Don't Waste Your Heritage

Last week's violent storms in St. Louis can add the toppling of a well loved peach tree to the notches on its hypothetical gun. The peach tree was a fairly young, healthy tree that grew on the side of my aunt's house. I remember we used to pick little peachy-colored peaches and eat them with some sort of spice thing. They weren't like generic store bought, or even organic, local-farm grown, but they were good. The storm snapped the tree trunk quite easily. My aunt claims its because it had so much fruit and was so heavy, but I am somewhat doubtful about that, since the same storm demolished much bigger trees just as easily. However, it is true that there were a lot of peaches this year. When I arrived at her house armed with a chainsaw and plastic bags (okay, my dad was carrying the chainsaw.), she offered me a bowl of giant-golfball sized, green peaches. I took one, and immediately wanted to spit out the bite I had just taken. I don't mind less-than-ripe fruit -- I like my pears crunchy, my apples crisp, my bananas greenish-yellow -- but this was like eating a green tomato. I asked my aunt why she didn't wait until they were ripe(r), to which she replied horrifiedly "but then they would be no good!" I nodded as understandingly as I could and slowly finished the peach in my hand, though I didn't really understand how the four first generation Taiwanese present could sit there eating those peaches like grapes, albeit with pits. Later, when we were home with a large bag of the same hard green peaches, I asked my mom how she could eat them. She said it was "heritage" and then launched into a story about how back in her day in Taiwan, her family would eat everything because they didn't want to waste anything. When a typhoon hit, they would gather all fallen fruit, ripe or unripe, and eat it because it would be a waste otherwise. My dad also chimed in with a story about his Marine days, when he and his fellow soldiers would gather the mangos that fell from the government mango trees after typhoons and store them under their bunks and eat nothing but mangos (saving their other foods) until they perspired yellow, and then ran out of mangos. I think my parents try to tell me that in their childhoods in Taiwan, good food was hard to come by so you ate whatever you could get however it came, and that I should realize that I've got it pretty good in America. Perhaps the moral of this story is that you should be grateful that your fruit in America is more than likely sprayed with chemicals to ripen faster but not fast enough to go bad before reaching your kitchen refrigerator. Jessica acquired a strange tolerance for little green peaches while writing this piece. She grows grapes in her backyard, but has never eaten them because the cardinals get to them before they are anywhere close to ripe.

An ABT's Guide to the Motherland

Most days I feel like the only Taiwanese-American person who needs a cheat sheet to being Taiwanese or a guidebook to artfully articulating what it means to be Taiwanese-American when you know very little about the country, the culture or its history. I know if such a book were to exist, I'd be the first in line to buy it. The truth is, I don't know very much about the Taiwanese side of my identity. If someone were to ask me what a typical Taiwanese meal consists of or what's "hot" and what's "not" in Taiwan, I would be at a loss for words. A deer caught in the headlights of cultural ignorance. I don't want references like Boba Tea, cheap knick knacks and Ang Lee to be the only things to come out of my mouth. I don't want to be a deer and I sure as hell don't want to be roadkill on the highway to Taiwanese self-discovery. So, I've decided to take matters into my own hands and stop waiting for a VH1 episode of Taiwan's "Best Week Ever" or a FoodNetwork special on "Xiao Chi Unwrapped." I plan on arming myself with the ABCs of being an ABT (American Born Taiwanese) so that the next time I say I'm "Taiwanese-American" it will be a statement and not a question. That when cornered in a conversation about our ethnic backgrounds, I can bust out with some little known facts about Taiwanese pop princess A-Mei and Henry Lee, Taiwan's forensic scientist extraordinaire. And for the purposes of this blog, I plan on sharing my new found knowledge on Taiwanese culture with you, dear reader, because knowledge is power and don't you want to impress the pants off of your friends and family? I know I do. Here's a tasty tidbit about about a Taiwanese treasure that will leave you drooling... Do you love a good bowl of beef noodle soup? Have you memorized which restaurants make the best bowl of soup second only to your mother's? Then you're all set to attend the 2006 Taipei Beef Noodle Festival slated for September 3 - November 5 - a three month beef noodle lovefest that aims to establish Taipei as "the world capital of beef noodles." To promote this national food favorite, Taipei government officials plan to provide an eatery guide for those interested in finding top-quality beef noodle establishments throughout the city and a beef noodle cooking competition to which both locals and foreigners will be invited to display their culinary skills. And if this still isn't enough beef noodle soup for you, festivities for this meaty madness climax with a "beef noodle carnival." I wonder if there will be beef noodle rides and games? Check out the official site here. Kim Yen knows that her beef noodle soup will never be "just like momma used to make" but she tries anyway. A Midwest transplant, she lives in San Francisco, and is, admittedly, still unnerved by large crowds of Asian people.

