Lost In Interpretation: China Stories Told By A China Insider

By Barbara Hong Li

Most American books about China are written by Americans who have visited, lived, or worked in China. The authors believe that their experiences are a slice of what Chinese culture truly is.

Lost In Interpretation: China Stories Told by a China Ins

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Dec 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637309353

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INTRODUCTION

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I definitely have a lot to be thankful for about this country.

Having worked as a California State Court certified and US government contracted Mandarin and Cantonese interpreter for the past ten years, I have been extremely fortunate to work on various high profile court cases as well as senior government level exchange programs between China and the US.

In my professional career, the most common question the Chinese delegates ask me is this: As a Chinese person living in America, have you ever encountered discrimination yourself in this country?

My answer was, Rarely, but that does not mean discrimination does not exist. In fact, if you look at the history of hate crimes in America, the record is ugly. This is because in the United States, Asian Americans have long been considered as a threat to a nation that promoted a whites-only immigration policy. They were called a ‘yellow peril’: unclean and unfit for citizenship in America (De Leon, 2020).

It is obvious racial discrimination against Asians in America has not been historically directed at one race or minority, but rather toward a different minority at different times. Usually, it is associated with a political event: from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1897 enacted by the forty-seventh United States Congress banning all immigration from China to the Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, resulting in the internment of Japanese Americans after Japan launched attack on the Pearl Harbor, and to the current wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans exacerbated by the outbreak of COVID-19 (De Leon, 2020).

Having first come to the US in large numbers in the 1850s to work in mining and railroad construction as cheap labor, the Chinese immigrants in the US have long been the target of bigotry. Several massacres occurred between 1871 and 1885, resulting in severe loss of lives (Brockell, 2021). Public perception of Chinese Americans has shifted over the years, but many of the preconceived notions Americans have of Chinese stem from this time. Chinese Americans are seen as hard working, law-abiding citizens and, as such, have been stereotyped as a Model Minority.

Unfortunately, the moniker of the Model Minority and the comparatively better economic status have not helped cultural assimilation, and their voices are far from being formidable. Many Chinese people still feel unaccepted and unwelcome as if they don’t belong here. Being less politically active than other minority races, they feel they are at the bottom of the political and social ladder. They love America and view this country as a home of their own, but at the same time, they are overshadowed by the history when American Chinese were excluded. Some of them feel out of place among the westerners. When they feel not trusted and find it hard to be integrated into the mainstream US society, they retreat to their own community for a sense of identity and belonging.

Is there something distinctive in the Chinese culture making them an often scapegoat? I do see cultural differences between China and the US, and that question circled in my mind all the time, but the idea of writing a book about it never crossed my mind until I interpreted for a material witness in the horrific murder case of a Chinese exchange student named JI Xinran. This case shocked the Chinese communities on both sides of the Pacific Ocean (some names in the following section have been changed to protect witness privacy).

At 12:45 a.m. of July 24, 2014, JI Xinran, a twenty-four-year-old electric engineering graduate student from China studying in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering finished a group study at a fellow student’s home about fifteen minutes away from his own apartment near USC campus. He walked one of his classmates, Ms. Wang, home; after all, she only lived two blocks away and it was midnight. Walking a lady home was the gentlemanly thing to do. I interpreted for Ms. Wang on the witness stand.

According to Ms. Wang, JI Xinran offered to walk her home first before returning to his own apartment. A surveillance video later showed when JI was just about two blocks away from his own apartment, he was fatally attacked by four assailants lying in wait in a car: three men and one woman. They tried to rob him, but JI resisted. The assailants chased and hit him with a baseball bat and a wrench, crushing his skull and breaking bones all over his body. As the three assailants attacked JI, the fourth one, the driver who was sitting inside the car, fled. The other assailants, panicked, started to chase the car. As a result, JI Xinran was able to run away with his backpack still on him. The video in the lobby of his apartment showed JI sitting on a bench before going upstairs.

