Two Cultures Meet
In the Family
(June 21, 1996)
Text and
Photo by Robert O'Malley
The phone rings in the
home of Daquang Chu in an elderly housing complex in Boston's Chinatown.
It's his daughter-in-law calling from her home in Quincy. She wants
to know how her brother-in-lawdid in a job interview she arranged
for him today at the factory where she works.
Not long ago he and Daquang Chu's daughter immigrated from Guangzhou,
China, but in recent days, he has been growing increasingly disheartened
by his new life here. He has been unable to find a suitable job
and is worried about violence and a lack of rigor at his son's public
school. He has even written a 12-page letter to his parents-in-law
explaining why he wants to return to China.
To strengthen their son-in-law's resolve, Daquang Chu and his wife,
Chen He, emphasize the success of their five other children who
have immigrated to the US over the last decade and a half. Their
goal is to ensure that this last daughter and her family remain
in the US with the rest of the family. In Chu's extended family,
everyone strives to help the new family adjust to life in America.
Sacrificing Present Comfort for Future Gain
Not far away in Roxbury, the Yang family is also working hard to
create a new life for themselves in America. Yu Feng Chen and her
two children recently immigrated from a Chinese village to join
her husband, Da Ming Yang, in Boston. The family is temporarily
living with Yang's elderly mother in a crowded one-bedroom apartment
on Huntington Avenue. Mattresses and beds cover most of the available
space and the only wall decorations are a Chinese calendar and an
ancestral shrine for "a young family."
On days when their parents are working or attending English classes,
the children are cared for by their grandmother. While Da Ming Yang
envisions his two elementary school-aged children receiving an education
and someday working as engineers or computer specialists, he feels
his own career options to be far more limited. With little knowledge
of English and only seven years of schooling in China, he believes
his job in a New Hampshire Chinese restaurant is one of the few
available to him. Yang, however, remains confident that the life
he makes for himself and his family here will be better than the
one that awaited him in China.
Restaurant work, he laughs, isn't something he likes or dislikes;
it's just the way it must be for him in this country. Someday, perhaps,
he will be able to afford better living arrangements and his own
restaurant. He says he recently looked at one in Providence but
hadn't enough money to buy it. Not long ago, his younger brother
bought his own restaurant in Vermont, so he knows it's possible.
For now, though, he must save his money and sacrifice present comfort
for future gain. "What I want is to have a sweet life," he smiles.
"But for the time being I cannot afford it."
Inspired by Tradition
In Chinese immigrant households across the region, family dramas
like the Yangs' and the Chus' are the rule rather than the exception.
Inspired by the spirit of cooperation and self-sacrifice, hard work
and discipline, Chinese immigrant families continue to rely on time-tested
cultural traditions to make their transition to American life smooth
and successful.
According to many Chinese, the guiding principles of China's traditional
family culture are rooted in the philosophy of Confucius, who taught
that fulfilling one's allotted role in the family and society was
the key to group harmony. At the heart of the philosophy was an
emphasis on self-cultivation, self-discipline, education, and respect
for elders. In accordance with this, Chinese culture tends to encourage
children to obey elders and put the well-being of the family before
their personal needs and concerns.
In China, for example, a working woman will pay for a younger brother's
education, while a son who immigrated to America will likely invite
his parents and siblings to follow him abroad, often housing and
supporting them once they have arrived here.
"People will sacrifice for their family members," says Bak-Fun
Wong, the principal of the Josiah Quincy Elementary School in Boston's
Chinatown. Immigrant parents, he says, are often determined to give
their children the kind of education and job opportunities that
were unavailable to them.
"Chinese families, I think, are very good training for team work,"
adds Ting-Fun Yeh, president of the Chinese Historical Society of
New England. "The bad thing is the individual can be stifled, but
the plus side is you do learn to tolerate" the shortcomings of others
and gain an awareness of your own.
In a Chinese family, explains Daquang Chu, "if you do something
wrong, you have to criticize yourself." When a son or a daughter
misbehaves, it also reflects badly on the parents, who lose "face."
People conclude that the child has misbehaved because the parents
have failed to teach the child well.
Elders Involved in Family Life
Crucial to the smooth working of many immigrant households are
grandparents, who often care for children while their parents are
at work. Since she immigrated from Toisan in Guangdong Province
in 1983, Chen He has cared for at least six of her 10 grandchildren.
More recently, she cared for a grandson in her South Cove Plaza
apartment while his parents were at work.
Her husband, Daquang Chu, has also been actively involved in the
care of grandchildren. Every afternoon he used to walk to a school
bus stop in Chinatown to meet his granddaughter. He would then take
her to his daughter's home nearby and stay with her until her mother
returned from work.
