出生在美国并且长大的华人真实的生活情况是怎样的？

(中文翻译: http://zhi.hu/PiPh. Thank you so much @萧腾 for an awesome translation!)

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Thanks @胡洋 for inviting me to answer this!

I'm not sure exactly what this question is looking for, so I'll just talk about my life and my friends and let you guys ask questions.

Identity If anybody asks, I'm Asian American. If they ask further, I'm Chinese.

Very few people in America use "Chinese American". In fact, it even sounds weird in my head because so few people say it.

Also, very few people say "ABC" (American Born Chinese). That's something mostly people from China call me.

My friends and I think of ourselves as Asian Americans because that's what we were taught in school. Ever since kindergarten, they grouped us into: White, African American, Hispanic, Asian, Native American. In fact, any document that asks about race asks if I'm Asian, not if I'm Chinese. And most community organizations for Asian Americans are that broad too, such as the National Association of Asian American Professionals. The organizations that specifically call themselves Chinese are usually for people who grew up in China.

Like most of my friends who've visited China, I miss China when in America, but I miss America when I'm in China. I like to call it "jetlag of the soul", my body's in one place, but my heart's in the other. I also feel like I'm missing something when Chinese people my age joke and jostle in Chinese; it's like I'm mute in a world that sings. But at the same time the culture shock in China is nauseating sometimes.

So, being Chinese American is convenient and complicated. If I'm shrewd, I can use my Chinese and American statuses interchangeably. But if I'm unlucky, then the Chinese and American collide inside me.

Education

Public School As you might expect, most of what I learned in school is about America. I can sing the American anthem, but not the Chinese one. I know US and European history (and a lot of it), but not Chinese history. I was always "good" at math, because in elementary school, taught me multiplication at home; from then on, I always enjoyed the advantage of being placed in the highest level math classes.

In elementary school, almost all of my homework had some sort of story behind it,

Suzy is going to the bank to deposit her coins. She has 15 coins that total $2.25. How many different combinations of coins could she have?

And we also had research projects such as,

Pick your favorite historical figure and write about his or her contributions.

or

Survey the people you know and create a plot of their birthdays.

or

Design a science experiment. What was the result? What is the scientific reasoning behind the result?

There were occasionally some homework problems that simply tested rote learning, but usually no more than 5 questions a day. So in general, homework took about 30 minutes each day.

Middle school followed the same format except the project topics were more detailed and we had more group projects. Homework only took about 1 hour each day.

For high school, I tested into a magnet high school, so my experiences vary from the average student. Although my friends at other high schools had about 1-2 hours of homework each day, suddenly, I had 2-3 hours of homework and 2 hours of reading each day. The classes were discussion-based and we studied through researching our discussion topics at home

Discuss Shakespeare's commentary on England's economic conditions in Hamlet Discuss the connotations of Hemingway's use of weather in A Farewell to Arms Discuss the influence of industrialization on German unification

and then we learned methods of analysis when we questioned each other in class. It was demanding because the teacher didn't expect a correct answer, but the best answer our research and reasoning could construct. The process was much harder than remembering and repeating, but also more thorough.

Outside of school, I also

• Acted in a theater performance
• Played on the varsity men's volleyball team
• Co-edited the school's literary arts magazine
• Led a county-wide robotics team.

It sounds like the typical over-achiever Chinese American story, but I did each of these things because they were incredibly fun. I could have easily gone home at the end of the day, done my 2-3 hours of homework and played games for the rest of the night. In fact, my parents wanted me to quit my extracurricular activities because they wanted me to sleep more. But from each of my activities, I learned skills that have carried me farther than from any of my classes.

Chinese Almost all of my Chinese American friends attended Chinese school. Chinese school is outside of normal school. It's usually organized by the local community and consists of a couple hours a week on either Saturday or Sunday.

Most of my friends speak a basic level of Chinese with "improper" pronunciation (shi / si, chang / cang give them trouble). But it's enough to talk with their grandparents at home about basic everyday things ("这个放在那儿", "我吃过饭了" - pretty basic stuff). Even better, some of my friends actually speak 广东话, or 上海话 at home so they really have trouble with 普通话. But overall, their parents speak to them in Chinese, they respond in English, and sometimes the parents will also respond in English after that. Some of us try to speak Chinese regularly at home and I have two friends who can read.

When I was five, my parents actually sent me back to China to live with my grandparents for a year. So I learned 拼音 and some basic words (and enough math to last me through 5th grade back in the States). That year made a huge difference in my Chinese education. When I was in middle school and my parents enrolled me in Chinese school, knowing Pinyin really set me apart because I could,

• Use a Chinese dictionary
• Read and understand simple essays if it had Pinyin
• Pronounce words accurately

Doing well in Chinese school set me on the path to pursue Chinese studies. I enrolled in Chinese as my foreign language in high school. I started speaking Chinese at home and actively asking my parents about vocabulary I didn't know. I studied abroad in China for a year in college. (There's so many differences between American and Chinese colleges that the topic deserves it's own question.)

Economics When I was young, our family was pretty poor because my Dad was a PhD student and my Mom didn't have a work visa. All our furniture (and all my toys) were donated to us or purchased at yard sales for a couple dollars. At school, I had free meals since our income was close to the poverty line.

