Tiger Babies Strike Back

by Kim Wong Keltner

  I think it’s easier for Chinese parents to push for the tangible results of top grades rather than to encourage their children to pursue close relationships. It may not be until much later that social awkwardness rears its pimply head. And by then, the subtle hierarchy and clues to the kingdom might simply further elude a nearsighted brainiac. For me, competition for grades trumped fun and friendship, and that pattern began early. I felt close to neither Chinese nor non-Asians, with only my A pluses and test scores to offer cold comfort.

  No wonder I was all alone at night watching Jeopardy!

  And I wonder, is this when the combination of high achievement and feelings of isolation takes the next step into Tiger Personhood? When one doesn’t get close enough to anyone to develop sympathy, empathy, or bonds of friendship, it’s easier to stay inside the ever-tightening walls of that locked Chinese box.

  The Tiger enclosure is a lonesome cage. It’s a form of self-imposed solitary confinement. And if I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, I would say, “Honey, let’s not all be alpha females in separate cages.”

  10

  Show Me to the Foxes

  Once when I was a little kid, it was a windy day and I said, “Look, Mommy, the clouds are moving.” My mom said, “No, they’re not.” I’m sure she was preoccupied with whatever millionth thing she was doing. But there I was, my insistent four-year-old self. We went back and forth for a long time: the clouds are moving, no they’re not, yes, no, they are so moving, I said they aren’t . . .

  It was an aha moment. I was looking up at the sky and watching with my own eyes as the puffy clouds receded into the distance. I became silent, knowing that my mother was wrong. What insanity was this? How could my mom be wrong when I was still just a little kid? It was my first lesson regarding life being a game that moves as you play.

  Folks who haven’t been paying attention to the power shift that has brought the East to the forefront are like clueless adults who haven’t noticed that the clouds are constantly moving.

  Meanwhile, Asian Americans are up and running, and it’s GAME ON. We used to be viewed as the model minority. Call us what you want, but we’re breaking out of that mold, too. We’re not waiting for approval. We’re not the droids you’re looking for. You don’t need to see our identification. Go ahead and think of us in some kind of old way, as last year’s model, but we’ve moved on.

  In fact, we are grown up. Maybe we’ve got children of our own now. So even if we were willing before to not want better for ourselves, from now on, all that hot mess that we endured as kids just ain’t gonna cut it. Hybrid life is the wave of the future, whether anyone likes it or not. We have to live in the in-between times, between the blurred borders of East and West, Tiger parenting and vulnerability, between running fast and enjoying the stillness.

  Without our knowledge or consent, the world sees us in many different ways: academic cyborg, materialistic princess, dragon lady, or Hong Kong bar waitress. Often, we are defined as “other.” But to us, we’re not an “other,” we’re just us. We are kind people, dutiful daughters, good friends, hard workers, or maybe emerging artists. Maybe we’re finding our way, trying on new ways of being, or defining ourselves by comparing ourselves to others. Or maybe it never even occurred to us to be, or not be, what other people projected onto us. What do we want for ourselves?

  We are not fixed constellations. We are constantly morphing, changing our ambitions and desires, figuring out what we want, and mashing it up. We have the right to evolve any way we want, at any time we want. The sky is moving all the time, and even supernovas explode. Then where are you, Superstar? You’re in a black hole. So keep moving cuz ya don’t wanna get sucked into a dark, dead zone and find you can’t escape.

  And how, exactly, are we going to carve out our identity in this in-between time, between expectation and reality? How will we manage not to get pulled toward the dark side, that is, a life by default that was never of our own choosing?

  By being shape-shifters. We can be what we want to be, but are often many things at once: loyal daughter, workingwoman, athlete, caretaker, stone-cold fox. We can be all these things in one day, changing from one type of person to the next, soft one moment, competitive the next. Throughout these changes, inside we are always ourselves, but we keep that hidden from view. Inside is where we live, where the alchemy happens.

  I am referring to women and our myriad opportunities and responsibilities now, but even in ancient China, women were perceived as shape-shifters. Men were believed to be fixed in nature, and not fluid like women. Male “yang” energy was threatened by too much female “yin,” which is often described as watery, and hence women were sometimes portrayed in tales as eels, or water snakes.

  In stories from the Ming Dynasty, there were legends of “fox fairies,” beings that appeared in the form of women who were really tricksters with half-animal bodies. Men could be married unknowingly to fox fairies who stole into bed at night with animal prowess. During the day, however, the wife would never be seen without clothes. Why not? Because she was hiding her fox tail, of course! And further, a great part of the allure of bound feet was because women were seen as enchantresses, who were these half-fox beings. The foot as a deformed “hoof” was profoundly enticing. Bound feet were a tradition to keep women at home, but they also caused the hobbled gait that was perceived as attractive. The “fox feet” necessitated a swaying movement, all the more appropriate for a woman who was thought to be changeable and poorly tamed. Through the nationwide practice of foot binding, the fear of women’s fluidity and threat of independence was made into physical reality. By this torturous, centuries-old tradition, you could keep your sexy beast at home.

