As a child, I always dreaded Sundays. Sundays smelled like pungent dry erase markers, dilapidated church basements, and powdery old lady perfume. Sunday mornings were full of frantic page flipping and scrawling, and a stomach full of butterflies in anticipation of the afternoon. Sundays were for 中文学校.
Zhong wen xue xiao. Chinese school. I’m sure those four words unearth deep-seated, and perhaps slightly traumatic, memories in the hearts of many Chinese Americans. Every Sunday, the local church parking lot flooded with cars as hordes of Chinese parents dropped off their kids. We’d trudge up the front steps to the sound of a furiously ringing handheld bell indicating the start of class and peel off to our individual classrooms, where the teacher — usually some stern-faced Chinese mother — would pace around the room and check our homework. Thus commenced two hours of vocabulary quizzes, textbook reading, grammar drills, and, if we were unlucky, a test. The misery didn’t stop outside of the classroom, either–we were assigned copious amounts of homework every week. Vocabulary lists to memorize and copy, grammar structures to learn and use, paragraphs to read and comprehend. My mother would spend hours grilling me on vocabulary and checking over my homework.
Now, armed with the wisdom of age and hindsight, I realize that I did not appreciate the unlikely existence of such organizations, and the horrors of Chinese school are probably somewhat exaggerated in my memory. The fact that so many Chinese immigrants had taken a leap of faith, uprooted themselves to find a better life in America, and managed to build community hubs to preserve their culture in a strange new world is a commendable feat of resilience. Of course, I failed to consider any of this as a young child. All I knew was that Chinese school was an imposing force in my life, a source of drudergy and pain. I despised those Sunday afternoons and how they bled into my week and how my mother yelled at me whenever I wrote a character wrong or scored poorly on a test. Chinese school elicited feelings of resentment and envy within me. I was sure that Lauren from my third grade homeroom did not spend her weekends in such dreadful ways. Her peppy PTA mother would never yell at her over the kitchen table and monitor her nonexistent extracurricular homework. I imagined that she and the other popular girls in my class would have fun weekend playdates and trips to the mall instead. Every Friday, my insides twisted as I saw the anticipation for the weekend on my classmates’ faces, burning with the knowledge that I did not share in their delight.
I grudgingly remained enrolled in Chinese school for many years at my parents’ behest, but I made sure to obnoxiously bemoan my suffering every single chance I had. By middle school my parents grew sick of paying tuition just to hear me complain, and so they struck a deal with me: I no longer had to go to Chinese school, but they would tutor me at home. This arrangement persisted shakily for a few years. The grammar and vocabulary drills continued, supplemented by mandatory viewings of Chinese TV shows to help hone my listening comprehension. My father made me memorize Tang Dynasty poems, which I did poorly, immediately forgetting them the moment after he quizzed me. My mother gave me the assignment of keeping a daily diary in Chinese for the purpose of practicing my writing skills. This, I shirked whenever possible. By the time I entered high school, both my parents and I had tired of pushing the massive boulder of learning Chinese uphill. Entering high school meant I became much busier and had even less time to dedicate to the endeavor. Gradually, we stopped resisting. How easy it was to let go, to watch the last several years of painful effort and pathetically low return roll away and fade into nothing.
Or so I thought.
After many years of allowing my Chinese skills to sit on an abandoned shelf in the back of my brain collecting dust, starting college sparked an unexpected desire to relearn Chinese. Upon coming to Georgetown, I met and befriended numerous students studying Chinese, most of whom were not from traditional Chinese backgrounds. I was simultaneously in awe and a bit jealous. Having studied it before, I knew it was no easy task even for someone who grew up in a household that spoke Chinese, so I greatly admired the dedication of my fellow students tackling the language with absolutely no previous experience. I was terribly curious about what their curriculum entailed and would look over their shoulders while they did their homework, stealing glances at the textbook and homework problems. I could not help but be filled with a creeping sense of inadequacy whenever I stumbled upon characters I did not recognize or phrases that I could not properly translate. Seeing others diligently studying Chinese made me feel saddened that I had not properly learned it when I had the opportunity. Now, Chinese phrases rolled awkwardly off of my tongue, words sticking like peanut butter to the roof of my mouth as I struggled to string together coherent phrases. I longed to dip my toes back into the language in an academic setting, but I felt paralyzed. It had been so long since I had last studied it; would I remember anything? What if I failed the placement test and had to start from scratch? Did I even have enough time or credits to dedicate to Chinese and study it meaningfully?
After two years of light deliberation, I finally decided to take the leap and sign up for Chinese classes again my junior fall. When I informed my parents of my decision, they looked at me with mild shock. My father laughed, not in a malicious way but in an ironic way: I had been given the opportunity when I was younger and I had clearly rejected it, so why was I so determined now? I could not quite vocalize exactly why, but I felt an overwhelming force inside of me compelling me to do so. When else in my life would I have the ability to carve out a structured time dedicated to studying Chinese and have the opportunity to engage with other students? I felt a sense of ticking urgency to hold on to what I had not yet lost and scramble to recollect what had been swept away.
My story sounds terribly cliché: A Chinese American girl grows up rejecting aspects of her culture and family, only to come to the realization that she was denying an important part of her identity. And then everyone lives happily ever after. That isn’t quite the case though, although I wish it was. I would be lying if I said it was all smooth sailing after I enrolled in Chinese class. There are many days where I go to class and feel utterly overwhelmed by the content. Spontaneous conversations in my Chinese recitations trigger my fight or flight instinct. I often feel like a deer in headlights when I am cold called upon to speak about foreign relations, family structure, and economic reform–topics that I barely grasp in English, let alone Chinese. Some days I feel a crippling sense of imposter syndrome because it seems like my Chinese is worse in some aspects compared to students who have only studied the language for a handful of years, especially when I choke out crude sentences that are jagged and unfinished. I would also be lying if I said that I looked forward to every Chinese class and Chinese assignment. Some days I want nothing more than to bullshit my homework assignments and procrastinate on studying for exams. We like to romanticize life, give our experiences a narrative and purpose, but reality often does not line up.
I am not sure if I will ever be fluent in Chinese. Perhaps the classes I am taking now will simply be a repeat of the Chinese school of my youth, and maybe the instant I graduate everything I learn will dissipate into thin air. Even if I grasp on to some mastery of the language, how long could I maintain it for? Would I be able to pass it along to my future children, and them theirs? It seems a bit Sisyphean to resist what seems to be the overpowering natural course of things. I wonder if my parents quietly grieved about this when they moved here, knowing that their children would grow up disconnected and distinctly separate from their culture and people. They tried very hard, as evidenced by what my younger self perceived as tortuous tutoring lessons and homework review sessions. Whenever I dig through desk drawers at home, I can find the ghosts of their efforts in the occasional handmade vocabulary flashcard, neatly penned in in my father’s handwriting.
All of those thoughts are winding and unhelpful and completely out of my control. What I can control is my actions in the present. I remind myself every day to be grateful for the opportunities I have, even when I have piles of homework in front of me or a midterm oral presentation to prepare for, like I do now. I do not want to look back to this part of my life and rue my mindset and actions like I do when I look back at Chinese classes the first time around. I try my best to talk to my parents in Chinese whenever they call, and I actively volunteer to exchange a few sentences with my grandmother whenever she is on the phone. I watch my weekly episode of the Chinese rom coms that my mother recommends to me (side note:《二十不惑》, or Twenty Your Life On, is a pretty good show). I do all of this in the hope that if I repeat them enough, they will stick around and become permanent habits.
Learning Chinese is hard. Life is hard. All we can do is try.