Step 9: Memorize This Little Chinese American Cheat Sheet
PUBLISHED IN SALT HILL JOURNAL, ISSUE 48, FALL 2022
Available in print. From a series called “How to be Hapa in 10 Easy Steps or Less! “ (Read “Step 1.”)
Step 9: Memorize this Little Chinese American Cheatsheet.
A) Take your shoes off inside.
B) Bookmark the PBS special on Asian Americans; fail to watch it.
C) Promise to take care of your parents in their old age.
D) Know names of dim sum dishes.
E) Remember all the anti-Asian celebrities that didn’t get cancelled including but not limited to Billie Eilish who pulled her eyes back and said ching chong even after the Atlanta spa shootings.
F) Have chili sauce in the fridge.
G) Google Grace Lee Boggs.
H) Learn how to pronounce 你好 and 过年好.
I) Go to Disney’s California Adventure Park and when you get tired, sit in the historical theater because it’s air-conditioned and listen to Whoopi Goldberg tell you about how hundreds of Chinese men and boys were killed making the transcontinental railroad and it is the first time you have ever even heard about this; cry at the happiest place on earth.
J) Buy a Jeremy Lin Brooklyn Nets jersey at the Union Street subway station.
K) Know the difference between jackfruit and dragonfruit.
L) Be a little lactose intolerant.
M) Okay, be more than a little.
N) Read The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.
O) Do not go to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because it disempowers Bruce Lee which is just another instance of the emasculation of Asian men in America that has been around since the dawn of our people being in this land.
P) If you are also kind of Jewish–CHEWISH, NPR did a piece on us–be torn about not eating pork or be really into eating pork.
Q) Question if Awkwafina is problematic, question people who insist she is problematic, question everyone who doesn’t think everyone is at least low-key problematic.
R) Wear a little bit of red when it’s your zodiac year.
S) God damn it I said take your shoes off inside.
T) Write an angry email to everyone you know when no one talks about the Atlanta spa shootings.
U) Read They Called Us Enemy by George Takei.
V) Google Vincent Chin. Worry that in 39 years, no one will talk about the Atlanta shootings except Asian Americans, because those are the only people who still talk about Vincent Chin.
W) When someone in your improv club in Boston does a racist impersonation of a Chinese man buying bok choy, sit in stunned silence and go home without saying anything, and be pleasantly surprised when the nicest white kid there says that last week’s representation was offensive–wonder if they would have said anything if you weren’t there.
X) Your ancestors signed X on the dotted line because they could not read the lies in which they were trapped.
Y) Read The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord.
Z) You do know your zodiac, right?
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