One and a half. A number that is just enough, but not quite. A number that is in between. This is how I have felt my whole life as someone who is considered of the “one and a half generation.” I was born in Vietnam, but my family and I immigrated to the United States of America when I was two years old, which never gave me any time to truly grow up in my home country. Traditionally, immigrants to a new country were considered first generation. Their children that were born in this new place were second generation, their children third generation, and so on. This idea of living a life in between, never being able to fully identify with one group or the other has been the dichotomy of my lifetime. Growing up, I had to walk the fine line between being a Vietnamese daughter and an American citizen. This challenge is one that many people in my generation face, including Jack Xie, my older sister’s boyfriend who was born in China and, like me, immigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was two years old.
“Cabin fever,” Jack replied when I asked him how he was doing. “You have a fever?!,” I exclaimed as I misheard what he said. When I sat down to talk to Jack, it was over a Zoom video call because we wanted to avoid leaving our respective households amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem with meeting digitally was that you traded connectivity for convenience and safety, as well, in this case. Jack lives with my sister, Rita, in an apartment in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina. She appeared on the video meeting briefly to say hello and let me know that our mother would be dropping by their home to drop off tax documents; even though my parents had a much better hold on English now than they did when we were kids, they still heavily relied on my sister to help them do essential paperwork that they didn’t want to get wrong. Jack, also being the eldest child in his family, did the same for his family.
Jack Xie
Jack Xie was born on April 23rd, 1992 in Guangzhou in the Guangdong province in China. In 1994, him and his family immigrated to New York City, Brooklyn, to be exact, where there was a large community of Chinese immigrant families. Growing up in New York, Jack lived a relatively normal life, or what was his version of normal. This vision of life included going to public school, occupying the living room as his bedroom in their small home, and spending his weekends helping out at the family restaurant.
His parents worked approximately 13-14 hours per day at New Golden Star, a Chinese restaurant that they owned and ran just outside of Washington Heights. Jack’s father moved to the U.S. before the rest of his family did and began work in a Chinese restaurant in New York City as a chef, eventually working his way up to head chef. Additionally, his grandfather worked at that restaurant as a dishwasher. When they overheard that the owner at that time was retiring and selling the restaurant after 50 years, they bought it. Throughout all 20+ years of ownership, the business has experienced a steady stream of income and regular customers.
They served the majority Latin American community in that area, including both Chinese American and Latin food on the menu. When I say “they,” I don’t just mean Jack’s parents, I’m talking about their whole family. Jack started helping his family’s restaurant when he was incredibly young, so much so that he had to stack soda boxes in order to reach the register.
“I started when I was like six, seven years old...Some customers still remember me from when they used to come, like still asking what happened to the little boy. Sometimes I show up once in a while. They're like ‘Damn, you're so old now,’” he recalled.
When there was no school on the weekends, Jack and his sister went to the restaurant with their parents where they would end up helping out. Jack was in charge of taking orders over the phone and doing transactions on the register. Many immigrant families will start their own businesses when they move to a new place to create a resource that can provide a steady income and serve as a space where they fully belong in a foreign world. I still have vivid memories from working my first job as a receptionist at my mother’s nail salon on the weekends when I was 12 years old. This was usually the place where I got to spend the most time with my mom, and the same was true for Jack.
Give and Take
Immigrant parents often occupy this survival mindset that overrides their prioritization for family time, and while their kids thank them for this when they’re older, it’s not before we usually go through a phase of resentment.
“At some point, and especially when I was between a young adult, between like 17 to maybe when I was 21, I definitely felt resentment because I always felt like they owed me something ultimately...they didn't teach me how to drive a car and teach me how to ride a bike and teach me to swim, play basketball,” Jack said. I had flashbacks to my own childhood when Jack told me that his father would often have to guess his kids’ age and what grade they were in when he was asked.
“They could have been home more, and we could have spent more time as a family. But the tradeoff would have been we wouldn't have all the nice things we had in life, right? So it's like you kind of just got to give or take,” said Jack.
This phase of resentment usually ends when the kids grow up and realize that, without their parents working so hard, they would probably not enjoy the same life that they do. For Jack, he realized that the restaurant completely changed his family’s life for the better.
“My room was the living room. There was no couch. My bed was the couch, and then we moved to a house where I had my own room,” he said. “I think the business ultimately changed my whole family's life from the point where they're immigrants from Asia, where they had nothing except the clothes on their back, maybe a little bit of money and to the point where they can invest in other things and provide for their family the way that they want to,” Jack said.
