Family History Response

       After publishing the family history and reading the wonderful stories that my friends wrote, I found some similarities and connections between few of my Asian friends' families.  After reading a bunch of readings, I got some quotes from Jay Pan, Andy Lau, and Shiyun Yang. All of the stories have one connection, which show that how strict Chinese family is, and how much hard work their mother had experienced back to their childhood.  First of all, this is a quote from Jay Pan:

When my mother was young, she went to an “advanced” math class at her school. She was an extremely studious and hardworking student that never slacked off or screwed around in class, (according to her anyway). She was apparently so hardworking that she was a well respected person in her village. They respected her as a student and as a hardworking member of society.

From Jay's quote, I can tell that Jay's mom was a "4.0" student in China back to the period, even though Chinese schools don't count GPA for their grade, but yah. The main point is that, although Jay's mom had a hard class and fortunately do well in the class, but she still had to get some times to do her housework. Going onto shiyun's quote, she shows the same connections of her mother's situation when she was young:

My mom would wake up at seven in the morning and head to school. When she comes back, she would be asked to do chores by her parents. Each of her siblings were assigned to do a different job. My mom had to take trips to the wells or to faucets to gather water for the family. For each bucket they got, they had to pay a cent. Back in the day, they had no access of water at homes.

   And this is Andy's quote:

Andy's quote:She described these as dirty and filthy places that she hated going to. Instead, my mom knew a friend who had a bathroom in their house with running water. She would go shower and use the restroom of one of her friends who was wealthy and had numerous bathrooms in their house. She said that she was very lucky and her parents and sister envied her because she got to shower in a clean and safe place.

    So, three of their quotes show an important connection in between Chinese families. From shiyun's quote, it basically shows how hard her mom's school life was, and how she was still working hard; from Andy's quote, it expresses a hard situation that Back to the time when their moms were still at school, I can see all of them were struggle on their familt situation while China was developing country. Thus its economic was not that rich compare to United States, so people owned a very low paying job, or even no jobs for them at all. So, their kids must to be mature early, and started doing housework. This is what my mom always tells me. I think this is what exactly the connection is showing: Back to our parents' childhood time period, kids are working hard to earn a good grade and having too much housework. These experiences are such alike what my mom told me she had before, and I think the memories are valuable because it shows a big different comparing to today.

The Joy Luck Club cyclical element writing

     Finally finish reading the Joy Luck Club, I think it is a great book which expresses the ideas of Chinese cultures in Chinese family. And it also shows an idea that is cyclical element between the family members, and how it effects their relationship. For example, the motherhood has a big impact on the daughters' life and the mothers led their daughters having a unique view to their life.
     For example, in the story, The Rules of the game,  Waverly Jong's mother pushed her so hard to be perfect on playing chess. Her mother is very strict at her, she pushed Waverly to learn how to play chess after she found her had such talent and gifted on playing chess. Also, she required her to lose as least as many pieces she could in the chess tournament. "Lost eight piece this time. Last time was eleven. What i tell you? Better off lose less!"(P97) This quote is from Waverly's mom, which is really mean and strict. As a chess player, I don't know the purpose of losing less is better than losing more, as long as you win the game at the end. The only purpose of doing that is to satisfy the desire from Waverly's mother of showing off to other people that Waverly is actually professional on playing chess. However, Waverly does not really like how the way her mother treat her as a way to show off, which make her dislike chess so much.
     Later on, after waverly grows up and has her own children, she tried to teach her child to have a good personality espectially not always want to show off. There is one quote that Waverly said" And My mom loves to show off a lot, like one of my many trophies she polished. she used to discuss my games as if she had devised the strategies" (P170) This is what Waverly really think about her mother while she was little. Because of her mother's bad personality influenced Waverly had a bad mind of what is going on in her childhood, she started to teach her daughter to be modest and respectful. This is how the cyclical relationship is--Waverly's mother pass her view of life to Waverly, and then Waverly gives a better view of life to her daughter as a mother. I believe this cyclical will turn better and better by the time pass by.

Family History

         There is a complicated relationship in my family history. I immigrated to the United States when I was about 13 years old, but my parents told me that they turned in the application forms of immigration to the staff before I was born, actually both of my parents did know my mom was pregnant at that time. That means it took 13 years to get a stamp at my immigration passport. I always feel funny about how my parents turned the application form in before I was born, since they don’t have any information of me yet and it took such a long time to add my name onto the list after I was born. Sometimes, I feel special somehow about the time it took to work on the immigration passport on me.

       Start with premise of how a person has his or her qualification to apply for immigration to the United States. First of all, the person needs guarantors that are in the United States who also have stable income every month, which means it is impossible for a person to apply for immigration if there are no guarantee on the other sides. “Having a stable income” prevents the case of people immigrate to United States, but don’t have an enough income for their life, and ask the government for relief money. The nation fears that people will do such things, so they publish a law of having guarantors in order to apply. So then the guarantors need to relieve if the people they guarantee for 10 years if they cannot make money in any cases. Second of all, there is a very complicated procedure to check if a person’s health is good, but this is not really relating to the story.

