Renee Chou: Blending cultures, remembering roots

This month, my family rang in ANOTHER new year -- the Chinese (Lunar) New Year, tied to the lunar calendar and one of the biggest holidays celebrated by a quarter of the world.

My three-year-old daughter was excited and enthusiastic about the Chinese New Year, thanks to stories I’ve told her about how I grew up celebrating the holiday. The Chinese New Year is about family, marked by festivals, food and receiving “lucky money” in red envelopes called “hong bao.” (Perhaps the “free money” part caught her attention!) I bought her a traditional Chinese "chipao" to wear. When Elsa put it on and pranced around with a huge, beaming smile - I thought my heart was about to burst with love and pride.

We kicked off the celebrations early with the Triangle Chinese New Year Festival at Dorton Arena, which I had the honor of emceeing. Aromatic scents of stir-fry dishes, noodles, dumplings and buns filled the venue. Colorful, stunning costumes and traditional dance performances took over the main stage. Elsa and I shared a noodle dish and steamed pork buns. Afterwards, she stood at the side of the stage, fascinated and mesmerized by the performances. She would even try to mimic the graceful dancers’ movements!

I looked around at the sea of jet black hair and dark eyes; listened to the chattering cadence of Mandarin and other dialects, and thought to myself, “I hope she will always feel at home here.”

It is that way for me because my cultural identity was shaped by my parents who immigrated from Taiwan. At home, my parents spoke to me in Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese. We used chopsticks and ate white rice with almost every meal. From kindergarten to senior year in high school, I spent every Saturday afternoon going to Chinese School to learn the language - something I resented my parents for forcing upon me - only to begrudgingly acknowledge, as an adult, what a gift that was.

But during those tough and turbulent adolescent and teen years, I also remember a lot of pain, hurt and resentment from being “different.” Kids can be cruel. I’ve heard all kinds of racial slurs and comments about my Asian features. People mocked my parents’ heavily accented English. There were times when I felt ashamed of being Asian.

My daughter - being half Caucasian, half Chinese - likely won’t experience that same kind of torment. But how her racial identity evolves will be interesting to me. Will she consider herself Asian American? Biracial? Or check “Other”? Will race even matter to her at all?

What I do want for Elsa is to have pride in her Asian heritage. From the start, I’ve been teaching her Chinese. Her intonation and enunciation are spot-on. I consider it a parenting win when she asks me in the middle of a conversation, “How do you say ___ in Chinese?” She enjoys using her kiddie chopsticks and scarfing down white, sticky rice. We read Chinese books and listen to CDs of Chinese toddler songs. Our trips to Grand Asia Market in Cary is always a fun mother-daughter date. As much as I can, I want Chinese culture to be a natural and normal part of her everyday life.

In another year or two, we plan to enroll Elsa in a Chinese Language School on Saturdays (there are a few in the Triangle area.) Speaking the language fluently will create a direct connection to her Chinese lineage. Right now, she’s excited about that prospect. Hopefully she won’t resent me too much for sending her. I do know -- she’ll probably thank me later for it.

Blending the best of two cultures, while always remembering your roots, is something I'm grateful to my parents for instilling in me and what I hope to pass on to Elsa. And something I will always treasure: The image of my half-Asian daughter wearing her chipao dress and a radiant smile that needs no translation. It's an image that makes me, as a mama, 100 percent proud.