In the US:

1st generation refers to those that immigrated as adults.

2nd generation refers to their children that was born in the new country and (presumably) grew up there.

I came to the US when I was 8 years old. I went to school in China for 1st and 2nd grade. Then from age 8 up now, is in the US…

So although I’m technically in the “1st gen” category, there’s another term for those like me: the “1.5 generation”

So I didn’t get the “full Chinese experience” enough to be Chinese… since I have no idea what life is like in China beyond 2nd grade.

But also not the “full American experience” since I didn’t spend Kindergarden in the US, and I had to spend the first several years being like “wtf” in a classroom full of people speaking a language I didn’t know, didn’t make much English-speaking friends in the beginning due to language barrier and feeling foreign and lack of confidence self esteen issues from the first few years of feeling “alienated”.

So I’m in between a 1st gen and a full 2nd gen’s experiences… like a bridge between the two worlds

I know enough to be able to just embrace which ever side, which ever “culture” I chooses to identify with. I’m like standing right in the middle of a gateway between the worlds.

I would say anyone from grade 1 to grade 12 to be on a spectrum of 1.5gen-ness, the earlier you emigrated, the closer you’re to a 2nd gen, the later, the closer to a 1st gen.

I struggle to express myself in Chinese so I’d consider myself leaning more towards “2nd gen” but not fully 2.0 gen.

That’s why its called a 1.5 gen.

Or I guess if I were to invent a new term, I call myself a “1.8 generation” since I’m SOOO CLOSE to being native, except I didn’t get birthright citizenship so I can’t run for US Presidency. But I primary language is English, so I think I could theoretically “pass” as an American-Born Chinese.

Hey, don’t question me, not my doing LMFAO. 🤣

(Very frugal parents… literally every thing gets repurposed for something else. There are still stuff in the house that is never fixed… heater randomly quits working, bathtub randomly leaks water downstairs, refrigerator sometimes lets icecream melt, roach infestation… don’t judge xD, not my fault. And my family is no longer poor anymore, not as of currently, just refuses to spend money to fix stuff since they grew up in poverty. Literally every penny gets invested)

Red envelopes that my mom asked me for it to “help me keep it safe” 🫠

So in my experience, it’s all just a big show, its performance.

My cat doesn’t even wanna touch any “human food”, only eats catfood. You can out fresh fish and she will not eat it. Only smell it.

In China, it used to be that there was food insecurity and cats just, unfortunately, get fed scraps of leftover food basically, and they actually had to eat mice.

Idk what happens in new years… probably get fed better? maybe? idk

My cat never eats the mouse, only kills them and leave them around. Sometimes my cat leave them half-dead and the mouse runs away.

So my cat is a privilaged American cat that gets to eats catfood whenever she wants, all year round lol

OMG 我屬馬嘅 I’m gonna be 24 this year after my birthday

Going off on a tangent:

But its funny how because 落地占歲 I’m technically unofficially 25 since I was considered 1 years old at birth??? (cuz 9 months spent inside a womb apparantly counts lmfao), and new years, even before your official birthday counts… towards your age…

So I ask my grandma, what happens if you were born the day before new years?

So you just become unofficially “2 years old”, 1 day after your birth cuz of weird shenanigans… where you are 1 years old at birth, then on new years your age counts uo by 1?!? lmfao

So I was like “A 16 year + 1 day old person can say they’re 18 then?”

I don’t think a Mainlander can walk into a bar in China and get alcohol that way, only legal age counts lmfao, not this 迷信 stuff

But anyways… I kinda wanna magically become a horse and run around wild

My older brother was born in '97, the year of the Handover from British, so he got to visit HK fore free for bring born that year (or something like that, maybe I misheard), so that’s why we went to HK for tourism as family… so long ago… I can barely remember.

My paternal grandpa would say something like: 牛耕田，馬食谷。 Because he’s 屬牛 I’m 屬馬 so my brother didn’t like that saying lmfao.

Anyways: 新年快樂

Family of Origin is so frustrating tho… 煩死啦

Oops I said the 死 字

新年流流，唔好意頭 or something… i dont really care anymore…

I did the self defense thing in response to a racist bully in school, they had a friend with them and obviously biased and sided with their friend so I got arrested… for fucking self defense.

They like to paint us with the “model minority” stereotype and all view us as obedient (as in context of obeying laws) and also “soft targets”, so when you do stand up for yourself, you’re labeled as a troublemaker.

