What Do White People Call Their Parents? - and other stories
My parents invited my boyfriend Breyden and me to visit for a weekend. My boyfriend is white, if you couldn’t tell by his name. Here are some funny little stories from the visit and the days leading up to it :).
白人这么叫父母？What Do White People Call Their Parents?
“Maria, I have a concern. What do white people call their parents?”
I thought the “concern” would be more serious than this, but my mom actually sounded worried.
“I saw on Google they call them by their first names. We are not comfortable with that,” My mom continued, and I could see her frowning at Google, disapproving of all the white kids in the world who call their parents by their first names.
“He doesn’t call them by their first names, but I’ll make sure to relay that. What should he call you then?” I tried to keep the amusement out of my tone. “I can teach him to say 阿姨 (āyí) and 叔叔 (shūshu).”
“No, that’s too much. He can call us Mr. and Mrs. Guo.”
过 Guo
I’m used to my last name being mispronounced. Pretty much only Chinese people can say it right, and it’s not like there’s an agreed upon Americanization for it, like there is for “Wang” and “Zhang.” So, I didn’t expect him to say it right, and neither did my parents, but he insisted on trying.
“G-woh? G-wuh?” Breyden practiced saying my last name for weeks before this visit, which was sweet but hilarious. He continued his practice session for the 4-hour road trip from Pittsburgh to Maryland, parroting my name back to me.
“Guo,” I corrected. Honestly, he’s close enough, but I like teasing him.
“Thanks for inviting me over, Mr. and Mrs. Guo,” He greeted my parents when they opened the door.
“Oh, pretty good!” My dad praised, and the smile on his face made the practice worth it.
豆腐刮子 Dòufu Guā Zi
I noticed folded up cardboard on the dinner table, with the criss-cross of the ddakji game from the viral k-drama Squid Game. Breyden and I had just recently finished watching it, and the scenes were fresh in my mind.
“Are you guys watching Squid Game too?” I asked, gesturing at the cardboard squares.
“Yes, very bloody. I played this game when I was a kid though, not just from Squid Game,” My dad responded and picked up a few squares.
I didn’t know this. “Oh, it’s also a Chinese game?”
“Yes, it is called 豆腐刮子 (dòufu guā zi) in Chinese,” He handed me and Breyden both a square. “I will teach you.”
My dad placed one square on the ground and took his position above it, another square gripped in his hand. With the ninety-degree angle of his elbow and the slightly crouched stance, I could tell this was a well-practiced position.
Bam! He forcefully smacked the square in his hand down. It hit the center of the other square and flipped it perfectly. First try!
Breyden and I took turns playing. He got it after a few tries, but I had trouble throwing the square with both force and accuracy. If I focused on force, the square ended up flying off at a diagonal. If I focused on accuracy, the square hit its target, but too lightly to be useful. I can see now why Gihun got slapped so many times.
My dad’s smug look said it all. “Looks like Breyden is better than you!”
老外喜欢炒饭 Foreigners Like Fried Rice
We went out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant, the kind that has the big fish tank at the entrance and strung up chickens in the back.
My mom ordered jellyfish salad, congee, fried pork cutlets, steamed fish, and mongolian beef. When she was done ordering, the waiter glanced at Breyden.
“他想吃什么？(What does he want?) 老外喜欢炒饭。(Foreigners like fried rice.)” He suggested.
She added fried rice to the order.
“Breyden, do you like the food?” My mom asked later, after we were done eating.
“Yeah! I really liked the jellyfish and the beef.”
We packed the fried rice to go.
When we left to return to Pittsburgh, my dad lent Breyden his Easy Pass, which is a stamp of approval if I’ve ever seen one.
Reflection
As lighthearted as these stories are, they represent something I’ve learned through dating someone outside of my culture: relationships are all about meeting in the middle, and that includes cultural differences. It would be foolish of me to expect Breyden to speak Mandarin fluently, and it would be foolish of him to expect me to not eat jellyfish (I love jellyfish, and now he does too!) However, the effort he put into learning to say my last name, and us making the (unnecessary) accommodation of ordering fried rice helps immensely to bridge the gap between our different heritages.
I don’t claim to know everything about Chinese culture. Quite the opposite, I know I’m ignorant of a lot as an ABC (American-Born Chinese). I can hardly be a teacher on this subject. However, like with the dòufu guā zi game, we can learn the unfamiliar parts of Chinese culture together.
There are similarities in our upbringings, but also unique differences. We both celebrate Thanksgiving, but my family eats Peking duck and his eats turkey. He has a huge family in the US and knows his cousins closely, whereas my extended family is all in China, and I’ve only met my cousins a handful of times. Lunar New Year has always been a bigger deal to me than the Western New Year.
As we continue our lives together, I hope these differences can become new traditions. And that this combination of traditions from two backgrounds can become a new culture, one that is a mixture of both of our ancestries, one that builds upon who we were before.