Amy Huang Finds Her Roots

The family of six lives on a hillside in a part of Long Island called Cold Spring Harbor, and the house, with gardens front and back, is reached by a winding road that resembles those in the mountains of Taiwan.

Amy graduated this June from the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences, and is getting ready to enter law school. As her father says, she is a typical young American-born Chinese. Now 22 years old, Amy was born in a small West Virginian town with very few Chinese, and moved to Long Island at the age of eleven, never having felt any different from other children. But it was when a classmate once teased her saying "why don't you go home, go back to China!" that she felt she first encountered prejudice.

It was an upsetting experience. "I speak and dress the same as any other American, why should they think I'm a foreigner?" It was a kind of unconscious prejudice that she would continue to meet up until she left for university. "At that time I really wished I had blue eyes and brown hair," recalls Amy.

Two visits to Asia before starting university changed her. The first took her to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, where people assumed she was Chinese or Japanese, never American. Sometimes she would angrily pull out her passport to prove her nationality. "In their minds you have to be white to be American." On the second trip she went to Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and mainland China, where she encountered different types of Asians, and all kinds of Chinese people. This time, instead of insisting on her American identity, she found she was embarrassed among the Chinese not to be able to speak the language. Though she once learned it for a while, she gave up because it was too much trouble. But the trip to East Asia made her feel she had to get back to her own culture, and she resolved to study it afresh, whether language or culture.

At university Amy took non-western history as her major, specializing in oriental studies, and joined the Chinese Students' Association (CSA) which she chaired in her final year. "It enables me to feel that I haven't lost my way," says Amy of her return from West to East.

At the mention of the generation gap Amy Huang grins, and describes herself as one of those "good" Chinese children, who does as her parents say. But her parents are different from most American parents, she feels. When she was small her mother would take her to piano and violin lessons two or three times a week, which she describes as unusual for American families. She lost a lot of time that could have been spent making friends, but her mother told her she couldn't have it both ways, and would have to choose between learning music or making friends.

As the eldest child Amy Huang also felt she should be an example and not upset her parents. Nevertheless, she envied her brother George being able to say "I want to enjoy my own life" as his reason for refusing to study a musical instrument, and she says, "No matter what, George always wins." In fact all four of the Huang children have excellent grades at school, and George, now in his third year at the University of Pennsylvania, is deputy chair of the CSA.

Amy feels that her parents' strict supervision made the children do so well. "They always wanted us to study hard," she says, "not just for good grades, but to get first place." Her father, Dr. Jerry Huang, readily agrees: "I want them to be the best."

"Our parents imposed whatever they thought was best on us," continues Amy, for they stressed the virtue of hard work at school in order to excel. As Amy says: "they were right," but social life is as important for the young as success at school, and "we had even more need of friends because of our good results at school--the process of getting used to society cannot be missed out."

But as an obedient child her policy was simply to wait, knowing that once she got to university her parents wouldn't mind her going out and meeting friends. Her younger brothers put up resistance earlier on however, and at junior high George would often play ball for one or two hours after school before coming home.

Amy only had one major dispute with her father, during her third year at college when she was selecting a graduate school for the future. Her interest was towards business, but her father wanted her to take law, because "it means a more stable future and higher earnings." This annoyed Amy. "You can't be happy if it's all about earning money," she told him. His angry reply was: "Of course you don't have to earn money if you don't want to, but don't you want to succeed?" What he meant was that it is twice as hard for those from an ethnic minority to succeed, and the choice of profession is all-important. In this light, law and medicine are the safest bets.

After three hours on the telephone to her father, Amy capitulated, so the result was the same as always in the past--doing just as her parents said. But she continued to think about it. "Why is it that students from Asian families all take law or medicine? Why can't they study philosophy, or art or psychology?" Later she realized that she gave in to her parents' wishes in this way because she had always listened to them and never been worse off for it. Learning to play music--which she wanted to do anyway--had enabled her to appreciate the arts; diligence at school helped her gain admission to an Ivy League college and encounter a variety of outstanding people; and her parents' taking her to learn Chinese and inviting Chinese friends over to the house gave her the opportunity to travel in Asia. All this helped her to better know her own background, and the worth of being of Chinese descent.

Amy believes the most important reason for her interest in Asian cultures, and her contact with them, is seeing her parents' own virtues. "They are highly considerate people, very good to others, and love to help others." She feels these are Chinese virtues which are different from Western ones. "Americans are mostly individualistic and pragmatic."

For this reason she is absolutely certain that she will marry a fellow ethnic Asian, and not because her parents have told her to--though they would like her to marry an ethnic Chinese. "At the moment I can't distinguish between Chinese, Japanese and Korean, but I know for sure that the family cultures of the yellow and the white races are different." She feels that marriage to another oriental would be happier for her, because of what they will share in common.

In fact the people she moves among do tend to be other ethnic Asians, because of her college courses, her interests and the student society she belongs to. Sometimes, worrying that she might be leaning too far one way she "goes back," and makes an effort to spend more time with white students, to better understand Western culture. It seems that she often wavers between the cultures of East and West.

One thing she is positive of is that she will start learning Chinese again, and learn it well, for the sake of researching her own culture and exploring her roots. The first phase of the project begins this summer vacation, when she will come to Taipei to study Chinese. After that she goes to Japan to research Japanese and other Asian cultures. By this means she believes she will better understand where her own place lies.

[Picture Caption]

Amy Huang came to Taipei this June as phase one of her search for her roots. Here she is shown at her relatives' home in Shihlin.

The family Huang at their Long Island home.

The family Huang at their Long Island home.