Mom: Make sure you marry a Chinese girl, so when I’m old and come to live with you I’ll be able to talk to her.
Me: Uh, ok. What if she doesn’t speak any Chinese?
Mom: It doesn’t matter, we’ll understand each other, as long as she’s Chinese.
[Eventually I failed on both counts - my spouse is neither Chinese nor a girl]

If you know a bit about Chinese culture, you also know historically the youngest daughter was the one who stayed behind, didn’t get married and took care of the aging parents. I think in the back of her mind my younger sister always felt she had that role to play even though she got married and had kids, so she stuck by my dad’s side when he got sick with cancer. But it was always known that I would be the caretaker for my mom, when her cancer came back from remission.

The question of which child cares for the elderly parent was the recent topic of a NY Times article, which tackled the widely held belief in American culture that parents treat and love their kids equally (there’s obviously no such thing in Chinese culture). According to the Cornell University study (quoted by NY Times), American parents do really have a favorite child, even if they tell their kids otherwise. It’s their favorite child, who they typically want to be their caretaker in later life, even if their favorite isn’t the best suited (due to things like bankruptcy or drug abuse).

So I guess it should be no surprise to anyone, my younger sister was always my dad’s favorite, and I was always my mom’s. That much was obvious to anyone who knew our family. My parents didn’t hide it the way American families do. In another interesting aspect of the Cornell study, they found that the adult children in the study quite often incorrectly identified the favorite child in the family. Most often they’d say it was themselves, incorrectly. I guess that goes to show you, in American culture, there’s at least a facade of loving all the children equally. Being in America I think my parents at least attempted to do that, even if they didn’t succeed. Do your Asian parents play favorites? Is it obvious, or do they tell you all, they treat you all the same (I hesitate to use the word love as we all know Asians don’t use the word love and I love yous are for white people).

Tan’s hard work has earned her the award for 2009 Activist by The Advocate magazine. To read the full write-up about Shirley and the 2009 People of the Year, pick up a copy of the December/January issue of The Advocate, on newsstands now. If you’re interested in helping pass the UAFA in Congress, you can visit the Immigration Equality page that lists ideas including writing and calling Congress, writing to editors, and signing a petition among other activities.

Lam is also the creator of a website, www.GoInspireGo.com, designed to give voice to inspirational and uplifting stories that would otherwise not have a voice. He also writes about George Lin, former Program Director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, whose loss to Cancer inspired the theme of this year’s recent film festival, Cancer Awareness. The video above from GoInspireGo discusses Lin, his Cancer, and the tributes paid to him during the Festival.

Lam’s goal is simple, all of us know someone whose life has been touched by Cancer. So in an effort to help prevent the pain and suffering of losing someone to Cancer, we need to break the silence — talk about Cancer, especially in the Asian community. Awareness and Early Detection could save lives. In my family, we didn’t find out about my dad’s cancer until it was already stage 4 (the last and most progressed stage), since he never wanted to see a doctor or talk about his pain. So spread the word and let’s help make it so one day when we talk about Cancer, we can replace the big C with a little c.

I miss the days when my mom would get that twinkle in her eye and say we’re going out for breakfast, and we’d end up in Cupertino, at either a diner-like Chinese restaurant (A&J) or at Marina Foods, where she’d order hot soy milk (豆漿 dòu jiāng) and “shao bing yóu tiáo” and insist we eat it the way you’re supposed to, one wrapped inside the other. She’d order the sweetened soy milk, as would I, but my dad always got the salty soy milk (the choice of purists).

For me, it’s the mix of textures, the crunchy yóu tiáo with the soft shao bing that makes this breakfast dish an attraction, and one I haven’t had recently. The blog article is a good reminder that it’s time to make another weekend morning trip to Cupertino.

It turns out there are local Muppet characters developed for almost every international location that Sesame Street has a broadcast. In addition to the Indian characters, there’s the ones for the Chinese market, Hu Hu Zhu and Xiao Mei Zi, the Bangladeshi market, Shiku and Tuktuki, the Filipino market, Kiko Matsing and Pong Pagong, the Japanese market, Meg, Teena and Mojabo, among others.

With my upcoming trip to Taiwan with my daughter, and this new found discovery of local Sesame Street productions, I’m going to keep an eye out for an airing of Sesame Street in Chinese, so she can watch and I can see her reaction, especially since Elmo has always been one of her favorite Sesame Street characters. Maybe she’ll find a local Asian one to adore as well.

