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).

Like I’ve said, there seems to have been a slew of commercials (Target, CVS) recently with Asian Americans being portrayed as normal Americans, rather than for fodder. Now, Comcast has an ad touting its HD quality compared with AT&T’s U-verse with an Asian dad & son, along with Shaq. If you haven’t noticed lately, Shaq and Ben Stein have been spokesmen for Comcast this past year or so. Anyways, the kid kind of reminds me a little of Russell from Up. [Because he's, you know, Asian. And chubby. -Editor]

In reading several articles on this story, what stands out to me is the fact that Melody was the daughter of Khmer refugees, Chantha and Vanareth Ross. Her parents and other family members escaped Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime to Long Beach, California, home of the largest Khmer community in the West Coast.

During college, I took a course on the refugee policy in the context of the refugee flows out of mainland Southeast Asia in light of the Second Indochina War. One of the salient points my professor made regarded the ways trauma from the violence experienced in their homelands traveled with the migrants through refugee and transit camps to their eventual country of resettlement. For Melody’s family who escaped the Khmer Rouge genocide, how does her death as an innocent bystander speak into her family’s history? Living in a city with a high crime rate and gang activity, Melody’s parents had even moved their family to a safer neighborhood. Her uncle, Sam Che, commented to the press on his niece’s death, “It’s so senseless. We escaped the Killing Fields.”

In attempting to understand the Khmer refugee experience of displacement and resettlement, Melody’s death brings together both the trauma of her family’s flight from Cambodia and the pains of the immigrant’s life in the US. Both Vanareth and Chantha work 10-12 hour days, six days a week to provide a better life for their children. Vanareth, her father, expressed, “I have a little regret we didn’t have more time for her.”

South Koreans make up the largest group of transracial adoptees in the U.S., and they comprise an estimated 10% of the total South Korean population here. The first generations of adoptive parents were told to assimilate the children into American culture without regard for the children’s native culture; as a result, older South Korean adoptees tended to have the mindset of being white or wanting to be white.

Nowadays, adoptive parents are encouraged to maintain ties to their adopted children’s native background. They send their kids to “culture camps” to learn more about where they came from. They take the kids on a family trip to their native country. They enroll them in classes to learn their native language. The adoption mindset definitely shifted in the right direction by encouraging kids to learn more about where they came from — instead of avoiding it.

Of all the new shows this fall season, one of my favorites is ABC’s Modern Family which tells the story of three inter-related families in a mockumentary style – sort of The Office meets a family sitcom. One of the families is represented by a same sex couple, Mitchell and Cameron, who have adopted a Vietnamese girl, Lily. In the most recent episode, Mitchell accidentally bumps Lily’s head against the ceiling – and being concerned, Mitchell and Cameron take their daughter to see a doctor, who happens to be an Asian American woman who grew up in Denver.

Cameron, being white and feeling he needs to justify the adoption of Lily, makes some inappropriate comments and hilarity ensues.

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.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that we have yet another stereotype to be aware (or proud?) of: We’re cheaters!

Normally, this wouldn’t even register on my radar — ooh, straight Asian guys are having sex. yay — but then realizing how the stereotypes of Asian men have been since at least the 1960s, when apparently Asian men couldn’t have sex with anyone except themselves, it’s good to know that American women (read: middle-class white women) are finally acknowledging this basic fact: Straight Asian men are getting it on. WITH WOMEN. WHITE WOMEN. AND THEY CHEAT.

Of course, when you read the article, it’s painted with incredibly broad brushstrokes (“Asian” culture? Gag.), but it does point, however awkwardly, that straight male privilege is the same in nearly all parts of the globe.  Men are expected to be the breadwinners, work excessive hours to maintain their jobs and their families, and are lucky to see their wives/partners/etc. more than once a week, while having to deal with their stress by excessive drinking, womanizing, etc., because the workplace culture demands it.  And of course, if the writer is assuming this by dating ten or even twenty Asian men, that’s still not enough to make any generalizations.

At least it’s better than the assumption that Asian men are all docile little pussycats that would be the nearly-white men that these white women can take home to meet their (incredibly racist but overly polite to mention it) mothers.

So, to the original writer of that post: Asian men are still men. And some Asian men are douchebags and assholes who will cheat on your complacent white ass (like a certain Asian American man who’s been WAY overexposed who’s known for having eight kids.) And some Asian men are the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. You’ve just been unlucky to meet a whole slew of douchebags.