Parallel Worlds Now Collide

A young couple sitting at Southern Mini Town Restaurant in San Gabriel for lunch reads the menu together. The woman, Miaomiao Wang, 24, points at the image of “Shanghai Pork Spareribs” and looks up at Alexander Cheung, also 24, and he nods, agreeing with a smile. This dish seems to satisfy their preferences simultaneously and may lead you to assume they are from the same cultural background.

However, zoom in the lens and it won’t be difficult to find unconventional details within their relationship, which has been going strong for two years.

They communicate in English, mingling with Mandarin words and phrases. He is more interested in dishes with pictures on the menu and from time to time asks her to explain those without images aside. She orders in fluent Mandarin, and meanwhile he can’t catch up with her conversation with the waitress if she doesn’t slow down deliberately.

Cheung is a Chinese American, who was born and raised in the U.S. and hasn’t mastered writing and speaking Mandarin, national lingua franca in China, and Wang is a Chinese Chinese, who has arrived at this continent relatively recently and whose mother tongue is Chinese. They belong to different communities in the U.S., where new immigrants and established Chinese Americans stick to their own groups.

Chinese American communities have been making up for increasingly considerable population in the U.S., where Chinese Americans live in close proximity with the newly arrived Chinese, who have flooded in over the past several years. But these two groups occupy separate worlds and their relations are typically marked by stereotyping and prejudice.

Though the mainstream media has noticed the evident trend of recently arrived Chinese, little notice the difference and therefore explore relations between two groups of Chinese people within the Chinese communities in the U.S.

This couple, Wang and Cheung, are just one of millions in this city, but their relationship performs as an intersection of two parallels.

A Five-year Transformation to an Another Me

Coming from Guilin, a southeastern city in China, Miaomiao Wang has been living in L.A. for five years. In the August 2012, the then 19-year-old girl flew to L.A. to pursue her dream of becoming a director in this entertainment capital of the world and to begin studying filmmaking at California State University at Northridge.

Growing up in a well-to-do family for nearly twenty years, she was meticulously protected in China; the shield for her was taken over by her close friends when coming to L.A. She had known those friends back in China during her high school. Since they’re older and had been here longer, her friends automatically prepared many details for her, including housing, class selection, transportation and even restaurant recommendation.

“I didn’t encounter much trouble in life when I first came here,” Wang says, “I would say the main issue was language.”

“Although I started learning English at seven, I still wasn’t living in a world that everybody speaks English. And after I came here I noticed that I don’t understand most people’s American accent. I don’t understand slangs. There’s a wall between us,” she adds.

But there’s a group of people whom she didn’t have any barrier to communicate with, her close Chinese friends.

Wang classifies these Chinese friends as stereotypical international students, because “they buy expensive cars, designer bags, and streetwear.”

“When I first came here, I was definitely one of them. Everyone around me was doing the same thing,” she talked about the confusion she had experienced, “I was simply trying to fit in with them. I wanted to do exactly what they’re doing because that’s the only way that I knew how to behave.”

The turning point where she started embracing American culture and assimilating herself to Americans happened two years ago, when her Chinese friends graduated from colleges in the U.S. and left L.A.

I’m Not Your Stereotypical ABC (American-born Chinese)

Wang sees herself as a fashionable girl and she was wearing a pair of sneakers with thick platform attached to the bottom when they first met.

Alexander Cheung bursts into laughter when talking about her shoes, “that’s so weird. I’ve never seen that before.” For him, that’s probably the most awkward thing she has ever done.

She defends for her fashion taste, “they are popular. In my group of people, they are the most trendy things to wear.”

When first seeing him, she thought he was a Japanese because he’s different from other Chinese Americans.

He doesn’t fulfill much her stereotypes of Chinese Americans.

This pale quiet young man in light blue shirt introduced himself as a “Chinese-American”, which “go(es) together hyphenated.”

While his younger sisters, Jacsica Cheung and Tori Cheung, might see themselves as Americans and “they would just drop the Chinese part.” He tried to explain the mystery, “I really do think that they’re growing up so different in such a different environment has created some differences between me, my sisters and how they view themselves.”

He was born in San Francisco and moved to Missouri with his parents when he was three years old. His parents opened a Chinese restaurant there and were fully occupied by their business.

Is there a bridge or a wall between us?

Trajectories of Miaomiao Wang and Alexander Cheung intersected two years ago, when she started hanging out with new friends and he transferred from a community college to CSUN.

They knew each other through a common friend and clicked in an instant. Both of them are players of League of Legend, both of them play guitar, both of them like singing.

“We’re from similar cultural backgrounds, and I feel there’s an ethnical connection between us,” she says with a smile.

For her, dating with him opens a window on American culture, ranging from slang to new foods, music, movie and entertainment; for him, she teaches Mandarin, modern standard language used in China, and helps him explore the Chinese culture which was introduced by his grandfather and learn of the interesting phenomena have been taking place in current China society.

Before knowing her, he had just encountered one international student from China, who fulfilled all of the stereotypes, “they’re rich and spoiled. They don’t speak English well. They just come here to spend their money.”

