“Home”
Paulina Hoong
Since I learned to read or write, I’ve completed all the tasks that required using English for my Chinese immigrant parents, whose English isn’t perfect. I had to fill out my own school registration forms in my messy 3rd grade penmanship, while the school secretary stared in confusion at both me and my parents. Occasionally, I had to call the credit card company when I was fifteen to figure out why my mom was overcharged, and relaying each sentence over my shoulder in Cantonese. Often I had to call different companies to unsuccessfully demand a refund over the phone for some product like anti-wrinkle cream my mom bought on an As Seen On TV program, while my mom yelled in Cantonese in the background, “You need to be more aggressive! You’re being too nice to them!”
English wasn’t the only thing in America my parents struggled with. They dearly missed China, and they wanted nothing more than to go back and live there again. They wanted to eat real, authentic food in Cantonese restaurants that weren’t three hours away from their home. In their sparse time they had out outside of managing their American Chinese restaurant, they had to drive 133 miles to shop for essential ingredients for Cantonese food, like fish sauce or fermented beans. Outside of the Asian supermarkets, they would be the only non-white person at places like Walmart or the grocery store, and people would stare and point. They wanted to go to China, where they could have a conversation with a stranger that would understand them. They wanted friends that they could communicate with – they didn’t have any in America. Even after 30 years of living in America, in pursuit of a better life than they could have in China, my parents hadn’t fully adjusted.
Growing up, I didn’t fully understand their experiences as immigrants. I only wished they would try to become more American. I wanted them to eat American food and make pies and cookies, like what I saw on television. I wanted them to watch movies in the theater with me and have board game nights like I saw that my friends’ families did, not only watch Chinese television as their single form of recreation. I just couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t let go of China.
***
I didn’t get what it meant to live in a new country until I left to study abroad in Spain and I hadn’t had a single morsel of my parents’ Chinese food since. I missed rice. Not just any kind of rice. Oh god, I wanted white jasmine rice. I craved the sweet starchy aroma of jasmine rice wafting in my Madrid apartment, like it did everyday at home in Minnesota.
I was trying to be frugal to supplement my travel budget, which meant making pasta for dinner nearly every day, which always left me with an unsatisfied stomach. Back home, I ate my parents’ Chinese food everyday, and as time passed, my craving for it only grew stronger. Madrid severely lacked Cantonese cuisine, much like Minnesota. But Minnesota had my parents’ cooking, unlike Madrid.
I left my apartment one day to take a stroll down to Madrid’s downtown, Gran Via. I got sidetracked on the way because Google Maps coincidentally led me past a Chinese food store. A real Chinese food store where I didn’t understand all the labels on the fish sauce bottles. A real Chinese food store where the smell of dried fish, fermented cabbage and seafood hit my nose. A real Chinese food store where vegetables like gai lan and bok choy lined the produce shelf, while an entire aisle full of boxes of fifteen different types of ramen stood across from the vegetables. Oh and of course, fifty-pound bags of my highly sought out jasmine rice.
The smell of the store in Madrid took me back to Minnesota, to the Chinese grocery store my parents drive 3 hours to shop at every month, where I watched my mom find Chinese sausages for her breakfast dishes and watch my dad pick out bitter fermented beans for his rib dish. They wanted food that reminded them of their home. In this tiny grocery store in Madrid, surrounded by 30 different Chinese sauces, I could only think of one word: home.
***
The strobe lights matched the pulsing beats in Palace, one of the biggest nightclubs in Madrid. My legs and arms were timed to the song, flailing along in the sea of bodies. I grinned and jumped with my arms wrapped around my friends’ shoulders, singing along to Enrique Iglesias’s Bailando along with the rest of the Spaniards in the room. The dancefloor was alive, the Madridleños were alive, and I was alive.
A guy tapped my shoulder, and I was taken out of my Bailando trance.
“Konichiwa!”
I’m not even Japanese. My parents are Chinese. I’m American.
My head snapped back to glare at him, my face flashing with anger. I chose to take the high road and ignored him, returning to dancing.
Tap. Tap.
“Konichiwa! Konichiwa!” This time when I glanced back at him, he bowed at me while his group of friends snickered at our interaction.