Charges all got dropped, thank goodness. And I was momentarily worried about deportation but Luckily my mom was naturalized so I automatically got citizenship under the Child Citizenship Act so I was safe.

I don’t think that shooting American cops will go well, particular not for someone like me that is foreign-born and are always deemed “perpetual foreigners”. Its just gonna fuel anti-immigrant sentiment. But I honestly don’t know what solutions I have.

I really need a militia of “Rooftop Koreans” in my neighborhood. You can’t do this solo, you need a community and Asian Americans lack solidarity… literally Black Americans know how to band together, Latinos/Hispanics know how to bannd together, yet whenever I get bullied, NO ASIANS would even stand up for me. Jesus fucking christ.

When I was a kid, I remember we just do family gatherings when I was in NYC.

Like its sometimes consists of:

-visiting the paterna grandparents senior home (not assisted living, as in: you live independently, but in a building full of seniors) in Manahattan (we lived in Brooklyn, some relatives were in Queens. Its the 4 children of my paternal grandparents: My father and my 3 aunts (aka: dad’s 3 younger sisters). The oldest aunt, Stephenie, is the one that filed the petition so her brother, aka: my father could immigrate to the US.

-Going to restaurants. I remember the one we go to VERY OFTEN in Manhattan Chinatown, its called 金豐. My grandpa went there so often and knew people there. So the restaurant is always full all the time and people literally have to take a number and wait for their turn… lmfao… and they kick you out if you sit there too long chatting and not ordering food. (cuz they chat in the restaurant all day long lmfao) I hated to be in the restaurant after I’m done eating, since its boring… I didn’t have a smartphone back then.

-紅包 Red Envelopes… which gets confiscated as soon as I get home ahem I mean my mother “hold on it for me… FOR COLLEGE” 😭

-I remember one time my Brooklyn public school did a thing where they ordered food from a chinese restaurant and you’d eat that for lunch and not eat the shitty school lunch. It’s like everyone pays like… $5-$10 or something… forgot and its catering to an entire class… or maybe a few classes… idk if the other 2nd grade classes also did this. But that was AWESOME…

I was hoping for a No School, NYC proposed adding Lunar New Year as a holiday, but it wasn’t actually a policy when I was in NYC. Not sure if they have it now.

So some of my ethnic Chinese classmates didn’t go to school, BUT I REMEMBER MY MOM FORCING ME TO GO TO SCHOOL ANYWAYS, EVEN THO THERE WASN’T ANYTHING TO LEARN 😭😭😭

And worst of all, my usual “friends” weren’t there, so I felt so alone with a bunch of Gwailos kids (Gwailo means “foreigners”/“outsiders” anyone non-Asian-looking, its not meant to be deogratory btw)

-I think we visited Chinatown very often… I was so bored all the time… just being DRAGGED (not literally, but you know what I mean) around by my mom to various stores to buy stuff… sometimes Traditional Chinese Medicine stuff, no phone at the time…

I was so bored just at the fucking TCM store for like HALF AN HOUR lol

Now we are in Philly and mostly just chill at home.

We visited NYC sometimes… its a 2 hour drive… sometimes we took the busses there… but as we got older, I don’t go anymore… Never felt too close to paternal grandparents… I don’t even talk to them… but my older brother does…

I don’t remember what food we ate for new years…

But I think there is a 團圓飯 Family Reunion meal at like Lunar New Year’s Eve or something? Then they watch 春晚 CCTV TV Program which I hated except for the magic trick segment, but now I don’t even care for that.

So weird… I still live with my family of origin but I don’t even really have conversations anymore… I don’t think we ever had like a deep discussion beyond the basics, where to eat, what to eat, what restautant, are you happy or sad, remember when we used to do X thing… no deep conversations… :(

I can only express complex thoughts in English… but when my mom attempts to use English it sounds so cringe and awkward…

So yeah… language barrier with parents… what a fun incarnation this life being a child immigrant… this experience has been… so weird…

I think I’d just be doing the usual “Chilling at home” except my mom is gonna want to to eat downstairs instead of being in my room all day. 🫠

So much anxiety…

I feel like can only really live in places with Democratic control (or at the minimum, a purple area)

Like… if I walked around in a 99% republican white town, I’m gonna get called a “chink” every other day.

Even though I’m a Citizen, it still feel like over half of the US is unaccessible to me.

