By all accounts, my Chinese is good. My accent is almost indistinguishable from what it should be; I can always follow spoken words so long as I\u2019m not speaking to a scholar; my understanding of the written word is fair\u2014I can actually read Jin Yong to some extent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, when I say \u201cgood,\u201d I mean compared to other Chinese Americans or flat-out foreigners. Compared to real<\/em> Chinese people, I\u2019m on par with a seven-year-old. Because that\u2019s what I\u2019m not: a real Chinese. It\u2019s clear in the way I just always hesitate that tiny bit when I try to participate in conversations; in how clumsy I am, like a Bigfoot stumbling through a forest inadvertently scaring the birds into flight, when I\u2019m with Raine; in the way I\u2019m always unable to convey the exact meaning I want because the word I want is one in English; in the way my little cousins half my size need to tell me what word I\u2019ve lost on the tip of my tongue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I always feel as if my extended family judges me for my Chinese. It\u2019s a disaster in the making. Who wouldn\u2019t judge it? Mom is certainly always telling me to speak Chinese, though that never lasts long and I invariably revert to English after a few uncomfortable minutes. And Dad enjoys making me and my brother listen to Chinese poetry where each line is an idiom that I pretend to understand for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They probably don\u2019t judge me, of course\u2014they\u2019re far too nice for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t judge Mom\u2019s English, either, but I also think that that\u2019s a far different thing. After all, her English is fantastic, really, for having only learned in school. I hardly notice unless I think about it\u2014and I don\u2019t\u2014while Dad\u2019s is so perfect it\u2019s not worth mentioning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes, I even think her Chinese-ness makes her language better in its own way. After all, she\u2019d never start calling Arvind \u201coven\u201d nor Mr. Kramp \u201cMr. Crab\u201d\u2014both in Chinese\u2014if it weren\u2019t for the little quirk that comes from not being fully white; fully American. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I and other \u201cgood\u201d English speakers are like vanilla ice cream, you see, while she\u2019s realized that she can add the tiniest bit of spice to give the dessert a bit of kick that one would think tastes horrible until you actually give it a chance. She sprinkles in those spices so carefully that I can\u2019t even tell they\u2019re there, only that something<\/em> is there that suddenly brought everything to a whole new level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can\u2019t bake spicy mooncakes. I can hardly bake mooncakes in the first place and they always turn out absolutely ugly, but I especially can\u2019t bake spicy mooncakes. In all honesty, I don\u2019t even know if spicy mooncakes exist, only that I can\u2019t bake them at all. It\u2019s a scary game, trying new things, one that I\u2019ve so often been so afraid of and also so often unable to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I avoid mooncakes as a whole, really, until that certain time of year comes around for family and mooncakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"