  So I say let’s turn this ancient idea of women as were-creatures into something that works not against us, but for us. Remember how in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the villainess is Jade Fox? She was a trickster, and no one could catch her. She was a little old lady who killed the greatest warrior of them all, Li Mu Bai (actor Chow Yun-Fat). Well, Jade Fox (actor Cheng Pei-pei) was also the one who expertly instructed Jen (actor Zhang Ziyi) in the ways of martial arts, and besides, she only became evil after some dickhead kung fu master dropped her like a hot potato. So I say, add a little Jade Fox to your life. (And throw in a little jade jewelry while you’re at it.)

  I think of Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd playing the two Czechoslovakian brothers in the Saturday Night Live skit. They yell, “Show me to the foxes!”

  And we are foxy because we have to be. To have room to breathe, we’ve learned to move through the crevices, and take advantage of the in-between times. I do all my best thinking between dishes and laundry, between dinner and bathtime. And that’s not because I wouldn’t love to have an office, but rather by necessity. Who has a four-hour chunk of time to herself anymore?

  I love the shape-shifters on True Blood. I’m sure a lot of women who are fans of that show have imagined themselves turning into a panther to escape modern life’s humdrum routines. We can escape by watching shows with hotties who turn into werewolves (Hello, Alcide!), but maybe the idea resonates with us because we ourselves are already a hundred different things to a hundred different people and are constantly transforming our own selves to accommodate others. We make breakfast, send the kids off to school, go to work, call our parents, dress like sirens, and act like poker-faced CEOs. As the old perfume ad used to say, we “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan. And never never never let you forget you’re a man!”

  Lady, we’re shape-shifters, all right. We move swiftly through life on our thankfully unbound fox feet. We are tricksters every day because we trick ourselves into feeling like we can do it all; we trick people into thinking we are unhurt inside. We keep our true selves hidden in the cave of our silence. Am I at least a little right? Let’s pierce through the idea of perfection with an invisible needle. I know we can do it all, but why should we, all the time, every day? Let’s take some time for ourselves.

&nbs
p; And last, if you feel like you are stuck in a routine, or a job, or with family duties that you just can’t abandon, remember that the ultimate shape-shifter is the phoenix. She is a mythical bird who incinerates herself, then rises from her own ashes. She rises again and again, no matter how often she has previously burst into flames. In Chinese art, the phoenix represents the empress. On textiles and porcelains given as wedding gifts, the dragon represents the husband, but the bride is a phoenix. Even in ancient China, it seems, they knew a woman would need to repeatedly rise from her own ashes.

  11

  The Garden of Perfect Brightness Resides Within You

  What we need is emotional rescue.

  You can get straight As your whole life. You can graduate from high school at the top of your class, go to college, and earn a master’s degree or doctorate. You can get a job. You are very good at following the rules, but maybe inside you feel nothing but emptiness.

  Chinese thinking is very practical. No one asks you questions about your emotions. Or if they do, it’s very direct, and impatient, like, “What do you have to be sad about?”

  “What for, this therapy?”

  “Why you need to talk?”

  Maybe you don’t have the vocabulary or terminology to talk about your feelings because you’ve never developed the language for it. Frankly, it’s easier to never even have this conversation with yourself. It is common to busy oneself with all the tasks of living rather than ask about the source of the melancholy. When there is such pressure to succeed, it seems reasonable that one’s time is better spent studying or taking care of little brothers instead of moping around and pondering the meaning of existence.

  However, this reflection is exactly what’s missing in the life of the average Chinese American. There is no sitting around and looking at the sky. After all, where is the practical justification in that? Chinese people may value education, but it’s not necessarily for its own reward. In feudal China, passing the scholarly exams was the only way to secure a financial future.

  I think Chinese Americans are in a major identity crisis. After all, how do you know who you really are if up to this point in life you’ve been existing for the needs of all others—your parents, siblings, and grandparents? You’ve acted according to their wishes for you, to make sure someone else doesn’t lose face. But what about your own face? You don’t even know what it looks like.

  Your hours and days have never been your own. Your reputation is not your own. Even your face is not your own. As you go through the motions of living, a lot can get accomplished through an overwhelming sense of duty, added to a fear of failure, and fear of disappointment. Unlike Americans as a whole, I don’t think Chinese Americans have ever had their turn-on-tune-in-and-drop-out moment. What would happen if we did?

  Most Chinese Americans don’t have room to dream because so much achievement, and hence financial success, is expected of them. Not many Number One Sons or Number One Daughters are storming the gates of creative writing programs, let alone turning on, tuning in, or dropping out.

  Who has time to write about his or her feelings? They’re busy studying, or they’re busy working, or they live in an apartment with eight other people, five of whom are their younger siblings who require care and attention. It’s only the one or two kids at the bottom who will have time to entertain delusions of grandeur about their silly little aspirations; they are the ones who will have time because the older siblings will have taken the brunt of the parents’ strict rules. The eldests can then resent the youngers, and we youngests will wonder what their freaking problem is.