Even just moving from NYC to Philly, because Philly seems to have less immigrants compared to NYC, particulary less Asians, especially in the area I lived in; so because of that, I faced A LOT more racism in school than I ever did in NYC schools. I think in elementary and middle school, there was like less than 10% Asians… so much bullying, from literally every non-Asian. Even amongst Asians, there are still discrimation. Not to generalize, but there was this South/Southeast Asian kid that hates ethnic Chinese people for some weird reason… 🤷‍♂️ It wasn’t till highschool that the percentage of Adians went to like 22%, and it feels much less hostile compared to when there’s a low percentage of Asians.

I CANNOT IMAGINE growing up in some conservative white town… HELL NAH.

If I have children, I will not allow them to grow up in such hostile environments, even Philly is half-hostile. I’ll have to try to move back to NYC just so they can fit in. NYC feels a lot more Immigrant-Friendly compared to a lot of places.

How I feel right now as a naturalized US citizen:

P.S. It’s even more complicated in my situation, since my citizenship is technically called derived citizenship which mean I have citizenship because it comes from the fact that my mother became a citizen when I was a was under 18 so I automatically got citizenship status. I’m not a lawyer, but a quick search online apparantly says if my mother somehow gets denatualized, I could lose it too, through no fault of my own.

So… yea… mom pls don’t do weird shady shit… (I don’t know if she has any “skeletons in the closet”)

👀

Curious, so I was just thinking, like I feel more attached to my “native” languages Cantonese and Mandarin more than English, even though English is my primary language, like its my preferred language in every electronic device I use. If I wanna write a memoir, its gonna be in English, its where I am the most fluent in. But if I were to write a song/poem, its gonna be Cantonese, maybe with some Mandarin mixed in, to express my real emotions.

How do you feel about your ancestor’s language? Which languages you feel like… more emotionally attached in?

OMG It’s the 蛋撻, I’ve always lived near ethnic Chinese communities so I had a lot of these from the bakeries. It’s good! Well sometimes that one store kinda fucked it up a bit a few times and didn’t taste as great, but most of the times it tastes good.

I had some within the past few months, there’s like one of these bakeries very close by.

I think the best ones were in NYC. I remember in Brooklyn, I had a lot of different 包 and 蛋撻 and 粉麵 and alot of 燒臘

I remember stuff in Manhattan Chinatown was better? Or maybe I just go there rarely and viewed the Manhattan Chinatown as more “prestiged” than the Brooklyn 86th street "Mini-Chinatown"¹ where I live, and had a biased taste for stuff.

¹We call anywhere where there’s a lot of ethnic Chinese people a “Chinatown” (唐人街, literally translates to “Tang People Street” Tang refer to one of the best dynasties in China’s history).

I remember my parent’s refer to 3 Chinatowns:

The Main, Manhattan Chinatown, the most recognizable one.

The 2nd, 8th Avenue “Mini-Chinatown”

The 3rd, 86th Street “Mini-Chinatown” near where we lived

I always had the perception that the biggest one was the best one, idk if its true or not

Crossposting my comment from the other thread:

As a Chinese American, this resonates with me so much, I feel them. I’ve been through those similar footsteps as that kid, I was about the same age when I first got here, I was in second grade. But I’ve never been separated like that… I mean… I feel sad when I was in school, in an environment where almost nobody spoke my language (besides like a few classmates that were born here and grew up bilingual), and I felt alone, and my mother would pick me up from school like very late from the after school program that ran until 6PM, being separated from parents for just a few hours was already anxiery inducing enough, but this kid is now facing much worse than I ever did. I was also in NYC, so I can almost picture that scene… of being alone, and scared. I mean being separated like that, for extended period of time… who know how long this could be… must be terrifying, leaving your home country and trying to find a better life… only to get rejected by the country you are trying seeking help in.

My family are legal, I’m a US Citizen now, but still, imagine if this admin was in power back around 2010s when I first arrived and didn’t have citizenship status… and on that topic, my dad is still not a citizen yet (English is hard for adults)… so um… we could still theoretically get separated at any moment if this admin tries anything… 👀

As a Chinese American, this resonates with me so much, I feel them. I’ve been through those similar footsteps as that kid, I was about the same age when I first got here, I was in second grade. But I’ve never been separated like that… I mean… I feel sad when I was in school, in an environment where almost nobody spoke my language (besides like a few classmates that were born here and grew up bilingual), and I felt alone, and my mother would pick me up from school like very late from the after school program that ran until 6PM, being separated from parents for just a few hours was already anxiery inducing enough, but this kid is now facing much worse than I ever did. I was also in NYC, so I can almost picture that scene… of being alone, and scared. I mean being separated like that, for extended period of time… who know how long this could be… must be terrifying, leaving your home country and trying to find a better life… only to get rejected by the country you are trying seeking help in.

