American Panda

“‘You don’t get to call yourself Taiwanese. You’re not. And you’re not Chinese either, since your grandparents fled from there. You don’t belong anywhere.’

I was used to being shunned by others for my different-tinted skin, different-shaped eyes, and my parents’ difficulty with ls and rs, but this was completely new. I guess to Leslie, we weren’t the same either. Shortly thereafter, her bed was empty, a constant reminder of how much I didn’t belong.”

Mei’s first encounter with her old roommate, Leslie, was a shock because Mei had never been confronted so directly with the prejudice brought about by cultural tensions between Taiwan and China. This illustrates that the prejudice immigrants often face sometimes comes from other immigrants and can be just as damaging as racist prejudice perpetuated by nonimmigrants. This moment also highlights Mei’s struggle to feel like she belongs, especially in a new environment like MIT.

 “I had found my safe space. It was worth having to disinfect these socks now. And it was worth having to withstand the disapproving Mama Lu in my head with her pinched lips and hands on her hips. Dancing instead of studying, Mei? Each step is a stomp on my heart. God, she was always so dramatic. I pushed her out and focused on the breeze through my hair, the swishing of my feet, the energy flowing from my fingertips to my toes.

Even though I was exerting myself, my breathing was easier here. Natural. It was the one place I could express myself, be completely me. If only I could find another who spoke dance.”

When Mei finds the Porter Room, she finally has at least once space that feels like home on the MIT campus. Hearing Mama Lu’s voice in her head reveals how ingrained her parents’ cultural values are in her life. Mei can never fully have the independence she craves because her overbearing parents go with her everywhere, physically and mentally. This is why dance as an escape is so important to Mei.

“Rose joined me, her flexible young legs shooting into a perfect split. She lay forward on her belly, her head toward me, and said ‘You’re Chinese, like me.’ She pointed a stubby finger at herself.

Except you’re really American, I couldn’t help but think. I hated the touch of envy that shot into my throat like bile. She would never have to deal with child-of-immigrant guilt.”

Rose, a young Chinese girl who has been adopted by white parents and is taking one of Mei’s dance classes, reminds Mei that their lives are very different. Because Rose is being raised by parents who aren’t Chinese, she takes the Chinese dance classes Mei teaches to keep a connection with her culture. Mei, on the other hand, is constantly bombarded with Chinese culture in a way that makes her resentful sometimes.

“I wasn’t ready to tell [Darren]. Talking about my secret dreams brought them closer to reality, which could never be. And that included him. No Japanese boys, I heard in my head, my mother’s words like nails on a chalkboard.”

Again, Mei hears her mother in her mind, reminding her that acting on her crush on Darren would be problematic for her parents. Like dance, Darren is a forbidden dream that goes against the values she has been taught. Mei must decide if she will obey her parents or go after what she wants.

“I had forgotten about what I like to call the Asian Club Phenomenon—that my family didn’t know Brad Pitt or J. K. Rowling, but they knew Lucy Liu and Amy Tan. Was it because so few Asians broke into pop culture that they felt a sense of shared pride, or was it because they felt a bond with every Asian, even the strangers we bumped into at Kmart and Costco?”

Mei’s parents’ familiarity with Asian celebrities highlights the media representation that people of color often feel is lacking in American culture. This illustrates how strongly her parents hold tight to their cultural identities: They feel at odds with an American culture that often excludes people from backgrounds like their own, so they cling to what they know. The desire to keep their culture and people connected also explains their emphasis on community and arranged marriages.

“Worshipping was serious business. No smiling, no laughing, no talking—which of course meant it had taken all my strength to suppress my giggles as a kid.

After Yilong took her turn, I stepped forward. When I was little, this ritual had been a necessity to honor my ancestors (and on Chinese New Year, to get my hongbao with a crisp twenty-dollar bill inside). Now it had morphed into just what you do, like how you brush your teeth twice a day or eat dinner at night. Just going through the motions, not really feeling or thinking.”