"We try to respect each other and work as a family," says Daquang
Chu. "Because the family members try to help each other, it makes
the transition smoother and quicker." In a Chinese family, he suggests,
harmony is the key to well-being and survival.
Like an increasing number of Chinese elderly in the US, Chen He
and her husband prefer to live on their own. But that doesn't diminish
their role in the life of the family. Every day they see at least
one of their children and are often in touch with them by phone.
Even small events in the family are not beyond their ken. When
her recently arrived grandson tried to pierce his ear, his grandmother
soon found out about it and immediately expressed her concern to
her son: "He's wrong. He shouldn't do it. He's only 12 years old,"
she said.
American Values, Chinese Values
"In my family, my mother for the kids is powerful," says Betty
Cheung, whose children go to their grandmother's apartment in a
nearby elderly housing complex every day after school and stay with
her until their mother returns home from work.
Her mother, she says, continues to follow many of the strict rules
of behavior that traditionally governed relations between young
and old in China. They know that when they go to her house there
are certain things they cannot do, she says.
"When I was young, old people were the most important," Cheung
points out. But in America, it's the young who seem to have much
of the authority. "I just accept this; I don't thing it's good or
not [good]," she says.
Cheung says that when she was growing up in China, she couldn't
interrupt her mother while she was speaking. In traditional Chinese
society, children were not allowed to speak to adults without first
receiving permission. With her own children, she adds, she is more
flexible and willing to make allowances for American traditions.
"Just speak out. Say it. Maybe you'll get it," she tells them now.
"Most of the time I'll say no."
"I have some power over the kids," says Cheung, who believes that
the cause of much youth crime in the US is poor education in the
home. If children are given clear and consistent rules of behavior
in the family, she argues, they're likely to behave the same way
in the community.
Having come of age in China during the Cultural Revolution, Cheung
grew up with few material benefits. She is concerned that those
available to her children in this country will spoil and distract
them. In China, children in theory did not really have personal
possessions and often hadn't their own room.
"When I was young I never asked my mother to buy something for
me," she points out. "I don't think children need too many material
things ... If the kids pay too much attention to dress, to the material
things, they don't pay too much attention to study. So don't give
them money."
A good student herself when she was growing up in China, she remains
dissatisfied with her children's performance in school. Although
the teachers tell her they are doing reasonably well, she feels
that they should do better. "Why not get 100 percent?" she tells
her children. "Ninety points - this is not bad," they reply.
Raised in America
While the children of Chinese immigrants sometimes question the
traditional values imposed on them as children and come under the
influence of American ideas, they often continue to preserve many
of those values in their adult lives.
"When I think of Chinese families," says Anita Hum of Belmont,
"I think of the family being very nurturing and offering a lot of
guidance." Although she didn't always agree with their decisions
while growing up, she says her parents "were very unselfish in everything
they did." The children were likewise encouraged to be "sensitive
to others" in their group. "We were not taught to think about ourselves
and our own needs," she says.
Constance Lum had a similar experience. At the age of 7, she and
her family immigrated to Honolulu from Guangdong Province in China.
Lum recalls her parents working "from morning to late at night"
in restaurants and hotels when they first arrived in this country.
The family was unable to spend much time together because of the
long hours of work, but she always felt a "sense of stability in
the family."
Although she found it hard to talk about "personal" things with
her parents and became frustrated when they couldn't understand
what she was going through at school, she admired their self-reliance,
respect for education, and sense of responsibility.
In her family everyone was told they had to cooperate to ensure
a stable family life. After watching her family struggle to make
a new life without the benefit of wealth or the ability to speak
English, she feels that much can be accomplished through cooperation
and discipline.
Lum, however, remains wary of some of the traditional "Confucian"
values promoted by her parents, especially those suggesting that
wives should obey husbands and girls should be "the ideal Chinese
good daughter." Such a daughter, for example, shouldn't go out on
dates and should uncritically agree with her elders. Her father,
she points out, tended to have certain expectations of her as a
girl. He would often urge her to wear more dresses or tell her that
she shouldn't practice kung fu or go out hiking with friends "because
that's a boy thing to do."
Individualism Versus Cooperation
While traditional Chinese emphasis on cooperation within the group
has been a key ingredient of Chinese immigrants' ability to thrive
in the US, it has also at times become a thorny issue for their
children, who inevitably fall under the influence of the American
tradition of individualism.
Children who sidestep the wishes of their parents to pursue more
personal forms of expression may end up feeling intense guilt for
their transgressions, say some Chinese Americans. One woman, who
wished to remain anonymous, explains how she once felt compelled
to conceal from her parents the identity of a non-Chinese boyfriend
because she knew her parents would disapprove of her choice.
