"I was born Chinese. I was born Chinese."
By Karen Y. Chu, Special Contributor

Growing up, my friends and I loved Barbies but also loved playing hand-clapping games. “Down, down baby, down by the roller coaster…” these words carried a euphonious tune and the vivacious claps that accompanied it echoed down the hallway as my friends and I all sang along, captivated by the song. We sounded like a menagerie of exotic parrots, “Let’s get the rhythm of the hotdog!” We put our hands on our hips and we put on our come-hither face, as we seductively twisted and swayed our hips. Lindsay, a bubbly blonde, announced that she had learned a new song. We all huddled around her as she sang and demonstrated the new lyrics and claps. After her instructions, we exploded and shrieked, “Chinese, Japanese, Indian Chief!” As we cried out these nationalities, we’d pull our eyes into upward and downward slants. When I pulled my eyes into slants, things were blurry and surreal. When I removed my fingers from my eyes, my friends and I were hysterically giggling and initiating another round of the game.

I was naïve. I was not aware of the stereotype so blatantly expressed in the lyrics. And so my friends and I happily sang our new game, and we’d laugh and shriek in delight when we had to pull our eyes into slants as we cried at the top of our lungs, “…Chinese, Japanese, Indian Chief!”

One day, at a family get-together, my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, distant relatives sat around the dinner table, picked at their teeth in an unruly manner with toothpicks and talked and consulted each other about their personal problems. After dinner, they would crowd around the mahjong tables, their faces intense and thoughtful. Meanwhile, the children would be in the basement, playing videogames or avidly watching television. I suggested playing my new clapping game with my older cousin Tiffany in the middle of our Chinese Checkers game. She coldly remarked, “Meimei, do our eyes look like this?” She then pulled her skin taut at the corners of her eyes and I felt frightened and confused. What was wrong with slanted eyes? Did my eyes look like that? She seemed so confident, dauntless and concrete in her opinion that I knew I could not respond with anything half as significant as what she had just said. So I pretended I knew exactly what she was referring to and bought my shoulders forward, sat upright in a ninety-degree angle and concentrated on our game.

The night of the family gathering, I felt disoriented and confused. I felt hurt, yet I did not know what was causing the pain or how to pacify it. I felt disgusted with myself. I remember staring at myself for hours in front of my mirror, pulling my eyes upward and downward. I thought, how could I have let myself participate in a game where I made fun of myself, and my own people? I thought about my uncles and aunts sitting around the table, times when they would be falling out of their seats howling with laughter. They would clutch their stomachs and howl in pain as they hysterically laughed, their smile would reveal their unaligned teeth, and their eyes…their eyes looked the exact size of coin slots.

Over the years, I finally understood all the stereotypes placed on Chinese people. People immediately associate Chinese people with Chinatown, greasy Chinese food (which isn't genuine Chinese food), bootleg Louie Vuitton handbags, karate, Jackie Chan, fortune cookies, etc. Even television shows plays in on the stereotypes. Every time an Asian man or woman appears on television or in the movies, their role is the omniscient karate master. And we are also portrayed as crazy, servile people with triangle hats who pull carts on our backs and run around town without shoes.

I was born Chinese. I was born Chinese.

And so was he.

On the crowded streets on Chinatown, he sits. On his tattered, well-worn, ancient stool, he sits. Where he sits, he fashions the object in his hand and that is when one takes notice of his main tool: his hands.

The old man’s hands are scathed and bruised. They are wrinkled as if each wrinkle were like the ring of a giant sequoia tree, representing all his years of wisdom and knowledge. He peels the bamboo, ties and shapes the material into a wonderful and beautiful animal. Frogs, phoenixes, rhinos, dragons, and animals of all kind are displayed on his shabby, little wooden table on the edge of the sidewalk. People pass by, some give him and his creations a quick glance, and others stop to marvel at his art. His paring knife is his tool as he slowly and meticulously shreds the bamboo and forms his tedious handiwork.

As other vendors on the street try to sell their products of cheap jewelry and bootleg purses, they cry out, “Figh dolla! Tehn dolla!” The old man does not cry out in frenzy as the other vendors. He sits on his cheap plastic stool, worn and battered like his hands and continues to shape and tie his bamboo.
As I observed this sagacious, solemn old man, I felt a rush of pride wash over me. Chinatown is a town notorious for cheap Chinese products and loud, obnoxious Asians scattering about. Yet this man defies his surroundings and advertises a product of his culture and heritage, and his products bare his exclusive talent.
As I stop to admire his work, in my choppy Chinese I abashedly ask him how he learned his trade.

He was born in Mainland China, he tells me, where Communists and Mao-tze Dong violently and ferociously reigned. He was raised near bamboo fields and his father was a brilliant and accomplished artist. His father experimented with bamboo and taught him how to shape, trim and tie the bamboo. But the Communists did not appreciate his father’s artwork; it reflected the royal dynasties and represented their beauty and power. So they confiscated his art, his living, his passion.
His father watched as they burned his creations.

One tremendous, fat drop of a tear rolled out of the corner of his eye and that was when they shot him.

One shot in the chest was all it took.

He watched his father’s body lie limp on the ground.

He hid in the bamboo fields for several nights.

He fled, tried to flee from the corruption, the revolution. He fled; he fled to America. America, was where he found himself. America, he arrived with nothing but his malnourished, frail body and the rags on his back. But he made it. He worked over eighteen jobs, a Chinese cuisine cook, a stock boy, a truck driver, but nothing ever lasted. He reflects while intensely smoking a cigarette, deeply inhaling the toxic fumes. So he became a street vendor, purchased dried bamboo and began creating. His main tools were his hands and his paring knife. He tells me he enjoys the solitude of creating, and of sitting on his dilapidated chair in the middle of bustling Chinatown and creating. “Some kind of life, eh Mei-mei?” He attempts at a grin, but instead he bares his lopsided smile and his eyes twinkle. He continues at his bamboo, carefully tying the bamboo intricately.

I stand there, in awe and shock of his story. I suddenly feel awkward and indecisive about where to put my hands. I try to respond, to comfort him and his remarkable story. I wish to record this moment, his words, his escape and his reincarnation in his art. But I simply just purchase a bamboo frog, he smiles, and nods his thanks.

How do you accept something you’ve been trying to deny? How do you contain your indignation and try to embrace the stereotypes that have branded you for all your life? How do you deal with ignorance and racism?

His hands move adeptly and sagaciously as they tie and twist the bamboo into such intricate artwork. Bamboo seems like such a tough, hard material to work with. But the old man is patient with his obstinate material and makes it work. He cultivates the bamboo, maintains it until it becomes soft, easy to mold, to cut and shape. Just as the wise old man uses his patience and knowledge to tease the bamboo into silky threads, I must do the same and try to elucidate the misconceptions of my race. I must learn to accept people’s perceptions and slowly tend to the ignorant by encouraging and promoting the truth. When I have induced the ignorant, I will slowly, yet effectively harvest the truth and eliminate all the misconceptions and stereotypes. I will make it work, like he did.

One day, people will look past this man’s yellow skin and slant eyes and see the beautiful culture that is divulged through his work. One day, someone will put aside all the stereotypes and admire the strength, the talent, and the aesthetic worth of his art.

He was born Chinese. He was born Chinese.