More Than Words Would Have Said

By Maddy Kwan / Winter 2025

I sit on an intricately carved wooden chair in front of a round table full of lavish dishes. Hearty laughter and conversations fill the air; my family’s Chinese New Year celebration is in full swing. I look around the room taking in all the sights and sounds of the gathering. In the living room, I hear my dad and uncles joking and debating about current events. Kids are running around the table, squealing and laughing. Amidst the sounds, I hear my aunts and uncles conversing in their native tongue, Cantonese. The words and inflections feel so familiar to me, yet when I try to grasp their meaning, I find nothing.

I feel a small tug in my heart. I love Chinese New Year and the family gatherings that accompany it. Besides the extravagant meals, there is always so much joy, warmth, and connection during the celebration–feelings that assure me I am home. Yet, there is also another feeling stirring beneath it. It is the same feeling I experience whenever going into a Chinese restaurant, afraid that the servers will find out that I don’t speak Chinese. It is the same feeling I experience whenever someone asks me about Chinese culture, only for me to shrug and respond “I’m ‘uncultured.’”

This feeling took its strongest form when my Grandma was alive. She only spoke Cantonese, and I only spoke English. Despite the language barrier, I still felt her love in the warm meals she cooked for my family, the home-grown fruit she peeled and cut for me and my siblings, and the time we spent together watching English game shows she didn’t even understand. I loved her more than words could’ve said... or maybe, the words would’ve said. The language barrier was a distance between us that I felt would never quite disappear. I wondered what it would be like to have a full conversation with her, to hear and understand how she expressed her thoughts. In all the time we shared, I never once doubted her love for me. But, there that feeling was, all the same.

That feeling is the same one I feel now, hearing my family interact with each other in a language both familiar and foreign to me. Looking back, I now know this feeling is a culmination of many emotions. There is disappointment, shame, and even sorrow within it. There is grief for a lost connection to my culture and a hopelessness that it is too late for me to do anything about it. What went wrong? Why have I grown up with such a disconnect from my culture?

I think back to my younger self.

Growing up, my ethnicity was not a large part of my identity. I grew up surrounded by Chinese culture but was in ways oblivious to the fact that I was Chinese. I never really noticed other people’s ethnicity, either. That was, until kindergarten. My first-ever best friend was white. This meant practically nothing to me–what mattered was that we were friends. One day, however, we set up our first playdate at her house with a few other girls as well. Upon arriving at my friend's house for our playdate, I was met with my first-ever culture shock. Things that I thought to be normal practices among everyone were absent. I cringed a bit as my friends stepped into the living room without removing their shoes. After we finished eating lunch, I watched intrigued as her mother loaded our dishes into the dishwasher, a device that was reserved as a drying rack in my household. I watched with nervousness as my best friend talked back to her mom, expecting some form of punishment but witnessing none. Ultimately, this was a completely different world from mine.

After playing games in their backyard pool, we sat in a circle on my best friend’s bed talking about whatever came to mind. “I like your eyes,” one of the girls said to my best friend. The other girls and I agreed, admiring how cool her bright blue eyes were. I imagined what it’d be like to have eyes a different color from my plain, dark brown ones. Then my best friend spoke up:

“You know how some people have eyes that are like, squinty?” She used her pointer fingers to pull on the corners of her eyes. “You kinda have eyes like that, Maddy!”

The other girls piped up in agreement, mirroring her action and pulling at the corners of their eyes. It was then that the “feeling” emerged. I couldn’t quite place it, but it came along with visceral determination to prove that I was not what they said I was.

“No, not really!” I retorted, pulling my own eyes back. “See, this is what I’d look like if my eyes were really like that!” I let go. “But look, they’re not, ok?”

After coming home from that playdate, I rushed to the mirror and stared at myself. Were my eyes really how they described them? I pulled them back, released them, then pulled them back again. After convincing myself that they were “normal” I scurried over to my mom and told them about the shoes, dishwasher, and how cool my best friend’s mom was. After this experience, my ethnicity had a noticeable weight to it. I noticed other people’s ethnicities as well, taking note of how their languages sounded, what color their hair was, and how their eyes looked. Jealousy started to creep in as I thought about how much cooler I would be if I were of a different ethnicity.

Later that year, I sat in the kitchen as my mom stood in front of me scooping rice into our bowls for dinner. I thought for a bit, then asked her, “Why do we have to be Chinese? I wish we were something else.” My mom paused, then looked at me. Though I don’t remember her exact response, I remember her telling me to be proud of my culture. She told me I would come to understand when I was older, which was not an answer I liked at the time, but she was right.

In my own story, I see a reflection of the immigrants who came to America centuries ago. Among them, there is a distinct longing to assimilate into American society. Assimilation meant leaving their families and homes for an indefinite period, turning against other ethnic minorities, rejecting their own culture, and embracing that of the “civilized” world. I see myself in the Jewish immigrants, giving up their customs and language to avoid being “greenhorns.” In the lines of history, my story parallels theirs. These stories aren’t exactly happy, but I know mine doesn’t have to end here. Understanding the past has given me a greater appreciation of my roots and a desire to return to them.

I reach forward to grab a piece of fish that has caught my eye. “You know,” my mom says, “all the dishes here are symbols.” She points to the fish platter that I’m taking from. “Fish represents abundance because the word in Chinese sounds like ‘surplus’.” She gestures further down the table, explaining the significance of each dish. “Spring rolls represent wealth, the noodles are a wish for longevity, and the tangerine with the leaves still attached is another symbol for abundance in the new year.” Then, my favorite dessert gets served–sweet rice balls.

“Of course, these have meaning too,” my mom remarks, “they represent family unity and completeness!” I look around again. I am surrounded by a family full of joy, love, and connection. They inspire me to learn more about my ethnicity and, more importantly, to love it.