“Mom! Can we please not go today? I really don’t want to!” Tears were streaming down my cheeks. My twelve-year old self had been grumbling about attending my weekly Sunday Chinese school class since the start of the ride there, but by this point I was shouting at my mom to turn the car around and head back home.
“I don’t learn anything in Chinese school anymore, I didn’t even do the homework for this week! What’s the point of me going anyways?” I was referring to the specific lesson of the day, but I might as well have been simply asking what’s the point of me going to Chinese school? That question feels so funny to me now, because, eight years on, the answer is so clear to me: learning Mandarin Chinese, and cultivating a key aspect of my rich cultural heritage.
Rosemont College's Mayfield Hall, where I attended Sunday classes for Great Wall Chinese School (长城中文学校) until eighth grade.
Indeed, “Chinese school” was a community institution set up by a group of Chinese immigrant parents to keep their culture alive in the Philadelphia suburbs of southeastern Pennsylvania. Its backbone was, of course, Chinese language classes, but the college campus they rented out every week was also the site of small markets for Chinese foodstuffs and the annual New Year’s Spring Gala, complete with performances from students and parents alike.
And I didn’t care for any of that.
Because in my mind, attending Chinese school was the most “Chinese” thing that I could do as a Chinese American middle school student struggling with his sense of identity. As part of a fairly robust Chinese American community that would send their kids to various other Chinese schools but which was also surrounded on all sides by a white predominance, I was desperately trying to distance myself from the community and my heritage for fear of being just another face in a Chinese American crowd.
I didn’t end up attending class that day. In fact, I flat-out stopped going to school afterwards. And I know that it might have been a little unrealistic to expect this from a stubborn little preteen, but I wish I had been able to see the value in those classes. There was a point to going - I was just too young to realize or appreciate it.
Some pictures of me in the Spring Gala performances, when I still attended Chinese school (first picture: third from the right; second picture, left).
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