suspend your disbelief
Chinese garter was a game we played back when we were kids at school. It involved jumping over a thin piece of rubber “garter” which was usually 6 to 10 feet long, stretched out and held at each end by two other players. The object of the game is to be able to successfully jump over the garter as it was gradually held higher and higher, starting at the ground, then at knee level, up till the ones holding the garter stretch their arms straight out over their heads.
This sounds simple to do, but it requires quite a good combination of skills to launch yourself in the air without using any equipment, and jump high enough to clear a very thin piece of garter suspended 5 feet high.
Yesterday, our small but lively Filipino community here in our laid-back corner of Florida decided to hold a beachside “sportsfest” to celebrate Father’s Day and the birthday of 2 kids. The kids had their pinata, Father’s day card-making contest and various other activites. The adults, on the other hand, played basketball, volleyball, and badminton, as well as Pinoy games such as takyan, “Japanese game” (or base-base) and “Chinese garter”.
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Posted under Photography
Where are you from, originally?
Ever since I came to the U.S., this has got to be, hands-down, the question that people have asked me the most number of times, even more than “Are you Chinese? Japanese? Korean? Filipino?”.
So it greatly amused me when, a few pages into the book, the author, Jane Hyun, shares an anecdote about a Korean American who was asked this same question. June, a professional with over 25 years of experience in financial services and technology, gave a witty reply that I wish I’d thought of myself:
Senior executive: That was some really interesting material you just presented. Where are you from?
June: A northwest suburb of Boston.
Senior Executive: Actually, I meant, where are you really from?
June: How far do you want to go?
Senior Executive: As far back as you’d like!
June: Okay, then, I come from the Garden of Eden.
While the above incident is amusing, the issue of Asian Americans moving up and reaching the top of the career ladder in corporate America is a very serious concern. Serious because, as the book points out, there are very real and very definite cultural differences between Asian Americans and non-Asians, differences that are preventing Asian Americans from “breaking the bamboo ceiling”. Moreover, more often than not these differences are ignored or not acknowledged, and Asian Americans are not aware that they are, as Hyun points out, “operating on an entirely different plane because of their unique cultural lenses”.
I became jolted to this reality a few months back, when one of my supervisors, amazed that I was holding my own quite well when bantering with my (multi-racial) co-workers, blurted out to me: “I thought you were so meek and quiet!”
I, meek and quiet? Ay, really, now! My family and friends, especially my husband, will have a field day with this one. Sure, I’m not usually the loudest or most colorful person in the group. But I speak up when I need to (or sometimes when I just feel like it), I usually don’t think twice about initiating conversations with strangers, and I actively take leadership roles in varied activities. Proper? Usually. Polite? Yes, I’ve been described as such by Filipino acquaintances, as I was brought up to mind my manners and I do try to be very courteous to others. But I’ve also been described, back in the Philippines, as assertive, friendly, and an extrovert. So why did I suddenly get described as “meek and quiet” when I came here?
The answer, my friends, is a combination of cultural influences and perception. In the first chapter of the book, Hyun takes pains to show how certain Asian cultural values such as deference to authority figures, maintenance of interpersonal harmony, self-effacement, and self-control/restraint, affect how Asians (and Asian Americans) communicate and in general carry themselves.
As an example, Hyun points out that “the Asian culture lives closer to the adage ‘The loudest duck gets shot’”, while “Americans tend to live the adage ‘The squeaky wheel gets the oil’”. Hyun goes on to say that “it is not only first-generation immigrants who are saddled with parental influences from the motherland”. Even more acculturated second- or third-generation Asians who are self-proclaimed bananas (Asians on the outside, white on the inside), she says, report that they feel burdened by the cultural influence of their parents and grandparents.
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Posted under Navel-Gazing , Reading