As a child, Mei had trouble taking traditional Chinese worship seriously. Now, she goes through the motions as she’s expected to because the ritual has become ingrained, just like the rest of her parents’ traditional values. These glimpses of cultural rituals illustrate how traditions can evolve into habit and Mei’s increasing difficulty reconciling these rituals with her American identity.

“My mother went back to cleaning, but before she could touch any of my stuff, I snatched the hand sanitizer off my desk and squeezed a gigantic glob across her knuckles. She narrowed her eyes at me, and I knew she was saying, I hope this doesn’t interfere with your future. My struggle with germs was an unspoken tension, and I often had to hide it from my parents to avoid fighting. I was used to sneaking sanitizer on beneath the table, in my pocket, behind my back.”

Mama Lu believes that becoming a doctor and marrying successfully should be Mei’s only goals and that Mei’s fear of germs compromises this plan. Mei never directly discusses her fear of germs with her parents because she feels shame and guilt. Dancing around this topic here makes her later confrontation with her parents more poignant.

“I’ve always been jealous of my friends whose parents kissed their cheeks, read them bedtime stories, bought them whatever toys they wanted. But my parents showed love in different ways: shopping exclusively at garage sales, reusing napkins and Ziplocs, never treating themselves to the furniture or vacations they coveted. It was so I could go to the best school and end up with a stable career where I would never have to sacrifice like they did. To them, a secure future was the ultimate gift a parent could give. How could I refuse them when this was their motivation?”

Mei juxtaposes the open affection her friends’ parents show with her parents’ behavior, which is rooted in love and care but lacks the explicit physical and emotional connection she feels she’s missing out on. She knows that her parents love her, but she also feels guilty for wishing they showed it differently. Still, despite their strict adherence to tradition, Mei recognizes the sacrifices necessary for her to be at MIT, a common trait of the immigrant and child-of-immigrants experience.

“I realized that I had come here partly because I wanted to know why our experiences had been so different. [Helen’s] parents were from Taiwan, just like mine. They had immigrated here for graduate school, just like mine. Yet Helen had boyfriends, spoke her mind, and her only house rule growing up was Don’t let the dog poop on the bed. I bet Helen never suffered from Lu guilt—you know, that special brand of disgrace, responsibility, and shame bred by an environment where most things you did weren’t good enough and unconditional obedience was expected.”

As Mei tries to understand her family dynamics, she seeks out her friend Helen to commiserate with. However, the meeting helps her realize that it isn’t her parents’ cultural traditions that are problematic but their interpretation of and strict adherence to them. Helen has not had this experience despite also sharing a Taiwanese heritage, and Mei resents this.

“Before, I had blamed my culture, but that wasn’t the problem. It was so much more complicated than that. It was a clashing of personalities and interpretations of cultures. How would my parents and I ever find a solution to this impossible mix of opposing ideals and desires? No right answers. Only a long list of wrong ones.”

Mei’s meeting with Helen brings clarity surrounding Mei’s family dynamics: Her parents have chosen to rigidly cling to tradition at the expense of Mei’s happiness and free will. Mei feels hopeless because she knows the hold that these cultural traditions have on her parents and cannot see them changing their minds. At the same time, her recognition that her culture “isn’t the problem” helps her realize that she also chooses how to interpret and celebrate the aspects of her culture that make sense to her, such as traditional forms of dance.

“They believe having different opinions makes me a bad person. In Taiwan during my parents’ childhood, filial piety was as much a part of life as breathing—ingrained from birth, expected from everyone. Confucius’s Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars—one of the first lessons in school—spoke of warming an icy lake with your naked body to catch fish for your mother, tasting your father’s feces to diagnose his medical condition, and feeding yourself to the mosquitoes to spare your parents’ blood.”

Mei outlines for Darren her internal struggle with filial piety. Her desires and values are at odds with ancient lessons and texts that have existed for generations. Just as her parents’ voices and reminders are ingrained in Mei’s internal experience, Mei’s family carries these lessons with them always. They expect Mei to believe and adhere to these expectations without question, which Darren cannot comprehend.

