If they are female, they will often marry a white person. They will be less frugal than their parents. They will tend to be professionals-lawyers, doctors, bankers, television anchors-and surpass their parents in income, but that’s partly because they started off with more money and because their parents invested so much in them.
They will usually play the piano and/or violin.They will attend an Ivy League or Top Ten university. The next generation (mine), the first to be born in America, will typically be high-achieving.Everything they do and earn will go toward their children’s education and future. (“Don’t throw out those leftovers! Why are you using so much dishwasher liquid?You don’t need a beauty salon-I can cut your hair even nicer.”) They will invest in real estate. As parents, they will be extremely strict and rabidly thrifty. Many will have started off in the United States almost penniless, but they will work nonstop until they become successful engineers, scientists, doctors, academics, or businesspeople. The immigrant generation (like my parents) is the hardest-working.The pattern would go something like this: “One of my greatest fears is family decline.There’s an old Chinese saying that “prosperity can never last for three generations.” I’ll bet that if someone with empirical skills conducted a longitudinal survey about intergenerational performance, they’d find a remarkably common pattern among Chinese immigrants fortunate enough to have come to the United States as graduate students or skilled workers over the last fifty years. But it's all in the context," I tried to explain.
Amy was speaking metaphorically-right, Amy? you didn't actually call Sophie 'garbage.'" My friend Susan, the host, tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests. One guest named Marcy got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. When I mentioned I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.Īs an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophie, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectful toward me. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. But it didn't damage my self esteem or anything like that. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. “Once when I was young-maybe more than once-when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect.
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