User:Kayinpepper

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My name is Wong Ka Yin (Huang Jia Yian in Mandarin) and I was born on January 15, 1986 in Kowloon, Hong Kong. When translated directly from Chinese to English, my name literally means “Yellow”, “Praise”, and “Beauty”, respectively. As my name suggests, I am not only a yellow-skinned Chinese woman, but I also hold with me the genealogy of many prominent nobilities in ancient Chinese history. The roots of my surname can be traced back for more than 4,200 years to the days that Emperor Huang Di, otherwise known as the Yellow Emperor, oversaw China. Through his fame and contributions to the Chinese people, the color yellow became closely associated with many nobilities. According to the Hundreds Family Surname book, the Huang Clan was number 96 of all the original Chinese surnames, ranking eighth among Chinese surnames and totaling approximately 31 million in the worldwide population. Just in the Americas alone, the Huang clan accounts for nearly two million, making it the largest Chinese surname group. Although the surname was closely linked to upperclassmen and nobilities, the effects of foreign invasion brought the clan through long periods of decline that forced the clan to move and migrate to different areas of China. Everywhere that the Huang clan relocated, the place was renamed to take on the Huang title which still stands today in areas such as Huangchuan, Henan and the notorious Huang River. After almost three centuries of declination, the Huang clan began to rise again around the time of the fall of Tang dynasty in AD 907, the 117th generation of Huang, with the help of Huang Qiaoshan. After the fall of Tang dynasty, China entered a period of political and social turmoil and endured the rise and fall of four dynasties in a 50 year span. Fearing for his family of 21 sons, 155 grandsons, 334 great-grandsons (women family members were not included in the count because they marry and hold their husband’s name), Qiaoshan ordered his sons to leave the house and settle individually along with their immediate, nuclear family to establish their own genealogy and wrote a poem for his children to trace their branches. Except for the three eldest sons that he kept in the house, the rest of the 18 sons settled in 18 different areas of China, one of them being Guangdong, where both sets of my grandparents were from. My father’s family originated from a place called Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province, an ancient city west of the Pearl River Delta. Due to its closeness to ports and the river’s linkage to other major key cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Foshan, Huizhou, and Jiangmen, and the SARs of Hong Kong and Macau, Zhaoqing made a name for itself as one of the most famous attractive sites to visit in Guangdong and at the same time, allowed more development and foreign investments. My mother’s family originated from Xinhui, Guangdong, a city nearby Yamen which is remembered as the location where the Southern army of the Sung dynasty last stood against the invading Mongolian soldiers. Xinhui lies in the northwest region of the Pearl River Delta, bordering South China Sea which adjoins to the Hong Kong and Macau area, and is conveniently located by the Yamen Waterways. Xinhui also had Tungsten mines and other minerals that allowed an array of materials like textile, chemicals, and food to be produced. The two towns’ location and accessibilities to waterways made it possible for both sets of my grandparents to immigration to Hong Kong.

The Chinese are known worldwide for their details in all of the art and crafts and the level of workmanship required in producing those fine arts. My grandfather and his family were all crafters, carving elephant tusks into decorative ornaments for a living. Ivory has been considered an article of luxury because of its qualities of fine grain, creamy light color, smooth texture, and soft luster. It is strong and yet delicate at the same time, making this folk art extremely difficult and therefore, the crafters more appreciated. My grandfather specialized in carving ornamental animals like horses and dragons, which are both prestigious animals to the Chinese, and several movable ornaments. His older brother was also an ivory carver and took to creating landscape arts and jewelry. Together, they both worked full time in an ivory factory along with several hundreds of other employees to meet the high demand for the fine folk art. Since my grandfather’s skill was at high demand, he was able to hold a steady job and earn decent amounts of money so that my grandmother could stay home and be a housewife. Amidst the clamor from the Second World War and China’s Civil War between the Nationalist government and the Communists, my grandparents decided to take advantage of the chaos and loosen control to migrate to Hong Kong in 1940 in hope for a better economic opportunity. At about the same time, my mother’s family also immigrated to Hong Kong to escape the hardships of farming life and lived with relatives who helped them get a better start than my father’s family. Even though they have escaped Communism, they were knocked into a state of dismay because less than a year after they arrived in Hong Kong, the Japanese landed on the island, fighting off the Canadian and British troops who were suppose to guard Hong Kong. The one good thing that my grandparents benefited from the Second World War was the ample amount of ivory that became available because hunting elephant now became easier with the use of automatic weapons. Hong Kong became the number one consumer of raw ivory. Factories opened and my grandfather once again found work as a carver. He continued this line of work until late 60’s when his eyesight no longer allowed him to concentrate on the details that carving required. Not long after he retired, ivory trading was becoming difficult due to rising concerns about the over hunting of elephants. Finally in 1989, CITES, one of the largest conservation agreement, banned ivory imports because of a drastic decline in the Asian and African elephant population and the industry suffered greatly. (This ban was partially lifted in 2002 by the United Nations to allow certain countries to export certain amounts of ivory.) While my father’s family stuck to their original line of work, my mother’s family adopted a new role from farmers to factory workers making leather crafts. Unlike my father’s family, my mother’s mother helped her husband find distributors and delivered the leather cases that he produced. Although both families had jobs, the after effects of the war lingered and in order to live decently, my uncles and aunts were set out to the work force to help out every way they can. My father’s way of contributing to the family income was to become an apprentice at a Western restaurant. Starting at the age of thirteen, he worked his way from a dishwasher to a cook, making different styles of Western foods but focusing mainly on the Cantonese style of cooking which originates from Hong Kong. My mother took over the deliveries with her brothers and sisters while leaving both parents to make more leather suitcases for the rise in business. A big bulk of Chinese foods involves Dim Sum, a kind of food used to accompany the tradition of drinking tea. Besides the tasty part, Dim Sum is also treasured for its artistic forms of molding foods into shapes never imagined. As the late 70’s and early 80’s approach, people started to demand higher levels