How I Fell in Love with Chinese Culture

              Do you remember the first time you fell in love?  Did you ever stop to analyze what happened?  Was it the way she tied a red ribbon in her hair or maybe his deep, soulful eyes that grabbed you?  Maybe there was something about the state of your mind at that moment that predisposed your brain to the chemical reaction that made you say, “I’m so happy!  I’m in love!”.  I have been analyzing my love for Chinese culture and can trace its development from my childhood through today.  Like most kinds of love, it has evolved.  As a boy, it began with my stomach; moved to my heart as a young man, and now, in late middle age has spread to my brain and soul. 

              I grew up in rural, upstate New York in the 1970s.  For my birthday, my parents often took

me to what was probably the only Chinese restaurant in Schenectady.  I can still recall the smell of the garlic and oil outside the restaurant.  I would always ask for the same thing: wonton soup and chicken cashew.  I loved snacking on the fried wonton skins while waiting for the food to arrive.  Each meal ended with the completely non-Chinese fortune cookies and vanilla ice-cream.  I liked it when I would get the fortune that said, “Let’s learn Chinese, Xie xie.”  I had no idea how to pronounce that!  I also had no idea that the food was really more American than Chinese, but I loved it anyway. 

              Besides the food I loved, I had some very vague ideas about Chinese painting and calligraphy.  My Dad, an artist, and art professor at a Union College in Schenectady, New York, had a number of Chinese art books and I enjoyed looking at the pictures.  He always hired babysitters from Union.  I remember one who was taking Chinese.  She taught me taught me my first character, 人.  That was probably 1973, right around when Nixon visited China.  I was 11 years old and thought that it was cool that it looked so much like a person, the thing it meant.  Unfortunately, the student graduated and my Mandarin language study ended with that first character.  I didn’t think too much more about Chinese culture beyond the food until I got to college. 

              When I arrived at Yale, my love for Chinese culture moved to my heart, without ever leaving my stomach.   I had Chinese American classmates for the first time and quickly realized how much we had in common.  They liked all the same classes I did!  They were my friends in my science and math classes as well as in the string sections of my college orchestra where I played cello.  Some of them are still my friends today, more than 30 years later.  It was great to have friends whose moms could make real Chinese food!  Still, in many ways, my Chinese-American friends have had more in common with me culturally, an American, than with people in China.  I wondered if I would ever visit China one day, but I made no concrete plans to go.

              That changed in 2014, a year after moving to San Diego.  One of the great things about California is the large Chinese population.  I was able make many more Chinese and Chinese-American friends.  Wendy was invited to give some lectures at a small technical university in Beijing, called Gengdan University.  I was invited to come along.  Before leaving, I started learning some Mandarin using an audio course.  I learned how to say, “我会说普通话可是我说得不好”. (I can speak Mandarin, but I speak poorly.).  I repeated this sentence hundreds of times, trying to make my tones match that of the speakers in the recording.  I ended up saying this sentence at Wendy’s lecture, much to their delight and amazement.  The response was wonderful.  I really felt the love in the room; it approached the feeling of seeing that cute girl with the red ribbon in her hair.  It was then that I decided I would get a Mandarin teacher when I returned home!  I was going to get Mandarin into my brain and really delve deeper into Chinese culture. 

              Although Mandarin is one of the most difficult things I have ever tried to learn, I think it’s wonderful when characters seem to tell me their meaning in some poetic way.  One of my favorites is 怕 (fear).  When I have felt afraid, it seems  like the blood is draining out of my heart. This character consists of the two parts; the first part, 忄means “heart” and the second part,白means “white”.  When you put them next to each other, you imagine the blood being drained out of a fear-stricken heart, leaving it white.  Sadly, I have been able to come up with colorful stories to tell myself for only a handful of characters.  Still, with each new character that comes along, I try to look for hidden clues to its meaning.   

              My love of Chinese culture began with my stomach and Chinese-American cuisine, moved to my heart with my warm college friendships and then more recently has involved my brain with my efforts to learn Mandarin.  All of us are so much more than the labels that we share with others.  We are more than “doctor”, “teacher”, “Mom” etc.  Who we are and who we become is the result of many experiences, including the discovery and love of other cultures.  This journey to China, both mental and physical, through my lifetime has been both thrilling and enriching.