Hotter than Hell, but not Taiwan

Man it’s hot out. It’s like, Taiwan hot. It’s 99 degrees in the shade, with 99% humidity. The minute I step outside, my feet melt. It’s like the last time I went back to Taiwan; I had to go during the summer because the government said so, but if I had my druthers, I’druther go during the winter, when it’s a cool and breezy 70 degrees. I grew up in NYC, and people say that I should be used to this humidity by now, but I’m just not. And it certainly did not help me adjust to being in Taiwan during June. We got creative with ways to keep cool though, we had to - just to survive. If we had to spend all day outside, we’d hunt down a 7-11 and check out the beverage wares. Sure I wanted a drink, but standing in front of the open refrigerator, pretending to identify the mysterious looking fruit on a juice bottle for 10 minutes definitely helped bring down my body temperature by at least 1 degree. (It was usually starfruit.) We took this to the extreme when we went to Green Island and had a barbeque. I know I know, cook over an open fire when it’s 100 degrees out? Well, the smoke kept the bugs away. But more importantly, the barbeque restaurant had a huge refrigerator for the meat, and we’d fight over who got to get the next round of raw meats. Thinking back on it, the person who won always seemed to take a really long time to inspect the goods. Hmm. Needless to say, the fruits in Taiwan are amazing, and rare to find anywhere outside the tropical zone. They always do the job in quenching thirst, but in terms of really cooling ourselves off, we’d get the nationally famous dessert - Tsua-Bing. The various sundry of ingredients added to the treat, like red bean, pineapple, and almond jelly, was just a cover for eating a mound of shaved, pure ice. Mission to Cool Off Internal Organs: Accomplished. Sometimes just dressing appropriately for the heat helped keep us cool, but not all of us subscribed to this line of fashion. (This is no one we know, btw.) I guess the best thing we could do, which was also relatively easy since Taiwan is a tiny island (and Green Island is even tinier), was take a dip in the ocean or the various tide pools that surrounded Green Island. But now I’m in NYC where I can’t employ such methods to cool off. So I guess I’ll just bite the bullet and stay in my office job, where there’s AC twenty four hours a day. All I can say is, I’m chill, and I even get high speed internet to write about it. Audris likes to stand next to the air conditioner for as long as the hairs on her arms can stand it. She would like to thank everyone who posed for these pictures, especially the nice young gentleman in the speedos. Although she rarely has any favorites, for purposes of this blog, she would like you to know that her favorite dessert is Tsua Bing.

FedEx and DHL has nothing on me.