of artistry in the foods and my father became even more known at this time. Using his knowledge as a master Dim Sum chef, he combined the carving skills that my grandfather taught him in carving ivory and applied it to carrots, potatoes, and even tomatoes. He arranged foods to hold the shapes of different animals like horses, snakes, and dragons. My father’s fame in the restaurant industry allowed him to make a very decent living and earned him invitations to work overseas. He and my mother earned enough money to start their own noodle shop in the heart of a commercialized part of Kowloon. The business kept both of my parents extremely busy, so much so that they resided just above of the shop. My older brother and I lived on the other side of Kowloon with our mother’s parents throughout our childhood, visiting our parents over the weekends and whenever the family got together for dinners. With the money that my parents saved, they were able to put me in private schools and even send me off to Singapore for a better education. My brother did not show as much enthusiasm for studying so he stayed in Hong Kong. Going to Singapore to study at age seven was the first time that I left Hong Kong. I was really nervous about what to expect, having to live with my aunt and her family whom I’ve never seen or heard of. At the same time, I was also living in a strange land that spoke a different dialect of Chinese that I speak and wrote in a different format. I left Hong Kong days before my first semester in Primary One finished in June so after I arrived in Singapore, I had to wait until January to start a new school year and played catch up while I waited. Learning a new language was child’s play, especially since Mandarin tones were easier to pronounce than Cantonese and simplified characters made writing a breeze compared to the traditional characters. I quickly adapted to life in Singapore, where my aunt had a maid to take care of all my needs and my main focus became school. Because Singapore was not as crowded as Hong Kong, I had more freedom and got involved in more activities than before. Aside from my regular school load, I received extra work from my weekend extra-curricular course in abacus, creative writing, and drawing classes from a community center across my home and a tutoring center in downtown Singapore. My aunt also employed the personal tutor she had for my older cousin to help me with my homework, but that didn’t last for long because I managed my studies well. About a year followed since I moved to Singapore when my parents applied to immigrate to the United States in hopes of providing my older brother a better future because he did not do well in Hong Kong’s school systems. Due to the fear of Hong Kong’s handover in 1997, many people were also applying to leave to avoid the dreaded chaos that could arise between capitalist Hong Kong and China’s socialist economy. Luckily, my parents’ application process ran smoothly with the help of family members who immigrated and became US citizens decades ago and were able to depart Hong Kong in 1995 before the economic crash followed by the handover. My parents sold the noodle shop and the money from the business was enough for them to buy a condominium in Miami after residing a few months with my mother’s cousins. In exchange for their hospitality, my parents agreed to work in their family-owned restaurant, which benefited both parties. My aunts and uncles were finally able to include Dim Sum on their menus and attracted far more customers that enjoyed the tea tradition and my parents had a stable job and income. Both my parents never received formal education higher than grade school. The move from Hong Kong to Miami proved to be a harder cultural hardship than an economic hardship. They depended greatly on family members to advise them on what is good and lived their lives through others’ point of views for a couple of years until my brother gotten news from his middle school that there were free night school classes offered to teach adults English. Between the free classes, English cassettes, and videos, they both learned a fair amount of English that slowly allowed them to become more dependent on their own. Two years after they settled in Miami, I left once again after the first semester of Primary Three to live in the United States with my parents for the first time. Having stayed in the United States for roughly eight years now, I have yet to fully grasp the bases on the hype and desire to immigrate here. Perhaps my way of life was more enjoyable than others and did not experienced any disadvantages in either locations that makes the United States seem just like Hong Kong and Singapore, except with more land and space. One thing that really set me back when I started school was the concept of racism and discrimination. The idea that people of different ethnic groups did not blend well was not customary to me because we did not have those types of problems in Hong Kong and Singapore, both places there were also culturally diverse. I was considerably more accepting of other races than my friends who spent all their lives in the United States. Suddenly, I heard new words and saw unfamiliar things like stereotypes and separation of people from different groups. Maybe I was too young to realize of any such occurrences where I grew up, but my involvement and friendship with people of different groups became problematic and any attempts to try and blend them together was immediately shunted away. Slowly, I just learned to adapt and steered off in my own direction, befriending those who cared more about education than race. Thanks to my mother’s dreams of providing me with the best education, my shift from the other side of the world did not challenge me more than removing the letter “u” out of words like “colour” or “flavour” and changing the letters “e” and “r” around when spelling “centre”. Reading and writing in English was not a problem for me either because a majority of Singaporeans were Malaysians and other ethnic groups that did not speak Chinese. All subjects in school were taught in English except for our native language class and English was very much needed for every day life, more so for me since my aunt had a Filipino maid. The study habits that I established from Hong Kong and Singapore was firm enough to get me through the American school systems with little hassles. Even to this day, I have managed to graduate at the top of my high school class, becoming the first female in my family to graduate with distinction from a secondary institution and move on to a four year college. As of now, the greatest experience I have had since the beginning of the term was the night when a guest speaker from the Asian American organization spoke about the hardship she endured growing up as an immigrant. Hearing her speak of how she resented her parents for not speaking English and not looking American reminded me of the ways I felt embarrassed that my parents couldn’t speak English. I sensed a connected in the speaker’s stories to my own and came to a realization at the end that these past feelings of shame has erased as I finally broke the barrier between my parents and me and questioned them about why they immigrated. I began asking them questions with the reason that I have to write it as an assignment but slowly, I just kept calling home to ask more detailed things because now, I opened a chest that needed fillings; fillings that will continue to pour in as I continue to discover my past, present, and future.