A New Phase
The Xie family business has now expanded to a new restaurant, New Moon, in Murray Hill. This endeavour came about as an opportunity to make more money in a different part of town; because the area around New Golden Star was lower income, not many people were eating out. Although New Golden Star is still open and operating, Jack says that they receive more business at New Moon, where the typical patrons are white-collar workers and medical professionals on their lunch break. However, at both restaurants, the customer bases that they have built are loyal, and they rely on regulars.
“...we do see customers when they come for their anniversary, their kids' birthdays, and whatnot. I think there was a quote in a TV show one time; people said food is kind of like a trigger for a particular memory or emotion. I think that definitely plays a part in the community...so, I definitely feel food is more than just a place where you eat,” Jack said when I asked him how he thinks restaurants play a role in building the communities in which they operate.
On Authenticity
“I think the true definition of it should just be what the restaurant is advertising,” Jack said. I don't think authenticity has to do with originality as in ‘Oh, this is the true culture of this region, too,’ unless that's what you advertise. If you do advertise ‘Hey, this is a Shanghainese dish,’ OK. You have to represent people in that culture or in that particular region.”
This was a new idea of authenticity that I had not considered before, but it seemed to be the most fair version of it that I had come across. Authenticity is especially a hot topic when discussing Chinese food, or what I like to call Chinese American food, which is what people classically think of when they go to order takeout from their local place. Both New Golden Star and New Moon serve up these Chinese American classics, including fried rice and sweet and sour chicken. Jack expressed his belief that authentic Chinese comfort food is in a category of its own, not to be grouped with authentic Chinese food. He even posed a challenge to the idea that authentic food strictly adheres to traditional ingredients and practices, saying that there isn’t a true tradition:
“...even in a particular region, like the same exact zip code, some people might say, hey, this is authentic. We're using green onions and garlic while the person next door might be like, no, we only do green onions. We don't do garlic. So, then, who's to say what's more authentic, right?”
Misunderstood
I’ve always trusted Jack to take us to good Chinese restaurants when we go out to eat because I felt that he had a good idea of what real, authentic Chinese food was like and where to find it. He has not proven me wrong yet. What I never considered previously was how unique of a perspective he had on what Chinese food meant and, subsequently, what it meant to be Chinese American.
“People assume that, hey, all Chinese food is unhealthy for you. It's greasy, it's bad. They use MSG. And I think that's a big misconception because...in some particular parts of Chinese culture, they have some of the healthiest foods because we steam certain things. There's very little oil used in steaming...so, I think there's a lot more to be explored that people just don't know about,” he said.
There is a general misunderstanding of Chinese food that it, as a cuisine, is very simple and thus should be cheap. The first problem with this is the conglomeration of the many diverse cuisines that exist within Chinese food, so there is no singular image or idea of what Chinese food “should” look like. Secondly, people usually misperceive Chinese cooking techniques to be very simple and easy to replicate. I learned that this was not true the hard way when I tried to recreate the sweet and sour fish dish from Jiangsu that was meant to resemble a squirrel tail; what I ended up with looked like the tail of a squirrel who had just gotten into a fight. The sheer level of elaborate knife skills that are required in many Chinese recipes, including that one, is mostly unknown to people who don’t fully understand the cuisine, and that’s partially why people are less willing to pay more for it.
“People expect it to be cheap...I think that any restaurant can be cheap. It's like saying all hamburgers can be cheap. Yeah, sure, you can buy a $1 hamburger, but you can also buy like a $15 hamburger. Many people have this misconception of Chinese restaurants in the US, especially Chinese American cuisine,” Jack said.
When I asked him if he would ever pay more for Chinese food as a Chinese person who might be able to recreate some of these dishes at home, he had this to say:
“No, other dishes you can't recreate at home, even with the right ingredients. It's very different. Like, I was explaining to Rita how when we're moving into our new house, we're excited because instead of the electric range or induction range, it's like a live fire. I was telling her it's very important across all the regions in China. When you make stir-fry, if you don't have high flames, it does not bring out the same flavors in the food and the spices...and you can't do that at home. Restaurants can do that way better,” he said.
To balance the traditional Chinese dishes that he cooks himself, Jack is strategic when he goes out to eat at Chinese restaurants; he orders dishes that would be too difficult to recreate at home, like peking duck. I’ll be sure to pay more attention to what he orders us the next time we go out to eat together.
The tendency to homogenize Chinese food into one box also applies to the general misconceptions that Jack believes people have about Chinese and Chinese American people.