My family are legal, I’m a US Citizen now, but still, imagine if this admin was in power back around 2010s when I first arrived and didn’t have citizenship status… and on that topic, my dad is still not a citizen yet (English is hard for adults)… so um… we could still theoretically get separated at any moment if this admin tries anything… 👀

I’m curious how many kids just don’t care. Like… with all the emotional damage these parents do… does anyone actually care about their parents? Like… really? Spirits? Lol.

I was taught about some reincarnation stuff, yet, simultaneously they say ancestors are in heaven? So… the abusive parents go to heaven? Or I thought they were supposed to be reincarnated? So confusing.

Like jeez, imagine being “in heaven” with your abusive ancestors spirits.

Sorry for ranting, had a recent argument with parents.

It was to avoid mispronunciations and potential bullying in school.

I mean… yes, that does alienate you a bit with the rest of the population. But still, you can give children a name that isn’t used for official legal documents. Or like put it as the “Middle Name”.

Like, it can be very sentimental when… you know… the parent dies…

I know, I might sound a bit silly. “It’s just a name”, yes, but its one that echos in your ancestors, it goes up the bloodline, across time. Its an artifact, an heirloom. A unique bond between parent and child.

To 2nd generations… it might seem less impactful, so I don’t know if y’all might understand from my PoV. But, even though I emigrated when I was very young, when I was 8, that name is still a core part of my identity.

I think having such a name, even if not part of your legal name, kinda helps with like… you know… just feeling less self-shame about your heritage… helps with self-esteem a bit.

Now that we’re talking about this, I wonder what my Asian name would be if I had one xD

Are you parents still… around?

If you have a half-decent relationship with them… you can… ask them to give you a name (maybe they already thought of one but never used it). If they are still here, it’s never too late.

You can write a sort of mini-biography journal entry about it. Like: My name is [X] but the name my parents gave me is [Y]. And make the entry look cool. Add some flowery proses to it. xD It can make you feel better.

Lol. For restaurants, I’d just make up a random localized name that I’d never use.

Not giving a store my real name lmfao. Fuck the tracking.

I mean… even though I always thought my name is a very beautiful name, I’ve always wanted to use an English name, you know… to fit in. I sort of had one that I picked, but… you see…

I didn’t even speak English at first… so it’d be every very awkward to use a name in a language I didn’t even yet understand… so I kinda put off on this English name thing for a bit, and then when school started, I realized someone in my class actually has that same name, and he’s a ABC (“American-Born Chinese”), so I would feel like an imposter for using that name, so I kinda just… like… procrastinated about this topic for a while.

By the time I learned enough English, I’ve already been known by my Pinyin-Chinese name (I call it “Pinyin-Chinese” because its latin-ized, and without the tones, its not truely Chinese, just a transliterlization of the name) for a while, so now it feels “too late” to switch to an English name.

I mean, I could’ve done it when we moved to Philly, I had enough knowledge of the English language after being here about 4 years, but I still have self-confidence issues… so I didn’t feel brave enough to use that English name I picked. I didn’t feel like it quite “fit” me. So… I just keep on using my Pinyin name, and I had another 2 great opportunities to do it, when moving up from elementary school to middle school, and then from middle school to highschool.

I got US Citizenship while I was in middle school (via the Child Citizenship Act, my mom naturalized and I, as a Legal Permanent Resident, automatically derived Citizenshop status from my mother). But even so… the racism basically made not feel welcome enough. I didn’t feel “American Enough” to use an English name. So I didn’t do it for the final name, when I move up to highschool.

I’ve believed in the ideals of freedom and democracy for a long time, and as I got older, the more I realized I liked the US way more than China. I mean, China never really wanted me. I was the 2nd child born during the One Child Policy, I was rejected, they pretended I didn’t exist for the first few years of my life. And as I got older, I realized just how much more freedom the US has, and how much censorship there was in China. So… yeah. But even so, I struggled to fit in to the US. Racism. I got casually called a “ching chong” like… probably at least 10 times by now. I remember most of the racism I experienced was in Philadelphia schools, I don’t exact remember any happening when I was in school in Brooklyn, NY. Philly is less diverse… so yeah… Less exposure to diversity makes people more bigoted, who would’ve guessed.

