On Feb. 16, I opened The New York Times to the international section and found just about every single article on that page to be about China.
The first one, spread across all six columns, was about Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s friendly-yet-dubious tour in the United States. Beneath it, there was a cynical article about the Chinese government’s detainment of Tibetans and another one about a communist ploy to end China’s current capitalism streak.
I am a first-generation Chinese American, and seeing this sort of apprehensive attention for China always puts me in a stupor of existential cogitation. Well, that might be an overstatement, but I do always get uneasy.
To be completely honest, I really don’t know much about Chinese politics or even China-America diplomatic relations.
As a Chinese-American student at a politically aware, academically prestigious university, I suppose I have somewhat of an obligation to read up on such matters – or at least, an obligation to feign personal interest when it comes to issues like this.
But the truth is, I really don’t want to read about China in American media. Because regardless of context, I know that every scrutinized portrayal of China will be more or less an indictment – an appeal to my higher loyalties.
But here’s the dilemma: I don’t know where my higher loyalties lie.
For the past 10 years of my life, I’ve considered myself to be a cultural hybrid. While I’m thoroughly Westernized, I still straddle a deep, crooked culture gap. At home I speak Mandarin, eat rice every other night, wear slippers in the kitchen and occasionally watch Korean soap operas with my mom. Everywhere else, I am a “Mean Girls”-quoting, burger-eating pop culture junkie.
Nonetheless, there are times when my Chinese roots seep into my Westernized self.
For instance, sometimes I catch myself eating pasta and salad with chopsticks. When I get really tired, I’ll accidentally talk to my white, suburban friends in Chinese. I get caught up in certain Chinese superstitions my parents used to talk about, like associating spiders with luck. I still can’t help but cringe every time someone kills a spider in front of me.
All in all, my life is kind of a cultural cliche – identical to what Amy Tan wrote about in “The Joy Luck Club.”
On most days, I find that there is a natural balance between my two cultural identities. I don’t have to appeal to higher loyalties because I find most situations to be racially neutral.
But there are times when I’m challenged to pick a dominant side. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, for example, a friend’s mother asked me how I felt about Michael Phelps winning so many titles in China’s domain.
It was a harmless, trivial question without malicious intent (it’s possible she might have been slightly racist), but it stumped me. How was I supposed to answer the question without tipping my cultural balance?
Regardless of the fact that Michael Phelps may be a one-time drunk driver and quite the conspicuous marijuana user, I have absolutely nothing against him. But why would I be opposed to him in the first place?
He is by no means the face of American patriotism. Her question threatened my cross-cultural identity, but even more frighteningly, it suggested that I had stronger ties to China than I do to America. Needless to say, neither implication is true, especially not the latter.
In the same vein, America’s adversarial portrayal of China pressures me to submit to a certain side: I can either adopt a bigoted view of American supremacy or I can defend China, my ethnicity and birthright, against America’s antagonizing media.
Though I may or may not be the one forcing myself into this cultural quandary, I’m sure there are other cross-cultural kids who feel the same.
All the while, China may be becoming America’s biggest economic opponent. China has some major human rights issues to straighten out, and as of right now, China is still a communist nation. All of these facts, continually reiterated by American media, hold true.
But regardless of any political truths, the root of my dilemma lies in international rivalry – the egocentric strife for global socioeconomic power – something for which both America and China can be blamed.
Ultimately, picking a side should never be the solution. Culture is something that transcends politics and worldly affairs.
Having crossed and re-crossed the threshold of two different cultures, I don’t devote myself to one single country. I am a citizen of the world.
Cathaleen Chen is a Medill freshman. She can be reached at [email protected]