“They see China and they just assume...that the Chinese Americans here are very similar to the Chinese in China. And I think they couldn't be more wrong. I think it's just like how Chinese American food is a completely different category,” Jack said. “Chinese Americans, more often than no...are more American than they are Chinese. Like I would say 20 percent of us retain more of our culture than the other 80 percent. The other 80 percent are, like, completely whitewashed. A lot of them don't even speak the language. They have no idea about their own culture, where they're from, or how to prepare their own ethnic foods.”
Something that I have always struggled with when balancing my one and a half identities has been deciding if I’m Vietnamese, American, or both. I know that if I went back to Vietnam, I would not fit in there, even though my parents have raised me in this culture to speak the language, enjoy the food, and practice our traditional customs. But at the same time, people here in America look at me and don’t see me as an American. This makes it difficult for me to reconcile the hesitation that I have to call myself American, despite the fact that most of my friends are American, and I was taught to embody this country’s values throughout the entirety of my educational career. Jack feels that he is equally Chinese and American, and he has no qualms about claiming both parts of himself. This may be because he was able to see both the pros and cons of living a life that is almost double, but not quite.
“Because it's sometimes also good to get a different perspective on the same issue from a different culture. Like in one culture, it might be like ‘Oh wow, that's a big deal,’ but then in the other culture, it's not a big deal. It kind of alleviates whatever that you're feeling at the time,” he said.
Doing the balancing act of being simultaneously Chinese and American has been something that Jack has found great appreciation for, especially when he talks to his Chinese American friends who wish that they had participated more in their culture growing up.
Jack did not have a traditional American childhood growing up. He didn’t have a normal Chinese upbringing either. He had a little bit of both, and this has formed him into the complex, intelligent man that he is now. This experience has given him a new perspective on what it means to work hard, fully appreciating everything that his parents did for his family and adopting the work ethic that they embodied. Jack also feels that growing up in a restaurant taught him to be hands-on and not to be afraid to get his hands dirty, in terms of both cooking and going after what he wants in life.
After graduating high school in 2010, Jack attended a local college in New York City for two and a half years before leaving to join the military. About a year and a half later, a family friend who worked in demanufacturing gave him an opportunity to join the business, which he took. After working in that industry for five years, Jack decided that it was time to move on to the next phase of life, and he is currently pursuing a career as a real estate agent. He picked real estate because he claimed his parents taught him that there were two ways that one could accrue a large amount of wealth over time: stocks and real estate. Jack feels that the latter is simply a more tangible form of investment, and that’s why he is passionate about this work.
New Moon in COVID-19
At the time of this writing, the coronavirus pandemic is profoundly impacting the world, and many small businesses, including New Golden Star and New Moon, are being affected by it. Two days prior to the interview, New Moon was doing incredibly well because it was one of the few places in the area open; this was especially fruitful for them business-wise because, as was previously stated, the area is full of medical professionals.
“So, especially during this time where there's no eat-in and everyone's doing takeout, we have a lot of, you know, GrubHub, UberEats, Postmates, you name it, you got it. And a lot of people would place their orders beforehand in the morning when they get to work. It's like that whole floor or a whole office department or something,” he told me. “And they would go in in the morning and have like over 100 orders already put into the computer when we first opened the morning. And it was just, you know, toward last week that they were open. My mom was just saying it was just a madhouse. Like the phone would not stop ringing. Those orders online would not stop printing.”
His parents ultimately decided to temporarily close the business when they realized how much potential exposure to the virus was actually happening, especially to the eight delivery people that they had working for them, even with safety and preventative measures in place.
To live as one and a half is as bittersweet as the feeling itself. One on hand, you get to be shaped by all of the cultures in which you take part and can gain from them the values that you identify most with. With that comes the hard parts of the balancing act, like the conflict that can take place between cultures. My body still remembers the growing pains of my immigrant parents not quite understanding the needs that I developed as a Vietnamese teenager in America. Jack has managed to find his sweet spot in this netherworld in between. After years of going to American public schools during the week and helping out at his family’s Chinese restaurant on the weekends, he has come to a point of gratitude for the unique experiences that he’s had and the work he’s put in to get there. I’ve always struggled with choosing the right amounts of my cultures. Jack never bothered to make the choice, letting it make itself. Perhaps the tightrope is a little thicker than I initially thought it was.
Credits:
Created with an image by Kae Ng - "Entrance of Chinatown in San Francisco "