“And I hated myself for adding yet another secret to my already overloaded plate. It was like trying to contain three spoonfuls of stuffing in a dumpling—it was so overfilled the skin barely met on any side. All the secrets threatened to spill at any moment. If I ever tried to finish the dumpling, it would explode when I squeezed—meat and veggies everywhere.”

This moment illustrates an ongoing metaphor throughout the novel: a dumpling that symbolically holds all of Mei’s fears, secrets, shame, and guilt at betraying her family. In her mind, this dumpling keeps growing with every lie she tells about dance or Darren in order to keep her budding independence alive. In the end, the dumpling explodes when Mei confronts her parents with the truth about how she feels.

“Every face was different, unique, based on a real-life soldier. I took in this warrior’s slightly bulbous nose and pronounced cheeks. He was so familiar, what I would picture my ancestor to look like. I felt tied to these artifacts, as if a piece of me were in them as well. Perhaps that really was the case with this soldier here. Possibly a Lu. I knew he was inanimate, just a lump of molded clay, but when I stared into his blank, pupilless eyes, the shadows from the dim lighting made it appear as if he were staring into my soul, judging me and all my secrets.”

Mei feels a connection with the clay soldiers from the Terracotta Army exhibit because she is trying to understand her own identity as a Taiwanese American. She senses a familiarity in the soldier’s face and imagines that he is a Lu because she wants to feel like she’s part of something bigger than her complicated family dynamics. Being there with Xing instead of her parents highlights this complicated family relationship.

“‘I know what you mean,’ Xing said. ‘Sometimes I wonder if Mom and Dad are particularly tough because they immigrated here. Maybe they feel like they have to hold on to traditions tighter to make up for leaving.’

I nodded as he spoke. ‘And since they’re not there,’ I realized, ‘they can’t evolve with the times—they’re still holding on to traditions they grew up with from an entirely different generation.’”

Mei and Xing express empathy for their parents’ own attempts to retain their cultural identities and resistance to assimilating into American culture. Not only does this moment demonstrate Mei’s heightened understanding of her family dynamics, but it also shows her growing closeness with Xing. No one else can truly understand her experience like Xing can because Mei’s parents raised him, too. Mei and Xing are working on no longer being estranged like their parents wanted them to be.

“It makes sense that you and Baba care about keeping traditions alive since you were born in Taiwan. But it’s different for me, for my generation. We were born here, live here. It’s Chinese culture at home, American culture everywhere else. Do you know how hard that is? Can’t we keep the traditions we like and alter the ones we don’t agree with? Don’t we get to choose who we are?”

Mei finally communicates her fears and desires with her parents. She feels guilty for causing them pain and shame, but she knows that she cannot keep lying and keeping secrets anymore. Her questions here clearly outline that she isn’t rejecting their culture but instead seeks ways to blend her family’s cultural identity with her identity as an American.

“There was a hole in my chest, a piece of me missing without them. When I thought about continuing down this path, trying to find my way, the crater grew. […] But then when I thought about making up with them, the hole in my chest closed as a cavity opened in my brain, a partial lobotomy. I couldn’t go through life as a shadow. If I gave in to them, I’d lose myself. No matter how painful this was, I couldn’t go back. But just because I knew that didn’t make it any easier.”

Although Mei is devastated to be disowned by her parents, she knows it’s more important that she be true to herself. Her pain is almost physical as described here—a hole in her heart but also in her brain—which parallels the autopsy she struggled to witness earlier in the novel. She imagines her body coming apart as she grapples with the rejection of her parents.

“I thought about my mom and dad’s relationship. A lifetime of arguments, a lack of affection, no communication. Stifled by the predetermined husband, wife, and in-law roles, the unyielding expectations. Xing had escaped that—at a price, but a sacrifice worth making.”