At around seven a.m. in the morning when one of JI’s roommates, Ms. Xie, woke up and emerged from her bedroom, she saw blood all over the couch in the living room. In the shared bathroom she was horrified to see blood on the towel, in the sink, and blood-soaked toilet paper all over the place. Then she followed the blood stains on the carpet leading to JI’s room. It looked as though JI had simply gone about his night after the beating, tending to his wounds as best as he could before retiring to his room to sleep it off. But as Ms. Xie entered JI’s room, she was horrified by what she saw: her roommate, JI, laid dead in his bed, blood pooling around his body. She did what any of us would do in this situation—she called the police.

It wasn’t long before JI’s murder made the nightly news, and his assailants were arrested. In the opening statement at their preliminary hearing, the prosecutor of the case said:

Mr. JI Xinran is the only child to his two parents and four grandparents on both sides of his family. Being at the age of only twenty-four, he had a bright future ahead of him. The coroner told me that in his twenty-three years of career as a coroner, he has never seen anyone with this level of injury able to make it home to his apartment on the fourth floor. When I tried to move his head in the process of doing the autopsy, his skull simply collapsed.

In 2020, more than six years after the horrific crime, the case was finally closed with all four violent murderers brought to justice, but the remarks of the prosecutor in this case still stuck in my mind:

Even until today, we still don’t know why Mr. JI did not call the police.

I will share the reasons I think Mr. JI never called the police in a latter chapter of this book, but for now, among the numerous criminal cases I have worked on, this one has been the most heartbreaking and thought-provoking. Asian Americans, including Chinese people, are labeled a Model Minority for a reason. In general, we are shy and reserved, but we are good and law-abiding citizens coming to America to seek better opportunities for ourselves and our children. We prefer not to deal with the police to avoid problems because we think less is more.

When we encounter injustice, we tend to sweep it under the rug so as not to cause a stir, but in this dire situation, Mr. JI, having his phone and computer with him and a roommate in the next room, simply chose not to communicate, even in this matter of life and death. He missed not one but several valuable opportunities to potentially save his own life and potentially prevent another crime, because the same assailants jumped into their car and subsequently launched another attack on a couple on a nearby beach before they were arrested.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, hate crimes against Asian Americans increased at an alarming rate. According to CNN, in sixteen of the nation’s largest cities and counties, hate crimes are up 164 percent since this time last year, according to a new study from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State University San Bernardino. The area with the largest increase in reported anti-Asian hate crimes was New York City, which saw a 223 percent spike in early 2021, followed by San Francisco with a 140 percent increase and Los Angeles with an 80 percent increase (Campbell, 2021). New York Times reported that in the Atlanta shooting on March 16, 2021, out of the eight people killed at three massage businesses in Atlanta and nearby Cherokee County, six were women of Asian descent (New York Times, 2021).

Historically, this is not the first time the Chinese have been singled out as a target for assault; however, this time it feels different. According to Global Times, just recently the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed the ‘Strategic Competition Act of 2021’ by twenty-one to one, further pushing China-US ties toward confrontation (Qingqing, 2021). As COVID-19 continues to worsen in some places, hate crimes like this and in other forms against the Asian and Chinese communities will continue.

Other than hate and political reasons for these crimes, I see something else. This type of hatred or resentment is, unfortunately, often fueled by misperception and misinformation. Due to lack of understanding of the Chinese culture and a language barrier, many Americans seem to think the Chinese are secretive, rude, takers not givers, disrespectful of personal spaces, and loud, but based on my research, interviews, and my own personal experience, they are just different and many of these negative stereotypes can be chalked up to gross misunderstandings of the Chinese values, beliefs, language, and culture.