He also heard that recently his father, Edward Cheung, has expressed his concern about the amount of Chinese international students in UC Berkeley.

“He said that in the past UC Berkeley has accepted a lot of these international students because of the money they paid and maybe they’re a little bit more educated than other American people who applied to the school,” according to his account, “UC Berkeley has accepted too much Chinese international students and not given a fair chance for American students to attend the school to get into the school as well.”

He didn’t think his father really speak to negative sentiment against Chinese international students, and his father didn’t respond directly.

Nonetheless, Wang doesn’t want herself to be associated with the typical image of international students.

Journey to the East

In addition to teaching him written and spoken Chinese, Wang offered an opportunity for Cheung to explore their cultural heritage together in her homeland.

Wang and Cheung are shooting film in in front of an old house in Daxu, Guilin.

In the summer of 2016, she went back to Guilin, her hometown for vacation. Inspired by the newly restored ancient wall in downtown, she wrote a script in which she integrated Guilin opera, local food, ancient architecture and traditional costume. She wanted to make her very first short film based on this story and to dedicate it to her city.

As the director of her project, Wang started recruiting her dream crew.

“I immediately said yes when she asked if I could be her cinematographer,” he wrote in his Instagram post after he came back to L.A., “very grateful to have had this opportunity to fly to a country I haven’t been to in 12 years and do something that I love.”

It’s the third time that he went back to China, 13 years from his last trip.

They went through a short pre-production period before shooting for three days over the course of a weekend.

“My trip back to China recently has really allowed me to be more appreciative of the people there,” Cheung says, adding he updated his impression on Chinese natives.

Cheung's Instagram post on his recent trip back to China

What’s more, he got closer to his cultural roots through this nearly-two-week stay in Guilin. “When I went to one of the locations that we shot in Daxu (an ancient town in Guilin). People still live there but those houses were built hundreds of years ago,” he says with eyes shining, “they’re like old buildings and houses that my grandpa used to grow up in when he was a kid. I walked in there and I could just imagine my grandpa, my dad, even my uncle as kids running around in the house in that condition.”

It was mind-blowing for him to actually see a house similar to where his grandfather was living before he came to America, “that was one of the best memories that I’ve had out of that trip,” he smiles.

He admits that he had a tough and mentally challenging period of time during this spectacular and eye-opening trip. Since he couldn’t speak a lot of Mandarin, the language barrier he encountered when communicating with the local crew made him regret his language limitations.

“Simple things such as ’move the light here’ or ’turn the camera this way’ became a hindrance and a lot of times, I got frustrated at myself for something I felt like I should have learned already since it’s part of my culture,” he posted these words on social media when looking back at this experience.

Inevitable Clash of Two Worlds

“Misunderstanding arising from ignorance breeds fear, and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace,” said Lester Bowles Pearson,1957 Nobel Peace Prize Winner.

The misunderstanding between two groups doesn’t need to upgrade to war and peace but just need more mutual comprehension. But conflicts are always bubbling, either in or out of the intersection.

Sally Fu, a Chinese American girl coming to L.A. at six years old, really appreciates how smart and diligent her Chinese classmates are, but she doesn’t hide her worries that Chinese international students might take jobs away.

“They don’t really care about the pay. They want to stay, so they’re willing to work harder and for less pay,” she says, “I would say Chinese international students are taken advantage of for their work.”

Cheung’s grandfather, who has retired for years, is open to express his observation that Chinese international students would be competitive in college enrollment and job market.

Competitions in academics and jobs stretch the discord in younger generation between these two groups.

For those Chinese who have already accumulated substantial capital before coming to the U.S., they automatically jump to the higher rungs of the socioeconomic ladder without much competing with Chinese Americans, and they don’t bother to fit in the culture, let alone eliminate the existing discord.

“I have no Chinese American friends,” Hailin Fu, who has been in L.A. for nearly five years. As a tattoo artist, he had wide recognition and financial success back in China, and then he chose to come to a new continent in his forties to seek fame.

“I only hang out with recently arrived Chinese, and most of them are rich,” Fu lights a Chunghwa cigarette, from the most expensive Chinese cigarette brand, and says, “while we’re super confident, those early arrived Chinese, or Chinese Americans, feel themselves inferior. Because China was not as powerful as now when they came here, and they have been long ostracized and couldn’t be accepted by the mainstream.”

When asked how he could fit in the American society without mastering fluent English, Fu says, “I don’t need to assimilate American culture. I’m here to let more people see Chinese culture.”

However, Cheung’s grandfather points out that, “immigrants should be grateful for equality and opportunities American society offers.” This old man took enormous risk, spent painstaking effort, and finally succeeded in arriving at the U.S. “People should value that America allows you to stay and thrive, so follow the rules here, know the culture here and be respectful.”

“American culture is a mix of everyone’s culture, basically the more you know and learn about other people’s culture, the more you are open to the differences, the less ignorant you will be when it comes to socializing whether it’s for work or school,” Wang says.