Well, back to the idea, who are the ones guarantee my family 14 years old in order to provide an opportunity applying to the staff? I asked this question to my parents last week, and they told me it was my uncle who is on my mom’s side, apply my family to United States; and when I asked them who apply my uncle to United States, they told me to ask my uncle. Later at the night, I called my uncle(I have no blood relationship with him because he is my aunt’s husband.), and asked him how he got to United States, and he has been silence for a while, and started to tell me his history:

So, my uncle’s father was a mayor in Zhongshan, a big city in Grangzhou. During the Cultural Revolution in China during 1966 to 1976, under Mao’s leading, the upper-officers tried to find out the corrupt in every city with every kind of torture. So, they not spared to get information from different city and people, to find out the Corrupts. As I know, many loyalty workers also die during that period, because the governors did not give so much patients or trustings on them. Unfortunately, my uncle’s dad got attention from those people, and getting into a big trouble—those people wanted information of how people corrupted each one no matter you did it or not—of course everyone would say they never did so, which the officers would use torture on the mayors, until you make something up and they have enough evidences to “kick” you into jail. This is what really happened to my uncle’s family, when he was a teenager. It was impossible for his father to escape anyway, at the end; his father asked one of his best friends brought them away as far as he can because he feared that his family would get involved into it. Thus, my uncle follower his two brothers, from China, then shipping to Macau, to Hongkong, and lastly took airplane to United States. However, after he was going to United States, the government considered him as illegal immigration and did not give him any identity at all. Since they did not know when the Cultural Revolution would be ended, so they started to work in the United States. My uncle started his first job in a Chinese Restaurant in Chinatown and he lived in downtown Oakland. He had a very low paying job because he did not have any identifications or ID. So he struggle and struggle everyday—thought when he could go back to China at the time the Revolution end, and learned English at the same time. After 10 years, the Revolution started to get decreasing, and my uncles were deciding whether stayed in the United States since he already adapted to it. At this time, he finally got identification from the government somehow, but I heard that he paid a lot of money for getting it. And after three’s decisions, all of them went back to China—my uncle’s two brothers stayed in China for their rest of the lived, but my uncle, married my aunt, and brought her back to United States. He started his new life in Oakland. He injects the restaurant he worked for a long time, and became one of the bosses.

Later on, they have their first children, my second oldest cousin. So, he considered as “ABC”, American Born Chinese. And at the year he was born, 1993, was the day my aunt and my uncle apply my family for legal immigration. When my aunt was having the second baby, they went back to China. So, my older cousin started to get education from United States back to China, of course, his grade was bad because he cannot catch up on every subject. After 4 years, my aunt decided to bring both her kids back to America, because they were not really trying their best on their schools. Fortunately, both of them were doing well in United States, so my aunt chooses to stay in the America, and goes back to China with her family in the summer every two years. And after many years, when I was 14, they received a letter, which asked my family to get an interview for the immigration.

I think this story is really important to my family history because it shows the matter of immigrations in my family and how it effects to my family. And it also expresses how terrible and bad the Culture Revolution was in the past. It is just so hard and meaningful to my uncle of his life.

 The first year I came here was 2008, after about 10 years of staff organizing and working, my family finally had the permission to immigrate to the United States. My parents bought a house in Bay Farm, in order to offer me to go to Lincoln Middle School for the first year of School in the United States because there are ESL classes available in the school. In addition to recompense to my aunt’s family, my mom invited them to live with us, and they can have more income by renting their house in Oakland. Thus, now there are 2 families live in my house. And this is my AMAZING family history.

Joy Luck Club--Motherhood writing

     I think that there are many similarities and connections between the motherhood in the Joy Luck Club, and the article, Tigher Mom. First of all, both of the authors are Amy Tam. In the Article, Tigher Mom, Amy was saying how strict her mother was-- to push her to become genius in everything, and doesn't allow her to watch too much TV, and hang out with people outside too much. This made Amy feel like she does not have any freedom in her life.
    And in Third Chapter of the Book, The Joy Luck Club, all the stories express how hard the mothers push oh their daughters. For examples, like Waverly, her mom forces her to be good at playing chess which she does not like that at all. She thinks her mom requests too much on her, and gives up her chess after having many chess tournaments. Waverly has too much pleasures from her mother, which makes her gave up everything she wants to gain from playing chess. Just like the article, Amy's mom pushed Amy to learn everything and also had to be good. This kind of pleasure finally leds to the end of Waverly's chess life.
   However, not all of the pleasure is unnessary. Motherhood always has more personal-experiences than the daughters since they are older. Therefore, the motherhood always see things that are dangerous before they happen in the book. Like in the story of "Rice Husband", Lena's mom always notices things are going wrong, but she never give protentions because she wants her daughter, Lena, to learn something by her failures. Many bad things happen to Lena, which struggle her a lot, but anyway, the experiences that the motherhood has should be considered by the daughters sometimes.

Second part of the Joy Luck Club

      The beginning of the chapter 2 of the Joy Luck Club, has expressed the severe of the Chinese Families and the kids were challenging themselves. In the story of "The rules of the game" and "the voice of the wall", both of them show the pressure that the family had given to their children. Both of the families in the story wanted their children to become better and better. For example, in the story of "The rules of the game", when Waverly Jong's mom found out that Waverly had special gifted intelligent to play chess, she forced her daughter to have more tournaments and she always got the first place. However, during her practice, her mom always require her to win as perfect as she can, and this is what she asked her to do in the tournaments. Waverly did not really get the differences between winning by 10 pieces or 2 pieces, and why her mom wanted her to be perfect as well; what her mom response is that something like it is shameful to win with few pieces.

"Lost eight piece this time. Last time was Eleven. What I tell you? Better off lose less!"(P97)

     This is one quote from Waverly's mom which she is criticizing her daughter, Waverly, that she loses too many pieces in the game even thought she still won. Although Waverly was ignoring her mother because she noticed that her mother just used her as one of her tools to show off to people. This is not really what Waverly wanted by winning the tournament. So, my opinion to this story is that the idea behind that Waverly tried to say is that she got tired and annoying of her mother, and wasn't favor on what her mom did. Waverly just want to have a normal life like others, unfortunately, since her mom had a different view of Waverly's life, it changed Waverly's personality, characters and thoughts a lot.