Omiyage (o-mee-ah-gey). At least that's what the Japanese call it. While the word refers to the gift itself, it's essentially the culture of gift giving. From what I know, the Taiwanese also seem to be pretty keen on giving gifts as well. To be honest, I'm actually not sure what the Taiwanese word for it, as my parents also refer to it as "omiyage". There are occasions that I didn't know japanese people gave gifts. Recently, a japanese friend of mine begated a baby, and I received some tea from him. In the United States, you'd give the baby-conceiving couple gifts in a baby shower. In Germany, apparently the birthday person has to buy the rounds, unlike in the US. The cues that I get about which occasions to give gifts come from my parents. So given that my parents' aren't social boors, I'd venture to say that I have the gift giving thing down pat. I think that giving the right gift for a person is much more rewarding than actually getting one. I'm always embarassed that people got me something. However, the one gift giving practice I don't really condone is the gift giving while on travel. I'm a student of the school of travel that says, "Pack light, and wash more". The fact that I'm obligated to get gifts for relatives whom I'm visiting makes me indignant that I can't put all my travel belongings into one roll-y suitcase. What makes it worse is that it sometimes goes overboard. When I go to Taiwan, I have to bring all this stuff in my suitcase. I'm convinced that Taiwanese parents see their children as cheap couriers. The most ridiculous thing I've ever had to bring in my luggage is another piece of luggage--the luggage in a luggage trick. The gift usually has to be something local, things that relatives can't get over there. Sometimes it's medicine, but other times it's chocolate or snacks you can't get there. If I'm against globalization, it's only because I've brought snacks to Taiwan only to find that they're being sold at the local 7-11. Then I'd have to eat it myself, and lie to my cousin's kids that I was mugged by the snack pirates on the way here. What space gets taken up by presents on the way there, gets taken up by confiscatable items on the way back. My parents often bring medicine back in the form of dried mushrooms. The fact that getting booked is a possibility doesn't seem to faze them. I'm just waiting for the day that I have to plead with customs that the medicine is for my goats. Wil Chung is a fan of Scott Song's .plans. He currently resides in the basement of a townhouse with six computers, coding or writing for most of the day. He keeps a tech blog at http://webjazz.blogspot.com.

I must study medicine and engineering so my children can be art history majors

When I graduated college, I didn't give much thought to exactly what I was going to do as a job. I thought it was relatively clear that I was to hire into some-big-ass-company, and enginerd my way to a career. Actually, the idea of a career hadn't really crossed my mind. As far as I saw in my mind's eye, I'd make more money than I could use and feed myself, rent some roof, and splurg on fun with friends. Besides, it's what my friends were doing, and it's what my parents expected me to do as well. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and throughout my years in the 'real world', I found that neither did anyone else. Reassurance and solace was found in the shared confusion. Friends that looked like they had it together were the worst culprits. They might have been applying this school, that program, or in a great job. But at some deeper digging, they would admit that where they were going was at best a vague idea--much like how everyone is for world peace, but no one really knows how to go about it. By contrast, our parents seem to have a pretty good idea of what we should do. It's often joked that there are only three professions that Taiwanese parents approve of: engineering, lawyers, and doctors. Some even put it further, saying that, My parents give me lots of leeway in my career choices: I can be any type of doctor I want to be. Parents tend to be more conservative in the career choices of their children than they were about themselves. This is because parents share all of the risk and none of the excitement. However, most of our immigrant parents might not have felt like they had a choice. They did what they had to in order to make ends meet, build a good life, and provide good education for us. To them, the pursuit of the good life was success, and to provide for their family gave them a sense of accomplishment. "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” – John Adams But for the second generation, will the mere pursuit of the good life be empty? Blindly imitating the success of the first generation might not hold much meaning for us, as we might just end up with all this 'stuff', without a purpose behind it. Before we know it, there would be another Fight Club, but with Asian people in it this time. On the shoulders of the first generation, we second generation have the luxury of even asking that question. We have been given the gift of a great education and great oppurtunity for building our lives. But that luxury comes with the weight of expectations from the first generation. The mutual understanding between parent and child about career choice and disownment is the undercurrent between all Taiwanese, if not Asian parent-child relationships. Do I have a right to pursue what I want to do, or at least keep looking when I don't know? Don't we have an obligation as second generation to also provide for our own children in the third generation? Wouldn't I waste everything that my parents worked for if I went and pursued underwater basket weaving? For now, John Adams reassures me that I'm not making a mistake with my life. I should take the oppurtunity and try to carve out a path that has meaning for me and my children, just as my parents carved their own path that has meaning for them. In the end, I believe that beyond bragging rights and keeping face, parents honestly want us to be happy and to avoid suffering. However, it is a unique challenge for the second generation to demonstrate to the first that passion and interest are not mutually exclusive with status and stability, and that they are reconcilable. Wil Chung recently deployed Annologger (http://www.annologger.com), and would like beta testers. He bites his upper lip when he thinks and likes water over milk. He keeps a tech blog at http://webjazz.blogspot.com.