  I’m the third born and the only girl. I wasn’t Number One, and I wasn’t a boy. I was pretty much there to do the dishes and not get in the way. When no one is paying much attention to you, maybe that gives you room to dream. If you’re not expected to talk much, that frees you up to listen to everything going on around you. No one thinks you are paying attention. If you are left alone in a room with a stack of paper and pens, and if all anyone wants is for you to not make any noise, well, I say make your own noise in your head. Then write it all down.

  In Chinese culture, feelings and writing about them are considered indulgent, especially with a cultural tradition that doesn’t promote carrying on like an emotional leaky faucet. If you dare to be unhappy, you’re just supposed to throw yourself down a well and be done with it.

  Well, forget that.

  Have you seen that Catherine Zeta-Jones movie from 1999, Entrapment? All I remember is the ad with her beautiful derriere slithering between the trip wires as she eludes a high-tech alarm system for the heist of the century. Whether we like it or not, we gotta be like that gorgeous butt, maneuvering between the laser beams that are the lines that other people have drawn to entrap us.

  And for us, what is the heist of the century? We’ve got to pare down and bring only what we can carry. Anyone else’s antiquated ideas of who we are or what they want us to be must be left behind. To go in undetected, we’ll need inner strength, poise, and trust in our own abilities. The heist, the big one to end all other jobs, is to take back our dignity, our confidence, and the way we define ourselves.

  These abstract, enormously valuable treasures are buried deep inside each of us. They are already ours and are more precious than the contents of any plundered imperial Summer Palace, that Garden of Perfect Brightness.

  12

  Love, Chinese American Style

  There used to be this show on television called Love, American Style. During a jaunty little jingle, the credits rolled and showed snippets of happy-go-lucky shenanigans, like skirts blowing up and pants falling down. Tee hee. My husband says that, as a five-year-old, he used to watch the fireworks at the end of the program and feel so giddy that he was convinced that he, too, was actually in love.

  For me, growing up in a Chinese household, it never occurred to me that I might someday participate in a Love Boat–type of romance or have a Fantasy Island, Charlie’s Angels kinda life. Actually, I didn’t realize until I just typed those words that Aaron Spelling is the one who ruined my worldview. No Chinese people on those shows, EVER!

  The history of Chinese romance, what do you get? You get married off to a Gold Mountain man while you’re in Guangzhou and he goes off to find treasure in California. So while you’re standing at the altar, you’re tied with a ribbon to a rooster who stands in your husband’s place. Or your parents have made a deal with a matchmaker to sell you off to a family down the road when you’re only three years old. Of course, these are old world stories. But things aren’t that different now. Even my parents joke about my daughter, Lucy, marrying their friend Gene’s grandson, Thaddeus. The older generation’s utter Chineseness cannot keep them from doing this thing that seems so natural to them: matchmaking, for better and worse.

  As for me, everyone always wants to know how I met my husband, Rolf. People were especially interested after I wrote The Dim Sum of All Things and pointed out the phenomenon of white men who only date Asians. I called them Asian Hoarders and said they were large mammals in tube socks who tempted victims into their lairs with Drakkar Noir cologne and paralyzed us with saliva like neurotoxic slime. But for the record: Rolf is not an Asian Hoarder. He never had an Asian girlfriend before me. He is, in fact, a large mammal who does own tube socks, but there is no neurotoxic slime involved.

  We met in a Chaucer class at Berkeley, so you get a sense of how we’re a match made in nerd heaven, complete with the sound of our eyeglasses clicking together when one of us tries to move in for a kiss. I liked him first, but he didn’t think of me “that way,” so I immediately wanted to destroy him. When I grill him now, he says it wasn’t like that. He says, “I just didn’t know you liked me. And you were so young.” It’s true that I was eighteen and he was already twenty-five, and in college that’s old, man.

  But I liked his old-manliness. I was attracted to his lack of interest in video games, the fact that he didn’t wear stupid Bobby Hill–esque shorts, and
his devotion to learning Middle English. Doesn’t that just sound dreamy, ladies? Best of all, he was really kind. In a realm where jackass style was the norm, his manner, warmth, and lack of pretense stood out. By then Rolf had already been supporting himself for eight years, so compared to the other embryos at Berkeley, he was already a man, and he was refreshingly competent.

  But what was this? He was so clueless it hurt. I was constantly asking him if he knew what time it was, or what he’d thought of last week’s reading, and the lummox would launch into a ten-minute monologue about how fantastic “The Miller’s Tale” was. Good Lord. I wouldn’t have minded him droning on if he would only take his clothes off at the same time. I was patient for several weeks, maybe even the whole semester. However, when he didn’t catch the clue bus after a while, I lost interest. “Wife of Bath”? Fascinating, numbskull.

  That was my first year in college, but it was his last, so we didn’t see each other again for a long time. About five years later, I was at a movie theater with friends when I spotted him walking down the aisle just as the lights were dimming. I know this sounds somewhat implausible, but he’s actually really easy to spot. He’s a tall redhead with skin so pale he practically glows in the dark. Which came in pretty handy, otherwise I might never have seen him. We said brief hellos before getting shushed, and we somehow managed to signal to each other that we’d meet out in front after the show ended.