10 Lessons From A Chinese Immigrant Dad
By: Adam Cheung
Tags: Immigrants, Asian American, Chinese, Life Lessons, Immigrant Stories

It’s been a year since my dad passed away and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss him. It’s hard to not think about him randomly when I experience new things, see what’s going on in the world or when I sit down to have a meal. I was lucky to have my hero with me my entire life. He provided and taught me so much about life over the years that it’s hard to narrow it down to 10 things but here goes:

1. You will always be Chinese and a foreigner in this country. Always remember the importance of your heritage.

My dad always reminded me of this. He felt it was important especially during my formative years when I was under the impression that growing up in America would present me with unlimited opportunities. He never pushed this on me too hard but he made sure I grew up knowing Chinese values, traditions and history, whenever possible. I always remembered these conversations, especially as I grew up and many of his thoughts came true as I navigated through society and life. When you’re young with your entire life ahead of you, you feel invincible and confident that societal differences and challenges will be overcome, but he always made sure I was proud of who I was and where I came from. He also foresaw the challenges I would face as an Asian American adult in American society and prepared me for them. For this I’m extremely grateful.

“The Chinese civilization spans 2,000+ consecutive years. Modern Western history is a blip on that screen. Think about the importance of that.”

I think this is lost on many second generation Asian American kids because they grow up consuming American television, news, cuisine, music, etc. It’s only natural because I felt the same way. But with that said, our childhood was also filled with Chinese cinema, television, music, food, mah jong and card games. My sister and I always enjoyed listening to his stories about growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution, how he escaped to Hong Kong, met my mom, immigrated to the America and then established a life for us. It was through these stories and things that I was able to maintain a connection to my Chinese roots and gradually grew to embrace them. Finding your identity is a tough thing growing up in a diverse society where you oftentimes aren’t seen as an equal. Back then, we didn’t have social media or cell phones and all these outlets where you could easily find others like you to connect with, but I had my cousins and family.

In many ways, our family immigrated to America at the perfect time. The economy was growing and there were plenty of opportunities for my dad and relatives. I watched how hard our parents and relatives worked for us to have the future we have now and I guess in many ways, it was leading by example. To this day I respect action more than words as a result. With China’s rise over the past 2 decades, I also gravitated more towards rediscovering Chinese entertainment, food and culture and find it infinitely more interesting than its Western counterparts because of the values and stories I share with them.

It’s been eye opening reading and learning about Chinese history as well over the past year. Growing up in America, they really don’t teach us anything about it in school. My dad would share bits and pieces with my sister and I over the years but we always wished we had more time and more stories. Truth be told, it wasn’t until I got older that I really started to be more interested in the history of where my ancestors came from. I know my dad would be excited to know I’ve taken an interest in this. Moving forward, I’m going to make sure I learn as much as I can about where I came from.

2. Family should always be the most important thing

I have a pretty large extended family and they were all a huge part of my upbringing. We spent many hours together growing up. My dad always seemed to be the one that would help bring my uncles and aunts together because our grandmother lived with us. Holidays always included a house full of relatives and we always looked forward to this. Dinner was always a combination of traditional Chinese dishes with some American dishes sprinkled in. Of course there was always rice because elders can’t get full without rice. In the old country, sometimes you couldn’t afford more expensive meat so rice would get you full at a fraction of the cost. We didn’t know this at the time because we were spoiled, assimilated Chinese American kids, but it really made me understand the sacrifices that our parents had to go through for their kids later on in life.

So many memories over the years. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. In Chinese there are a lot of phrases that equate to blood being thicker than water or the sum of all parts is always stronger than the individual. These were lessons that my dad always taught me and my cousins. We treated each other more like brothers and sisters than cousins, looking out for each other and helping each other when necessary. As we grew up, some of us drifted apart more than others, but as we enter midlife, I’ve made an effort to re-establish many of those connections again.

When we found out my dad was terminal, the whole family showed up to the hospital on a snowy winter night within hours, traveling from near and far. I can’t express how amazing that feeling was as each and every one of my relatives showed up to support my mom and I that night. I take it for granted that family will just do that, but I know this isn’t the case for many families. It’s something I’ll treasure for the rest of my days and the example that I want to follow.

3. If you make a dollar, save 50 cents

Growing up, I remember we lived very frugally. My parents spent money on the important stuff like a house, but we always ate at home, didn’t drive the fanciest cars, didn’t have the nicest clothes or sneakers.

“Get a white collar job, live like you’re blue collar.”

That’s essentially what I took from this. I’ll have to admit this was a hard one for me when I was fresh out of college. I had gotten trapped in the wonderful Western credit card lifestyle and was spending way more than I was making at the time. Thankfully a good friend of mine set me straight and I was able to get back on track again. Of course you aren’t always able to save that much, but the general concept of not spending above your means should always be prevalent. This includes delaying gratification and being responsible with your money. I’ll say this. Having a competitive personality helps too because once you embrace this thought and challenge yourself, you’ll want to cut whatever unnecessary expenses you have. I like to win and I also like money, not because of what it can buy me, but for the freedom it allows me to have. If I want to walk out on a job because of a shitty work environment, I can do that. No questions asked. That is empowering.

Of course simply saving money won’t make you rich. My dad was always looking for ways to invest as well. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn’t but he instilled in me the mindset to always be looking for those types of opportunities whether it’s in the stock market or real estate. You have to have an end goal in order to have the motivation to get up and do something about it, a purpose. The reality is that I love making money more than I enjoy spending it. That’s the mindset he wanted me to have. You just don’t want to lose yourself in the process and be satisfied with what you have.