"Why could I not tell them? Why did I live a life of lies? That
brings us back to the whole issue of control - of the power the
parents have over the kids," she says. Telling her parents the truth
would have hurt them and made her feel guilty. They had immigrated
from China and had worked hard in their business. Like many Chinese
parents, they had sacrificed much to ensure a better life for their
children. She felt she owed them something. But sometimes it seemed
that "you owed them your life" and that was perhaps too much.
The cultural legacy of Chinese Americans may also be affecting
their life in the workplace, says Bet Key Wong, the publisher of
"The Family/Culture, a newsletter focusing on Chinese American family
issues. "Our parents taught us not to make any waves and to work
hard," she says. But in America, "you do have to make waves."
Wong suspects that some Chinese Americans may be passing up promotions
that take them out of state in order to stay close to their aging
parents, while those who accept them may feel guilty for leaving
their parents behind.
Stress on the Family
While Chinese families have generally been effective in providing
stable environments in which children can grow, they are not immune
to the pressures facing the larger society. The number of divorces,
teenage pregnancies, and single-parent families is growing among
Chinese, says Rev. Thomas Lee of the Boston Chinese Evangelical
Church in Chinatown.
In a recent study of Chinese students in Quincy public schools,
May Quan Lorenzo, a therapist and adjunct professor at Simmons College,
found that while the students were doing well in school and were
generally well-behaved, they also identified fewer role models and
have "very low self esteem, compared with the white students." Lorenzo
worries that some of the children do not look up to their parents,
who may be working six days a week in restaurants and haven't the
time - or in some cases the language and cultural resources - to
guide them through their bicultural worlds.
The children of immigrant parents are also quick to point out the
shadow side of what is generally a bright picture. Lum, for example,
notes that she has known families whose homes were "like hotels"
and whose primary concerns were financial. She also believes that
respect for elders doesn't always live up to the ideal. Elderly
immigrant parents sometimes feel isolated and alone in their new
environment because their children are too busy to pay much attention
to them.
One Chinese woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, noted that
the tendency to focus so much attention on one's family can lead
to an inward turning, a family-centeredness that may ignore the
concerns of the larger society. While children are taught to work
together, the context tends to be the family. The result is that
many immigrant Chinese are willing to contribute time and energy
to the family, but not to activities of interest to the broader
community.
Challenges for Youth
The subtle differences that distinguish Chinese and American thinking
present a range of challenges for Chinese young people growing up
under the influence of American culture, explains Rev. Lee. In traditional
Chinese society, he explains, emphasis is placed on the harmony
of the family rather than on the needs of the individual. In such
a society, a child's role in the family may be disconnected from
his individual "gift, ability, and talent." Because children are
taught to obey their parents, they may feel obliged to pursue careers
that are perceived to be secure, prestigious, or financially rewarding
by their elders but not necessarily fulfilling to them as individuals.
Lee himself had some difficulty persuading his father that a life
dedicated to religious work is as valuable as the chemical engineering
career he abandoned.
Another issue for some children is the manner in which emotion
is expressed in the family. "Emotional and verbal expression are
not part of our culture," adds Lee, who says his parents' primary
concern while he was growing up was "making sure we took care of
each other in a material way."
In China's traditional patriarchal culture, the father's role as
breadwinner generally didn't involve the kind of emotional expressiveness
children see in child-parent relationships on American television.
"When I watch TV, the Brady Bunch says this about what love should
be, and when I go to my family they say this," says Lee. "In our
culture you're not your parent's friends."
A challenge for many children of immigrant parents, he says, involves
learning how to integrate the "collective" and "individual" sides
of their character. "The only way I've been able to integrate them
well is in my faith," says Lee, who adds that Christianity is the
key for him because it emphasizes a person's individual relationship
with God as well as his collective role as caregiver and server
of others.
A New Culture Emerges
With each succeeding generation, Chinese Americans are further
refining strategies to address these cultural conflicts. "Even though
I believe strongly in family ties I think I've adopted the idea
of giving children more independence," says Hum, who explains that
in her own family her parents usually had the final word.
Yeh points out that while Chinese admire traditional American values
such as freedom of thought, individual expression, and the opportunity
to be creative, she suggests that these values need to be balanced
by an emphasis on self-discipline. "The more you learn to work with
restraint, to work with discipline," she says, "the more you gain
from it."
May Wong, a clinical social worker at a Boston hospital, tries
to instill in her children a respect for traditional Chinese values
such as family cohesiveness and self-sacrifice. But she also emphasizes
traditional American values: "They have to kind of think of themselves
(and) be a little more aggressive, a little more opinionated, to
do what they can to survive," she says.
Wong believes that a new "Chinese American culture" is emerging
in which the strengths of both traditions are honored. "I try to
integrate the best values from the Chinese and American cultures.
It's difficult at times."
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