On my days off I love going to Chinatown. Being in Chinatown is like returning home, coming back to a place of comfort and familiarity. Prior to moving here to the Greater Boston area I lived in Springfield, MA. About every two or three months my family would drive one and a half hour across the Mass Pike to Boston Chinatown for special birthday meals, dim sum, Chinese New Year grocery, hair cuts and Traditional Chinese medical doctor visits. Those were the personal memories I have of this place. Chinatown is also a place where I can live my culture with food that I grew up eating, faces that reflects mine, mouth that speaks my native language, cultural phrases and behaviors that I understand. And, it is a place of meshing and colliding of the Asian American experience.

Dim sum at China Pearl is the thing to do, a walking buffet with an assortment of Chinese specialty treats. My friend and I would get to China Pearl between nine or ten in the morning, early enough to miss the crowd. Regardless of going there with an Asian or nonAsian friend the host always greet my friend and I in English. In response to his, “How many people?” I would say in Cantonese, “A table for two please.” This interaction usually disappoints me, because I want to speak Cantonese when I come to Chinatown. Don’t I look Chinese? I have East Asian features, I’m petite with black hair. I even have a jade rooster good luck charm tied to my purse with red strings. Seeing that I’m young in my 20s he automatically assumed that I’m a jook sing who lost her native tongue to speak Cantonese. The stereotyping continues once we sit down at our table. Without asking what kind of tea we would like to drink, like they would ask other Chinese customers the waiter brought over a teapot of jasmine tea. Which, is the one of the two types of Chinese tea that American knows about, the other one being green tea. Living the double identity that I do as a 1.5 generation American who comes to Chinatown enough to know the difference I always ask for the half chrysanthemum and half ti kuan yin tea with sugar. Even the lady pushing the dim sum cart announces the dim sum items in English, “Shrimp dumpling, beef ball, stuffed tofu…” A part of me is disgruntled by being stereotyped by my own people but a part of me understands that this is the reflection of the Asian American experience. Asian Americans are inherently Asian but to know the degree of Asian or American in each of us requires a deeper understanding of each individual in order to tell.

My relationship with this place is similar to my love hate relationship with family. “I hate you, you don’t know me at all. I speak Chinese, can’t you tell?” Then, there are little practices that provide comfort and meaning to me. Such as the communal aspects of sharing a table with strangers, the nonverbal gesture of asking for more tea when the tea pot lid is uncovered half way, the gathering of old friends once a week over dim sum and nicknamed by the waiters as the four heavenly kings.