My eyes narrowed into a death stare. I turned to look at him even more slowly. He had a stupid, arrogant grin that I wanted to rip off his face. He obviously thought he was incredibly clever and this was the best way to pick up Asian girls at the club. Because of course, all Asians look the same, so it doesn’t matter what you assume them to be. His friends were doubled over, howling in laughter.
I screamed, “Fuck you!” and thrust my middle finger at him. My blood was hot, and I wanted to yell at him more and curse his stupid friends out but the club was so loud and I didn’t know enough Spanish. He was still grinning.
And I gave up. The hot anger turned into cold defeat. I was tired and exhausted of being the foreigner – not just in Spain, but being the foreigner in America as well. I wasn’t assigned as my correct identity, American, by strangers I didn’t even know, no matter where I was in the world. I remembered one time in elementary school, I was asked to speak about my immigration experience to America – the teacher assumed because I looked different, I must have immigrated to Minnesota. My identity was an uninvited game of “What kind of Asian is she?” to random strangers, not asking the real question “What kind of person is she?” I only wanted to dance without being bothered and be Paulina, not “that Chinese girl”, or “Japanese girl”, because apparently “All Asians look the same.”
Have my parents always been treated like foreigners for the past 30 years? They were citizens of the United States, ripping up their Chinese citizenship cards and pledging allegiance to the United States of America. They’re not foreigners. But everyone thought they were. Maybe this is why my parents couldn’t forget China when no one saw them as American.
***
During my stay in Spain, I planned to go to my favorite churros place for lunch, Chocolatería San Ginés. Churros con chocolate were my favorite Spanish food – they were long pieces of fried dough, dipped in warm, thick, and rich chocolate sauce. When I got off the metro, I spotted a Christmas food market stood in Plaza de Opera, selling a variety of sweets, toasted chestnuts, and churros con chocolate.
Giving the stand a chance instead of going to my favorite place, I made a beeline to the churros con chocolate stand, where I could already see the hot chocolate dispenser sitting next to a frier.
“One order of churros con chocolate, please.” I said confidently in Spanish.
“Sure, they look like this though,” The woman behind the counter points to a churro pre-dipped in chocolate. These were not the churros con chocolate I had in mind – the chocolate came already on the churro, and it would be cold when I would buy it.
“No, no, I want the sauce.” All I thought about was the warm taste of chocolate on my tongue.
She snaps, “No you can’t have the sauce. It comes like that.” I glanced back at the sign behind her, clearly listing out the price of the sauce.
“But… why?” Didn’t I say it right?
She spouting something in Spanish that I didn’t understand, and cocked her head at me, annoyed. I was too nervous and I didn’t know what she said and maybe I didn’t need the churro after all. My cheeks turned bright red. Only one word flashed in my mind. Escape. Escape. Escape. I spattered out a “Never mind!” and ran away from the churro stand, embarrassed I couldn’t order a churro.
I thought I was communicating perfectly. I’ve ordered churros at other places before, and the ordering processes were successful. Hiding behind the churro stand, I remembered one instance back home when I was whining about having to call the insurance company to ask about our benefits. I loathed calling people on my mother’s behalf. I hated waiting sometimes for up to an hour while listening to the recorded “We will answer your call shortly. Thank you for your patience.” I never knew what to say, and the other person on the end of the line could figure out pretty quickly I had no clue. It was my least favorite English-language task I was assigned to do.
Instead of picking up the phone right away, I spat out, “Mom, why do I always have to call for you? Why can’t you do it? You know English! This is so annoying.”
My mom stared at me. Tears began to pool in her eyes.
She curtly replied, “When I speak English, even when I use the right words and the right sentences,” her voice broke. “They don’t understand me. Because I’m too Chinese.”
I couldn’t even properly order a churro in Spanish, let alone negotiate a phone bill in Spanish. How could I have been so ignorant and ungrateful to my parents? It finally sank that for my parents, living in America meant missing their homeland, being misunderstood, to always being assigned the foreigner.
It took buying a churro to understand.
***
A month later, I was back in my parents’ home in Minnesota.
“Paulina, will you go online and see how much I’m supposed to pay for the garbage bill this month?” my mom asked. And I did.
