Why am I having an anxiety attack on Chinese New Year Eve?
What’s bothering me is probably the fact that today, I don’t feel strongly Chinese, nor do I feel American. I am in this limbo state.
It is Chinese New Year’s eve in china now.I was awake since 4 am. It felt like an anxiety attack. This unsettling feeling is back. Waves of anxiety. But I am not sure what is it all about.
Some of it must have to do with the fact that it is after all Chinese new year’s eve, but I am feeling such a lack of excitement, a surge of confusion that has to do with my Chinese-ness (or, lack of it).
I am seeing myself desperately trying to hold on to that inner little Chinese girl, playing fireworks in the intense war-zone like Chinese New Year eve downstairs from our apartment in Hangzhou after a big dinner, but inevitably I am seeing this image drifting away from me.
Although some pieces stick better than others. Many involved the unique perks associated with the Chinese New Year. New Clothes. Fancy snacks we’ve been looking forward to the entire year that mom got from Shanghai, her hometown. The 麦丽素 chocolate (chocolate covered 麦乳精). The candy-covered walnuts. The once-a-year treats. The excitement fades over the years as the abundance of goods was no longer an once-a-year affair when China and my family got wealthier. What kept making Chinese New Year Eve special was the family at the dinner table (and the ancestors who were looking at us from above the dinner table), the big rush to “home” for everyone around you, the pause and jump back in time to our “childhood home” — for the past couple years, the pandemic had disrupted a lot of that for many people in China and elsewhere but that is not what bothers me today.
What’s bothering me is the fact that today, I don’t feel strongly Chinese, nor do I feel American. I am in this limbo state. And I felt so lonely in it.
It didn’t help that at the picnic lunch yesterday they were eating those boring cold sandwiches, and the dinner at our friend’s house was optimized for Instagram pictures, not for the tastes, nothing hot and soupy! (Of course, i am half-joking. . It’s not really fair to my friend who made the dinner — she’s a busy founder CEO by the day and an aspiring home chef. She devoted a whole day to making everything from scratch incl. the 麻花! ) But my point is — it’s not like home cooking from my mom. Nothing will ever be.
Perhaps it is just the sort of things immigrants go through when they settle in their new home countries, leaving their birth family and childhood homes behind.
But after all, we chose to be settling in this area with many people cherishing the Chinese heritages, whether carried from their immigrant parents, or in the choice they made for their kids’ schooling (we have seen and known non-Chinese parents chose Chines immersion schools for their kids).
Perhaps I am just not in the right group. I have sort of given up on Chinese for both kids to balance all the other needs of kids and us. I shouldn’t be.
Perhaps, it’s just those Chinese American friends I hang out with are not exactly my people. After all, they moved out of China at an early age (6–10ish) and spent their formative years in a new country. Whereas I didn’t set foot in America until age 25 in grad school. (Even if I worked with American editors and journalists before that) I thought I was more American than Chinese back in China. But I was proved wrong when I do live here. For Christ’s sake, why do they have to drink so much iced water, and eat so many cold sandwiches? Why do so many of them love dogs more than people?
Then who are my people?
I got bored hanging out with my Chinese Chinese friends too. The Chinese engineers here are mostly single dimensionally interested in checking out how much the other engineers their levels make at other tech firms, or more accurately, ”big factory 大厂“ for engineers. The FAAG (Facebook amazon apple google) gang. The wives are more interested in chatting about the group buys and kids’ schools and afterschool classes.
It’s not just the single-dimensional interest in high-paying jobs and after-school classes that bored me and prevented me from hanging out with them. It’s also worrying not knowing which piece of national and local news and politics can all accidentally be divisive topics between us. Many of the Chinese language news and social media posts circulated around among the first-generation immigrant community, grew out of a heavily censored and controlled media system, after all, they have been shaping people's particular view of the world. Through my close encounter with that media system over a decade of years ago, I opted out of it. Now, with Chinese elementary schools requiring routine singing of patriotic songs, and Hong Kong becoming a taboo word in my high school friends’ social media group, the base of “my people” is inevitably shrinking.
The artists, writers, and wanderers are nowhere to be found nearby, they were priced out of the market a long time ago. Silicon Valley, like us, is in its mid-age: high maintenance, risk-averse, increasingly unwilling to embrace changes.
But there has to be a home for me and people like me. Who cherish something different. Who came here for the beauty of freedom and diversity on this land, the nature, the vastness, the maverick spirits, the possibilities. Possibilities to reinvent oneself. To create something entirely new. Unfettered, free from the shackles of the past, something not seen before. The eyes that are not seeing others in the lens of the jobs they are in, the house they live, and the schools their kids go to. The eyes that are seeing one because of who she/she/they aspire to be. The land of dreamers.
Words helped to clarify thoughts at times when I am confused. It can add to the anxiety and confusion sometimes too. Every time I write, I must make a choice, Do I write In Chinese. Or in English? Sometimes I wish I had only one choice. It’s much simpler. More often, I gave up writing, I am frustrated that the words don’t just flow to me naturally as they did before — I suppose it was because of my deep down confusion by the choice of language. It affects my thinking process.
In the end, I chose English. As this is the language the people in my life the most use, I imagine one day my daughter Phoebe will be reading it and knowing what her mom went through. And that is when she learns how fortunate and unique she is.
