My Family's Story

My mother, May, was born in Hong Kong, which was a British colony at the time.  She grew up speaking Cantonese and learned Mandarin in school, although the official language in Hong Kong at the time was English.  On her side of the family (the Chan's family), I thought it was interesting that my maternal grandmother (my PoPo) was an orphan that tried to escape mainland China during the depression in the 1930s as a refugee.  She only speaks Cantonese.  Since my maternal grandmother was an orphan during that time of political and economic turmoil, she did not have any family to cling to during her march by foot out of Canton province, into Hong Kong.  During her escape, she would tell me how she ate the roots of various trees, bamboo, and bushes, to prevent starvation and to keep alive.  When she arrived in Hong Kong, she met a business man (my grandfather) and agreed to be his second wife (concubine) in order to survive in Hong Kong.  She gave birth to 2 sons and 3 daughters - but one of the daughters (the eldest) had a falling out with my grandmother and grandfather and ran away from home in her teenage years.  My grandmother has not spoke of her since then, and when questioned, would become very depressed and saddened.  My mother and her siblings have attempted to try to trace the eldest sibling that ran away, through newspaper and magazine ads, but to no avail.  My grandmother endured further hardship, strife and turmoil during her life in Hong Kong, estranged and set against the first wife's family, who were all competing for my grandfather's love and attention.  My grandmother was a very strong and protective woman, and sacrificed herself, as a mother, for the success of her children.  My grandfather had a sister (my great aunt) who had children who studied in Australia and America.  This great aunt poured all of her energy, savings and resources to send her only son to America to obtain a PhD and Engineering degree and was part of the team that built the San Francisco Gate Bridge.  He is my Uncle David.  There at Berkeley, California, he studied various subjects and met an Asian American college student (at UCB), and they married, and moved to Florida, where my Uncle David worked as Chief Engineer of the State of Florida.  The Asian American college student is my Aunty Irene, who was born in Hawaii and spoke English at home.  Both she and my Uncle David had two daughters who needed a nanny -- so that's how my mother came to the States from Hong Kong.

My mother, May Chan, at the time, came to the live with my Uncle David in Tallahassee, Florida, to help as a nanny and take care of his two daughters, as well as attend a little Floridian community college where she learned English as a Second Language.  She eventually got a scholarship to attend Florida State University and started her educational career in Marketing.  One day, during a Chinese New Year dinner, she met my father, