens, and he's saved. I thought the movie had a very positive feeling."
...
Mama Fung: "That is what marriage is: being stuck on a boat with a tiger."
END.
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