Over the years, we moved 16 times, including across the country, as my Dad pursued better jobs. Now we've settled into upper-middle class society: my parents and I have well-paying jobs; we have a mortgage on a house; we can buy most of the everyday things that we want, but not many of the luxury items you see in magazines.

Overall, it's been a very slow and stable economic progression instead of the rocketship ride of China's economy,

• 20 years ago, when we were at our poorest, our standard of living was much higher than our family friends in China. For example, we owned an '81 Toyota Corolla and shopped at Walmart (20 years ago, every Chinese person who walked into a Walmart for the first time was stunned speechless)
• Now, we are no where nearly as wealthy as our family friends in China. For example, my parents' friends have all sent their kids abroad for college (many them to the States) where they pay the exorbitant international student tuition with plenty of money to travel and shop. In contrast, I chose to go to a state university because of the lower in-state tuition, the opportunity for scholarships and I also worked part-time for 3 years.

Most of my friends' families are also upper-middle class. Our parents are doctors, engineers, accountants, researchers, professors; and they've guided our generation into similar professions. But we're still young, so our careers paths could diverge quickly. I have a friend who just quit a perfectly good job in financial consulting to pursue improv comedy.

Some of us feel that our parents toiled and endured so that we could have the advantages of an unparalleled education, and that working at a "good" job for a "good" salary is to squander their sacrifice - that we should strive to enter a higher strata of American society.

Social Looking through my friends on Facebook, about half of them are Asian American.

Growing up, I mostly had non-Chinese friends, but not by choice; somehow the schools I attended always had very few Chinese students. Half of my friends were Jewish and the rest was a mix of African Americans and other Asians.

In high school, there were a lot more Chinese American students in my IB and AP classes. For the first time, I had a group of Chinese American friends, although they didn't hang out together with my non-Asian friends. The people in both groups grew up in America and we all watched the same shows and listened to the same music. The two groups didn't feel that different to me, although the they must have looked very different to an observer.

Family Parents I can only speculate on my parents' cultural identity, because we haven't talked about this, but I can tell you how they act.

My parents are both American citizens by now. In fact, they even legally changed their first names to American names. But they speak Chinese at home, watch Chinese TV (my Mom loves 非诚勿扰 and 中国好声音), and cook Chinese food (my Dad still can't order a good sandwich).

All their friends are Chinese. A couple years ago, when we had three other Chinese families living on the same street, my parents loved it. In the summers, every night they'd go out for a walk and chat on the sidewalk. During the Olympics, they root for China in every event (I usually root for both China and USA). And they complain about America's harsh political stance towards China.

But on the flip side, they're very well adjusted to America. They both work with predominantly non-Chinese coworkers and get along great with them. My Dad voted in the last two presidential elections and he's pretty proud of that (my Mom was too lazy to stand in line haha).

Personally, I doubt that they could ever move back to China. In the 20 years that have passed, their hometown is a memory now. Each time we go back to visit, my parents are utterly helpless and have to depend on our relatives. They don't recognize the streets or bus routes, they don't know the subway systems and sometimes they don't even know the names of popular products and activities.

They try to blend in as normal Chinese citizens, but they give themselves away pretty quickly. For example, when they get into a taxi, they automatically buckle the seat belt (safety first!). And they're also not used to living without the conveniences we take for granted in America such as, unlimited hot water, central air conditioning, public WiFi, clean public bathrooms and so many more.

They miss China tremendously, because it means being with family and friends; but they're always relieved when, finally driving their own car again, we arrive back at our house. So I'd say that they're stuck. They'll always be proud to be Chinese, but they're happy to be American.

Our Relationships I'm very close to my parents. I'm very close to my grandparents, since they also helped me raised me, so they're like my second pair of parents. I try to be 孝顺 because that's the example my parents set for me when they interact with my grandparents. Even though I live in my own apartment closer to my work, I spend the weekends with my parents, which is very rare for Americans.

My relationship with my cousins in America are also really tight. But that's because we're all Americans.

My relationship with my cousins and aunts and uncles in China are a bit more distant than I would like. The year I spent in China as a child really helped me bond with them, so I always think of them as close family. But in reality, we rarely talk.

There's the language barrier, of course. It's hard for me to say interesting things in Chinese and only a few of my cousins understand English. But also the 12-hour time difference makes calling each other a hassle. Emails? Well...I'll work on my Chinese first.

I'd really like to know more about how they're all doing. Although technology, such as 微信, is helping to bridge that gap.

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So there you go, a brief, biased story of a Chinese American 20-something. Let the questions begin haha

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This is actually a really hard question for me to answer because I have to describe things that are perfectly normal to me, but may seem absolutely bizarre to most of you. Also, I can only describe how things our for me and my friends. We're all 2nd generation Chinese Americans. But our experiences differ greatly from the 5th / 6th / etc... generation Americans of Chinese descent. Furthermore, these are just my experiences. If you've observed Chinese Americans acting very differently, then trust what you've seen; there are a lot of different people in world.

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(中文翻译: http://zhi.hu/PiPh.)

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