We’ve spoiled our daughter and taken her to Disneyland for her birthday each year, so we’ve gotten pretty familiar with the theme park. In addition my company has even held an event in EuroDisney, which I got to attend. What I didn’t realize until reading about the latest Disneyland planned for Shanghai, is that there’s already one in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

The park in Shanghai has been in planning for the last 20 years, and finally won approval this month. It’s estimated it will be completed in 5 to 6 years and be a little larger in size than the current Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. Disney hopes this theme park will create the kind of marketing engine that the other Disney parks have, encouraging families to buy into the paraphernalia the way my family has.

In part, the promotion of Disney within my own family has been largely my fault, as I was looking for role models for my daughter, and thought Mulan, with all its flawed images of Chinese culture, was at least a good independent Asian female role model, and not the helpless princesses of other Disney classics. Unfortunately, my daughter never took to Mulan and instead favors Snow White, who relies on others to save her. Disney to their credit did also produce an American Native Princess, Pocahontas, and East Indian Princess, Jasmine. And finally this Christmas season, the African American Princess, Tiana. My daughter can’t wait to go see this latest movie, so I think I’ll refrain from letting her know there’s another Disneyland she can visit until she’s a little older.

It turns out I’m not the only parent facing this same dilemma, as Wayne Chan writes this week about his decision to take his children to China in Northwest Asian Weekly. Chan’s wife confronts him the with the 8 simple words, “Maybe we should go to China this year”, and his immediate reaction is dread, as he has visions of the long plane ride, and the the hot summer weather (the only time he can go as his kids are school age). But in the end, he reminisces on his own first trip to China, and the life-changing event that it was for him, and he realizes:

I went to China that year as an American who happened to be Asian. I came back as an Asian American. So in all seriousness, “Maybe we should go to China this year.”

It’s that same life-changing experience I dream of for my own daughter, and I know it’s really too early for her, since she’s only 4. But there are a lot of other reasons for taking her back to Taiwan. We’re going for our Thanksgiving break this year. It’s actually a trip I’ve wanted to make for the last two years, but we were never able to go. Originally it was supposed to be three of us who were going, my mom, myself and my daughter. I had even purchased the tickets 2 years ago, but my mom got too ill from her cancer. In the end we had to cancel the trip, and cancer won the battle.

I view this trip to Taiwan, partly as a way to honor the memory of my mom. I’ll be taking my daughter to do all the things I wanted to do with her and her grandmother. She’ll get to meet all the relatives (many of whom are also getting on in age), including aunts, uncles, and cousins. I’ll make sure she sees the sights of Taipei. She may not remember any of it when she’s older, but at least I’ll have the photos to show her, and I’ll know I’ve done my duty to her and to the other elders in the family. My only wish is that this isn’t the only trip to Taiwan she gets to go on before she’s in college.

You can see the film trailer here for a preview. The movie will be followed by a student-led discussion encompassing the friction between cultural and LGBT values. The movie will begin promptly at 6:15 p.m., so please arrive early. Refreshments will be provided.

“Saving Face” Film Screening, Thursday, October 29, 2009
Conference Room B @ 6:00 p.m., De Anza Community College Campus

For more information, please see the Facebook event invitation here. Please feel free to invite your friends and loved ones — this is a free and open event where everyone is welcome!

Yang calls our attention to these sites, not only because they are funny, but because there’s something endearing about them for those of us that have immigrant parents. We love our parents and all their funny quips and sayings. As I said earlier, for those of us of certain age, we’d never actually call them F.O.B., so Yang wanted to know why Teresa Wu and Serena Wu (not related, but creators of the two respective sites), included the “fob” in the title of their websites. It turns out they used the term as “fob”, not “F.O.B.” and referred to their parents as “fobby” in the most endearing way possible. Yang gets some help from another Yang, Gene Yang, to get the explanation for this cultural shift:

[Gene] Yang, who now resides in Fremont, notes that Mission San Jose, the high school Teresa and Serena attended, has one of the most Asian student populations in the nation. “It’s like 80 percent Asian,” he says. “The average SAT scores there are through the roof, and they have no football team, but an absolutely killer badminton team.”

It makes sense that kids growing up in an environment where being Asian is the norm would have a different view of being an immigrant than one where they’re in the minority. “If everyone has immigrant parents, it’s easy to go, ‘Oh, my parents are such fobs’ and feel affectionate toward them, even proud of them,” he says.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around calling my own parents “fobby”, but they definitely had their share of “fobby” moments. When my parents bought their first new car ever in 1973, they bought vinyl seat covers to go over the vinyl factory seats. They finally took the seat covers off 13 years later to sell the car. By then the rest of the car was rusted out from too many New York winters, but the seats still looked brand new. I was able to convince my parents in later life that should enjoy the velour in their new car in 1997, rather than wrap the car seats with seat covers, so the next owner could enjoy the seats. I’m curious if anyone else actually uses “fob” and “fobby” endearingly, or do you also think of “F.O.B.” as a derogatory term?