After having grown up in a strict household raised by parents who clearly didn’t love each other, Mei has never had a proper example of a loving relationship. When she attends Xing and Esther’s wedding, she witnesses their love and devotion firsthand. Xing has chosen to sacrifice his family in order to marry Esther. Mei admires this choice, which foreshadows Mei later making a similar choice to be with Darren.

“Outside the funeral home, I paused. The pagoda-shaped entrance was from one of my two worlds, the one in which I didn’t belong.

I looked at the buildings across the street, outside Chinatown. Tufts Medical Center. The W Hotel. McDonald’s. I didn’t belong in that world, either.

Roommate number one’s harsh words echoed in my mind, reverberating louder and louder. Even my grandparents hadn’t belonged anywhere, driven out of China by the Communists, yet foreigners in Taiwan. Maybe I was destined to be lost, just like them.”

The two sides of the street are an apt representation of Mei’s attempt to reconcile both parts of her cultural identity, but she feels like she doesn’t fully belong on either side. She is reminded of her grandparents, and although she feels connected to them here, it’s for a sad reason: She feels that she has lost her home.

“I wish it didn’t end like this. I wish you could hear me right now. I wish you could’ve seen me for who I was—a loving daughter and granddaughter who just wanted to be heard. Wanted to be happy. I wish you could’ve understood, but we’re from two different worlds. Good-bye, Nainai. Rest in peace.”

Mei’s goodbye to her grandmother is significant because she can finally say what she has hidden for so long. Only in death can Nainai know the truth about how Mei feels. This is a moment of closure for Mei, who doesn’t allow her grief to weaken her resolve to be true to herself.

“I turned into the local Chinese community’s cautionary tale: whore, spinster, homeless, whatever that Asian parent’s biggest fear was. Since I don’t go by my Chinese name [Ying-Na], I often hear these stories from other Asians who don’t realize they’re telling me about my own sexcapades and failures. Did you know I was giving head in the public-school bathroom yesterday at the same time I was peddling heroin on the other side of town? And all because I tried one sip of alcohol.”

Until Mei attends Christine’s stand-up show, Ying-Na has been a cautionary myth throughout the novel, exactly as the local Taiwanese community has touted her. Now, the audience, and Mei, can see Christine as a person as she comes to life on the stage. Her personality is open and fearless, which is what Mei aspires to be.

“‘Mei, I raised you how I was raised because I thought it was the only way. But your words the last time we met’—she patted the spot over her heart—‘I heard them. I ask myself, what if things could be different? I never considered it before. Then I thought about my childhood. I hated when my mama—your waipo—gave away my toys. Or told the neighbor her daughter was better than me. Or scolded me no matter how good of a grade I got. It was what every parent did so I didn’t question it, but I hated it. Of course you hated it too. We believe a stern hand is the way to produce moral, hardworking children, but…’ Her voice trailed off.”

Mama Lu finally understands that raising her daughter in the traditional way has hurt Mei. Mama Lu puts herself into Mei’s shoes, recalling the things she hated most about her own upbringing, representing a turning point for Mama Lu’s previously reserved character. Only after reflecting on Mei’s truth is she able to truly empathize with Mei and see that rigidly following outdated cultural traditions can be dangerous.

“Gone was the lost, lonely girl who had looked at her pale, blond classmates and wished she weren’t so different. Who had recited ‘just is frog’ instead of ‘justice for all’ to a flag for three years because she didn’t know the Pledge of Allegiance and was too scared to ask.

For once, I was at peace.”

With her mother’s support, Mei finally feels happy to be who she is. Her internal identity crisis has shown her that although she may be caught between two cultures, she can choose to be who she wants moving forward. She is glad to be different.

“She turned her palm up and squeezed. ‘I’m learning from you. My smart girl. My American panda.’ Then she said the words I’d waited seventeen years to hear. ‘I’m proud of you.’”

In the end, Mama Lu shows Mei open physical and emotional affection just like Mei has always wanted. This moment also highlights the significance of the novel’s title: Mei is Taiwanese and American. The fact that it is her mother who says this is further proof of Mama Lu’s acceptance of Mei’s uniqueness.