I visited China this summer for the first time in my life. This isn’t so extraordinary except that I am second generation Chinese-American, and I and my friends and family—none of whom had been back to China since leaving more than 30 years ago—were curious about the land of my ancestors. Would I be impressed, overjoyed, shocked? None of Amy Tan’s novels gave me a clue.

My parents came from a village in Guangdong. I was born in Washington, DC, and moved with my family out to the suburb of Alexandria, VA, when I was two. Since my parents spoke no English, I grew up speaking household Cantonese with a small number of other children whose parents were from the same Chinese village—an experience quite different from growing up in a large Chinatown such as those in New York and San Francisco.

In college, a friend of mine persuaded me to study Mandarin with her. I had a car to take us to Chinese classes at a nearby college, and thought vaguely that learning Mandarin would be useful. I studied it for a total of two years, taking a year off in between to study in Paris. Studying Chinese seemed fun then, but I never had occasion to use it—and not for a long time afterwards.

Years later, I find myself working for the US-China Business Council, and needing to travel to China as part of my responsibilities as business and marketing manager for The China Business Review. I took a language review class to refresh my rusty Mandarin. Yet my trip would be like that of the typical foreign businessperson: I would meet mostly with the foreign or English-speaking Chinese managers of foreign-invested enterprises in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. I would not have time to visit the home village. While glad finally to make the trip east, I was a bit wary of traveling by myself in what was, to me, a foreign country.

My first stop—Beijing—was enjoyable and didn’t seem too unfamiliar, although I thought it would have more neighborhoods. Perhaps this was because I stayed in a hotel in the central business district, and my excursions beyond that were by car. People told me Shanghai, my second stop, would be much different from Beijing—as New York differs from Washington. I found it to be more like a large Western city than Beijing, but I wasn’t necessarily looking for Western on this trip. I was expecting to enter a Chinese city and see a charming and distinct Chinese culture. I didn’t find that in either Beijing or Shanghai.

The hardest part of being in China was looking the part but not speaking the language. I’m sure other Chinese-Americans experience this, though I didn’t happen to notice any other struggling Asians during my brief stay. In Beijing, a colleague asked me if I felt at home in China, with all the other Chinese around. No, I replied, I’m American—a response that seemed to puzzle him. Another day, I stopped into an American hotel to use the restroom. I walked up to an expatriate manager and asked him in English where the restrooms were located. He looked at me and responded in English that he didn’t speak any Chinese. Well, I answered, neither do I; where’s the restroom?

People were often amazed that I spoke so little Mandarin: You don’t speak any Chinese? They would ask. Well, yes, I would say, but only household vocabulary for a dialect of Cantonese—that is, not the Hong Kong one. Usually, this took some time for me to explain and was still difficult for them to understand, so often I would just smile politely and shrug.

I was occasionally able to use Mandarin. Out to dinner one evening with two couples, I was the only Asian face in the group. I entered the restaurant, told the hostess we wanted a table for five people in a non-smoking section, asked the waitress for green tea, and then had to resort to English when she asked me which dishes we wanted. Though I understood her question, I had reached the limit of my vocabulary.

I had heard that Hong Kong was a sophisticated city, and that I would be able to get by on English. This was more or less true. The questions was, whose English? American, British—or Hong Kong? There was the time I directed the taxi driver to Pedder Street, which I pronounced as any American would—that is, just the way it is spelled. He was confused, so I spelled it for him, which didn’t seem to help, and said it was by Queensway, which he seemed to understand. As we approached the street, he exclaimed, “Ah, Pedder (Peh-duh) Street!” Like I said....

Another time, I had dinner with a colleague, a Hong Kong native. She wasn’t familiar with the region on the mainland where my parents used to live. In her enthusiastic attempt to teach me about Hong Kong and Chinese culture, she explained to me all of the dim sum dishes on our table, even though this was unnecessary—my parents had been in the restaurant business at one time. She told me she used a wok at home, spelled w-o-k. She was surprised when I told her that I regularly eat Cantonese food and other cuisines, too. It seemed amazing to her that people from America could have had such exposure.

I enjoyed my trip, despite the difficulties making myself understood. But I thought Beijing and Shanghai otherwise resembled many other large cities and I wish I could have experienced the parts of China that are less internationalized; then I could have returned with some real stories—and perhaps a better understanding of the country. I plan to challenge myself more on my next visit by traveling to the countryside. Meanwhile, I’ll start preparing how to explain to even more people in China what it means (to me) to be Chinese-American.

—Kattie Lee        

---

Kattie Lee is business and marketing manager of The CBR.