For the first eight years of my life, I drank tea -- tea as I knew it -- more often than water. Much to the amusement of my American teachers, a handful of roasted rice or a few sprigs of dandelion often floated around in my water bottle. At first, I couldn't understand their humor because I couldn't understand their language. Later, as I learned the meaning and then the weight of their words, I began to pick the most foreign-looking particles out of my water bottle. Eventually, I convinced my parents to pack me plain water.
I have always been sensitive to both my native Chinese culture and the American one of my environment, perhaps because my first elementary school provided little support for students who knew barely a dozen words of English. I had come from a world of careful speech and soaring apartment towers and translucent tea. But, whether I realized it or not, I was certainly becoming more American, more like the people here who spoke their thoughts unhesitatingly, who often lived one family to a house, who stained their tea with milk and sugar.
I remember the first time that my grandfather looked at me and saw someone fed on milk and sugar. Many years after I first stepped onto American soil, one summer back in China, we were discussing some current event, and he gave a little sigh – and immediately, somehow, my preteen self knew that my most beloved mentor was disappointed. I knew that he saw me slipping away from him, sucked into the world of synthetic fashion jewelry and Hollywood and egotism and waste. I knew that he thought he was losing me, even as I stood before him.
It broke my heart.
I remember too the first time I stood up and spoke for my country. I was nine, and my fourth-grade class at Wedgwood Elementary had just read an article in Scholastic News magazine that flooded me with indignation. And the little girl with dark hair and dark eyes who had learned to speak English with more fluency than most of the class stood from her chair and let her words attach themselves to her feelings. By the end of it, she was crying. None of the other kids understood that – understood my tears. Perhaps some of them now have found something they’re truly passionate about, but that day, I looked around and saw that I was the only one who burned.
The boy whose desk was across from mine taunted me for a week about crying. Because only babies do that, of course.
For my Chinese grandfather, I am too American. For my American peers, I am too Chinese. And I? I cannot help but treasure my grandfather’s stories about history, art, culture – stories through which he poured out his mind and heart, desperate for the world he knew to survive for one more generation. I cannot help but treasure the classrooms and warmly lit libraries of my American school, brimming with the love of knowledge and invention. I am Chinese, I am American, and I drink tea without milk or sugar.