4. Always be learning and seeking knowledge

This one was drilled into me at an early age by example. My dad was always interested in a variety of things including reading, cooking, investing, history, fixing things around the house whenever he had the chance. He was always curious about learning even if he wasn’t necessarily interested in the topic. I can’t remember how many times I tried to explain the basic rules of baseball or football to him. I don’t think he ever really cared, but he still listened to me explain it and would sit down next to me and try to watch it.

I’m sure it helped me to train myself to be open minded and listen even if I didn’t necessarily agree with what people or friends would say to me later on in life. It made me challenge every comment and do my own research and develop critical thinking skills. It taught me that the process of learning itself requires curiosity, discipline and practice to perfect.

5. Nothing is ever truly black or white. There’s always a grey area if you look closely.

I remember one of the things my dad always said when I was growing up was that there was a clear difference between how people growing up in America viewed things vs. how how people that grew up in Asia did. There is a very naive, simplified version of how the average American look at things. Part of this is because of how the media portrayed things, but the other part is hubris.

When you are from an uber competitive society like Asia where it’s dog eat dog all the time, you have to learn quickly how to see through the bullshit, identify it, figure out what the real situation is and decide how to process the information or proceed.

You can see that with the advent of social media how polarized society has become. The truth is never right in front of you unfortunately and you have to learn how to figure it out because there are reasons certain narratives are pushed. America is also very good at presenting distractions. So when you mix that in, it’s easy for people to not question what they’re told, accept things as reality and never take a closer look at the facts.

I never really thought much about this as I thought it was annoying that my dad would sometimes make fun of ABCs (American Born Chinese) when I was growing up. I’d oftentimes respond back defiantly with how things are different here in America because of the ideals of our Founding Fathers and the basis on which this country was formed. But as I grew older and saw things such as the bamboo ceiling and how Asians were seen as worker bees not fit for leadership or how certain communities were perpetually held down because of systemic reasons, I realized the truth in his words.

6. Be cheap with yourself, but not with your friends.

My dad was always very generous with his friends even when we didn’t have much. He would always offer to pay whenever we ate out with family friends or acquaintances. I remember I used to get mad that we would spend money on others but not on Nike sneakers for myself.

He would say that if you have the means to take care of your relatives you should and being generous with others would one day pay dividends when you need it. As a kid, I would just get annoyed that I didn’t get nice stuff. But when I saw how some of his friends helped him in his times of need over the years, it made me realize how important this was.

Investing in relationships is important. You shouldn’t always expect something back from someone but you never know who will remember what you did for them one day when you need help.

7. Sometimes you will get the short end of the stick. Don’t let that stop you from being the person you are meant to be.

Life can be frustrating and sometimes you can prepare and do everything right and still fail. Being able to stand back up and move forward was something that my dad always encouraged me to do.

Apparently in the year before my dad married my mom, he lost all his savings in the stock market. He had to hustle odd jobs in order to make back the money. He was eventually able to do this but it was definitely a stressful time for him.

When I was laid off towards the end of 2008 during the recession, I spent months and months trying to find a new job with no luck and was getting stressed out and irritable. I felt like I was letting him and myself down. I remember one night he called me up and told me to relax, that he had thought about some options for me (things that I hadn’t really thought of), said a change of scenery might make sense and encouraged me to think about them. He always had this intuitive ability to analyze a situation, remove emotions from it and be able to come up with potential solutions. As a result of that conversation, I ended up moving across the country to Los Angeles, eventually found a job here, weathered the storm and found myself again. That simple 15 minute conversation opened up possibilities that I hadn’t even thought about, gave me a reset and the confidence to move forward.

8. Sometimes confrontation is necessary

Standing up to people requires courage and justification. You can’t just lose it without reason, but sometimes you need to in order to get your point across.

I remember my dad would always stand up for us against outsiders without question, even if we were wrong. He would scold me afterwards of course, but his first instinct was always to protect his family first.

One time I was driving with my parents in the car and got impatient with a driver in front of us so I went around and cut him off. While passing him, I flipped him off. This driver chased us down and cut us off and got out of the car to give me a piece of his mind. My dad immediately defended my aggressive driving while I was speechless, in shock. He knew I was wrong but still spoke up on my behalf. Then he yelled the shit out of me at home. But he didn’t back down when his family was being threatened.

He didn’t always agree with his siblings. If he felt they were wrong, he’d make sure they knew he wasn’t in agreement but he didn’t dwell on it.

Over the years, he dealt with racism. He would not let people talk down to Chinese people if he heard something derogatory being said. He’d stand up against that.

In life you have to pick and choose your battles, but you have to fight when you need to fight.

9. Be serious when you need to be, but laugh when you should

By all accounts, my dad was a serious man. He was stern with his kids and always had an opinion about how we should spend our free time, what we should study or how late we could stay out. He was honest with his friends when they asked him for his business advice, was always thinking about how to provide for his family and preferred to watch the news over television series.

But he also had a softer side, was great with children, was a good cook (ok maybe he just knew how to make a few good dishes, but they were real good) and had a big, boisterious laugh. He taught us not to take ourselves too seriously, be humble and enjoy the little things in life.

He instilled in us a very well rounded, logical and even-keeled approach to living life and dealing with its ups and downs. You can have emotions but you don’t need to make emotional decisions. This helped us look at the world from a mature point of view at an early age.

10. Learn to be independent so you can stand on your own

My dad was very self reliant. He was always curious about how things worked and would take things apart if they were broken to see if he could figure out how to fix them. Part of this was because he wanted to save money but I think he saw it as a challenge as well.

From a young age, it instilled a sense of curiosity in me that made me want to push harder and look deeper at everything. It taught me to always have a plan, anticipate the unexpected and have a backup ready. This became second nature over time and part of the process by which I tackle situations and things in life.