WongKaKui

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.

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... 👀