Societal Trends and family

       When I went back to China for the summer, I was talking to an old friend of mine from middle school. We mentioned how one of common friends of ours that were really close to us has came out as lesbian. My friend said that it shocked her, then made the comment, “I’d freak out if you tell me you’re a lesbian too.”

       Deep down, I really admire what my lesbian friend did. I admire the courage she has while it’s still such a taboo topic in China, though the society is changing so fast so soon.

       There was this app called YikYak, that I once downloaded about two years ago. It’s basically like Quora or Reddit, they are anonymous mini posts but you share it with people that are in your area. And of course, the area I was in is college. I was surprised to see how many posts there is about “Is it just me or somebody else as well have a crush on their roommates?”, “I am really attracted to this girl in my class but I am straight, does that make me bi?”, etc.

       Being born in the 21^st century, I have the privilege to see pride parade and pride month. I have the privilege to see LGBTQ+ flags hanging outside of houses. I have the privilege to see more and more people identify themselves as LGBTQ, hearing the general authorities talk about it, and discuss it in class without people shaming and others embarrassed.

       I have recently watched this show called Transparent. It’s about a family whose father, Mort, who later changed to the name Maura, has come out as transgender while he’s children are all grown adults. The things that family when through is definitely beyond what the father has gone through.

       There’s a quote in that show, it goes like “When one person in family transitions, everyone transitions.” It’s interesting to see the children all are very accepting of their dad’s being a transgender, because they’re born in California, raised non-religious, and young. While Maura’s ex-wife, Maura’s sister, and the older generation of the family have a harder time with it. Later, it turns out all the children weren’t handling their life in an emotionally healthy way because they never realize their mourning for the loss of their father. One of the daughters when into graduate school for gender study. The other cheated on her husband for a woman. And the son has a crush on a transgender woman. They cherished each other; they hated each other. They understood each other, they knew nothing about one another. They laughed together, they cried and no one was with them.

       So maybe there’s more to science in today’s societal trends and family. When we are all exhausted fighting over about “rights”, at the end of the day, a family is still a family, and love is love. 

Thoughts on gender and culture

       When I think about the word “gender”, the first thing that came into my mind is how there’s no women’s name in my family history catalog. Because according to my cultural tradition, after a woman gets married, she belongs to the husband’s family, so naturally, her name wasn’t included in the family history in the first place. And every time when I put names into the temple because we don’t know the name of the wife, we use “blah blah blah’s wife” instead.

       Are our identities as women only being seen as somebody’s wife? Though it is an infinite no in today's society, it is still an intriguing question to ask in the Mormon culture.

       I was raised by a nanny when I was a kid. Both of my parents work while I was in kindergarten and elementary. I remembered there were people questioning my mom whether she should be working while I was still such a young kid. To me, though I wouldn’t have ever known the difference, I don’t feel like being neglect in any ways or in anyways “defected” in my development as a toddler.

       I remembered I was much bossier around my nanny than around my parents. But I did enjoy having a friend outside of the family when I was a kid. Later, my mom quitted her job and became a housewife while I was almost graduating elementary school. And took on the role of taking care of the family and cleaning the house etc.

       But is it really so essential for her to stop pursuing her career and be with her family? Or do people do it only because of guilt that the society has put on them even in the 21^st century?

       After my mom quit her job, she always complains about having nothing to do, being bored, and being useless. By that time, our family has already converted to the church. So, she started doing family history work. And she woke up every day on time to start working on it, do some housework during the day, and work some more before she goes to bed.

       Until one day she found another job and decided she might go back to the working field again. And here’s when something interesting happened.

       A lady in our ward, who is in her 70s, walked up to her and told her that she shouldn’t take the job because she’s in her 40s and she should always put family first, moreover, she should put God first.

       I wonder if it’s a brother in our ward who is in the same shoe as my mother once were, would she have said the same to him? 

My home is the gap between the two countries on the opposite of each other of the tellurion

       It has been the fourth year since I have been the U.S. People ask me all the time, “Where is home for you?” But there’s no easy answer to that question because I have always been wondering the same.  

       I grew up with my two older cousins, Circle and Allan. Allan is similar to my age, and Circle is a few years older than us.

       Allan moved to the U.S. with his family when I was in elementary school because my aunt got remarried to a Texasan. After they moved to Texas, for a while, Allan kept in contact with me. At first, he would tell me his struggles at school, at church, and with friends. Soon, we started to receive photos of him being in the boy scout, competing in the swim meets and hanging out with his new American friends. To him, home is America.

       Circle, on the other hand, didn’t come to the U.S. until college. Now he’s working as an actuary at a high-end company in Dallas. He has a Chinese girlfriend that he met in college, and he mostly hang out with other people from China who had the similar experience as he does. Him, my aunt and uncle, bought a house in Texas a few years after Circle graduated from college. In their house, it’s almost like a Chinese household. They make Chinese food every night at home with ingredients they buy from the Asian Market, while watching Chinese dramas on TV. To him, home is China.

       A few years ago, my aunt had a son and a daughter with my step-uncle. We always called them “the American babies” in the family because they are born and about to be raised here. Alison, who is six years old now, speaks fluent English and would argue with his parents in English when she gets mad. Though my step-uncle is fluent in English, my aunt knows very few English. Alison, on the other hand, speaks few Cantonese and barely any Mandarin. So, Allen, their brother, will always be the translator in the family when my step-uncle is not around.

       Allan, Circle, Alison and I, we are all Chinese living in the U.S. But each one of us have such different experience that have sharped us to become who we are today.

       I came to the U.S. when I was 16. I decided to drop out of high school in China and moved to Oregon by myself. After living in the U.S. for four years, I went back to China for the summer to visit my family.

Most of my friends called me a “foreigner” because I refused to have anything else but spaghetti and McDonald’s the first few weeks I got there, I had a hard time phasing sentences and using the correct grammar when I speak Mandarin, and there’s English accent in my spoken Chinese. But more importantly, I found such a big gap in the ways of thinking and our perception when I communicate with some of my best friends in middle school, who there’s nothing we didn’t tell each other a few years ago when we were going to school together.

When I came back to the State after summer, I am once again, used to being recognize as a “foreigner” here because of my ethnicity. Though it has been a few years since I live here, there’s still a lot of things that differ me from an American. I still have a Chinese accent in my English, struggle to find the right vocabulary when speaking English, and have a rice cooker in my apartment.  

To me, both of them have been my home, but at the same time, neither have. Or maybe the gap in between the two countries on the opposite of each other of the tellurion, that will be where home is for me.