So… now I already finished K-12 school… I’m just gonna stick with my original name for the forseeable future… for now… like whatever.

Now, I don’t even think I like that English name I chose (you know, the one that I chose but never really got to use). Since then, I went though a list of common Asian American English names, and Idk which to pick lol. These names sound so silly to be, didn’t “fit” me.

…

I mean, I guess when I applied for the N-600, requesting the Certificate of Citizenship (it’s not a naturalizatiom btw, I was already automatically a Citizen because my mom naturalized, this is just obtaining the evidence for the Citizenship status I legally already have), I could’ve requested a name change legally (this was during middle school btw). But legal name change could cause problems with the inconsistency in names, and my mom told me there’d be a bureaucraric nightmare, so I just listened to her and didn’t go with any name changes…

So I’m just gonna continue using my original name unless I try to run for office or something. (I’m probably never gonna run for office lmao, too much stress, like who the f even has that evergy.)

P.S.

I mean, with Chinese names being so cool, for me at least, it doesn’t hurt to continue using it even if nobody else understand the meaning of my name and appreciate its beauty. Chinese names are 3 characters, it just so… like perfect lol. 3 is such a cool number. The characters, when written in Traditional Chinese, it looks like a piece of artwork. Each character has meaning, the name has a meaning beyond just a being bunch of sounds you respond to when someone calls you that. I mean no offence, but when you look at English names, do you even know the meaning behind the names? Is there even a deeper meaning? You’d probably need a google search. In Chinese, the meaning of the characters should be obvious, everyone learns each individual characters, nobody learns latin roots of English words.

Okay so I scrolled through the comments. Holy shit, there are comment basically calling him a race traitor. I skimmed through the wikipedia, and like I think he made a political song that the CCP got mad about and he got banned, so the comments are now just filled with ultra-nationalists.

Also: Apparantly, in Malaysia, its illegal to criticize Islam, so… he allegedly did that in one of his songs and got arrested.

Damn, that’s a wild biography.

I usually don’t watch videos others post, but I did for this one. Damm, it’s… kinda emotional… especially as a music video.

From what I’ve read, a lot of migrant workers have to find work in cities, and therefore have to leave their kids behind in their village due to the Hukou system, kids couldn’t go to public school outside of where their Hukou is, so the kids rarely get to see their parent(s) (sometimes its both parents). (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-behind_children_in_China)

I got lucky, my parents paid for me and my brother to go to a privately-run school in Guangzhou (it was poorly-run, and worse than public schools according to my mother), my maternal grandmother was sometimes there to look after us. So I do have memories of Guangzhou, cuz otherwise all my memories of China would not be a city and tall buildings and cars and big roads, it would’ve been memories of the shitty village my mother was from. (no offense to my parents, its just facts lol, it was so behind in development). But even then, we only see our parents like late at night when they come home. So in summers… when didn’t have school, we just at home by ourselves, which why we fought a lot. I remember sometimes going back to the villages… so I’m guessing that maybe its summer we go back to Taishan, then winter break (like I think New Years stuff I assume), we stay in Guangzhou, because the break is shorter? Or something? (Not sure, fuzzy memories) But I do remember times of being at the apartment in Guangzhou, with my older brother, and my grandmother wasn’t home, parents weren’t home.

I’m not even sure that’d be legal in western countries to do that, I was no older than 8, and my brother was no older than 13, so two minors at home by ourselves… for a few hours at a time… seems like a CPS problem if this had happened in the US.

And the door thing is so weird.

You know how cars have child-safe locks? My parents got those doors that are like (1) anti-theft, makes it harder to break in, but also (2) it can be locked from the outside with a key. (So its locked on both sides, and only opens with a key)

Fire code violations lmfao.

But you know, my parents didn’t want us to run off somewhere. So… there’s that…

And yea… I think the reason why my parents are sort of emotionally abusive because of how rough life was, so either they had anger issues and lashed out, or maybe that was their version of “preparing us for life” or something. So much emotional damage from it. lol

Also: Its interesting how there are 2 lines of lyrics being simultaneously sung…

Honestly I can’t exactly think of any such thing.

I guess like… “Authentic” Chinese food? (whatever “authentic” even means lol). I mean… I think the common saying is that US Chinese Food are “Americanized” so its somehow not “authentic”, but I don’t exactly have much memories of it, so I can’t say for sure as a first-hand account.