From: joe@astro.as.utexas.edu (Joe Wang)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Re: What it means to be an American
Date: 6 Sep 92 02:43:03 GMT
Distribution: soc
Organization: McDonald Observatory, University of Texas @ Austin

In article <SHAW.92Sep3210707@au-bon-pain.lcs.mit.edu> shaw@au-bon-pain.lcs.mit.edu (Andy Shaw) writes:
>With the remarkable claim from Joe Wang that he does not consider himself
>an American

Ahem........  I'd like to see the post where I made that claim, since
I don't remember making it.

What I said was that I was Chinese.  I didn't mention anything about
being or not being American as well.

Interesting how you jumped to that conclusion.  Why did you do it?

Since Americans have generally been good about accepting me as "one of
them" and have generally been quite nice to me, I don't have any
objections to considering myself to be American.

>Not necessarily the melting pot, but the
>knowledge that I share many things with other Americans, including values,
>beliefs, and even culture

I share a lot of things with other Americans.  I also share a lot of
things with other Chinese.  

>I don't doubt that that could happen, but my
>mother told me the last time we were in Taiwan (this February) that she has
>slowly realized that she can't go back to Taiwan, where she was born, and
>where she lived for the first half of her life.  

In 1987, I took a trip to Mainland China with my mother.  The tour
guides seemed very concerned about keeping track of us, so I didn't
have any chance to see how I would function there.  However, one time
while I was half-asleep I remember overhearing my aunt tell my mother
that she couldn't tell that I was from the United States.  But we were
kept in somewhat of an "artificial" environment of pampered overseas
Chinese, and I never was able to explore the place on my own.

In 1988, I was in Taiwan as part of the "love boat" tour.  During that
time, we were bombarded with KMT propaganda, which I ignored.

We had, however, a lot of free time to explore Taipei.  I remember
walking through downtown Taipei, by myself, looking for books to buy.
I'd taken the bus from Tamshui, and after shopping for books, I had
lunch at a Fried Chicken store there, and then I flagged a cab to take
me to a relative of a friend.  I made a lot of these trips by myself
through Taipei, and slowly the realization came to me that I could
move there permanently if I wanted to.  There would be some friction
because a lot of the people there would see me as "just one more $#%#$
wai-shen-ren who speaks only Mandarin," and I would have to spend a
lot of time trying to learn basic Taiwanese.

But I could indeed move there, if I wanted to.

I remember that while I was walking through the crowded streets in
Taiwan, that there was a part of my soul that had lain dormant while I
was growing up in the United States, which slowly came alive that
summer.  From that part of my soul, there came a powerful feeling,
which I honestly had not expected.  The words associated with that
feeling were "hui jia le."  (I'm home.)

Most participants to the "love boat" tour return to the United States
realizing how "non-Chinese" they were.  My experience in Taiwan was
different.  I realized that although I live in the United States,
there always would be a part of me thinking and dreaming about the
land across the Pacific.

The good thing about most American is that they don't care about that.