Conversely, many in the Chinese culture also think Americans are arrogant, unfriendly, selfish, and their only mission is to contain China. Americans don’t care about their own parents who are mostly left in elderly centers to die alone. Of course, this is equally misinformed. As the world’s current negative views on China continue to increase in the foreseeable future, it is important to keep the American people informed of the Chinese culture, because better understanding will help bring peace and prosperity by reducing miscommunication, misunderstanding, and misperception.

According to recent data from the Pew Research Center, The US Asian population is projected to reach 46 million by 2060. In the 1870 census, roughly 63,000 individuals were classified as Asian by US Census Bureau enumerators. By 1960, the first-time census respondents could choose their own race; 980,000 individuals self-identified as Asian. The nation’s Asian population rose to 11.9 million by 2000 and then nearly doubled to 22.4 million by 2019—an 88 percent increase within two decades. Asians now make up about 7 percent of the nation’s overall population, and their numbers are projected to surpass 46 million by 2060, nearly four times their current total (Pew Research Center, 2021).

For such a large group in the US population, the stakes are high in both economic and political terms. Unless these cultural differences are addressed properly, the problems will only persist for years to come. Clashes between Chinese and American culture may trigger even more bitterness, resentment, and hate crimes.

As a certified court interpreter working regularly in courtrooms in the US, I see cultural clashes at play firsthand. My language interpretation has helped numerous court cases, but the Chinese culture behind those cases often gets lost. You would expect people on both sides to have a pretty good understanding of each other’s culture forty-two years after the two countries normalized relations, but my personal experience tells me that is not the case. The Americans’ understanding of the Chinese culture is still shockingly limited. Many Chinese people have misinformation about the American culture as well, but that may be the topic for another time.

A compelling sense of responsibility tells me something needs to be done and should be done, even with efforts of my own might. While it is impossible to capture the breadth and depth of the Chinese culture, this book is intended to serve as a crash course for American readers. It provides an insider’s look at who the Chinese are and why they do certain things they do, in the hope to help re-establish understanding and restore trust between the American and Chinese people. The time for writing this book on Chinese culture has never been more fitting and relevant. The urgency is right here and right now.

The collection of sixteen chapters in this book aims to provide a better understanding of the Chinese by shedding light on their values, mindset, and actions from different cultural dimensions. If you have ever had an interest in US-Chinese relations, the Chinese culture, language, food, and relationships, you have picked up the right book. If you have a colleague, friend, neighbor, roommate, or even a family member of Asian or Chinese descent, this is a good read. The stories in this book are real; names and details have been changed. Readers are advised not to make any assumptions. It is my hope for you to gain great insight by reading through these pages.

It is time to demystify the Model Minority, so let’s start!

CHAPTER 1

HOW DID WE GET HERE? A BRIEF HISTORY OF US-CHINA RELATIONS

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On Wednesday, August 31st, 2016, the late US Congressman William H. Hudnut III stood next to the podium on the floor of the US House of Representatives, giving an informal presentation on US Federalism to a group of thirty-five bankers from China. He appeared weak and short of breath at times, but the audience felt his passion and enthusiasm on this topic. His tall stature, charm, charisma, and command filled the entire House floor.

This group of bankers were participants of a three-week senior business executive training program in DC. Visiting the US Capitol Hill was one of the most popular sessions of the entire program. Most of the participants had seen this legislative body at work on TV in China but being able to go down to the House floor on a VIP visit and listen to a presentation by a former Congressman in person was truly a once-in-a-life-time opportunity. Having heard about criticisms of China from some members of the US Congress previously, this group arrived at Capitol Hill with great awe at the highest power of the land.

At one point, Congressman Hudnut talked about the impeachment process. He threw the following question to his audience: Has anyone here ever heard of President Nixon?

Yes! Of course! All Chinese people know President Nixon. He opened the door to the US-China relations! Participants responded enthusiastically. The atmosphere on the floor instantly brightened and lively mini discussions began amongst the participants themselves.

That is true, Congressman Hudnut responded. He continued to talk about Watergate and how President Nixon was eventually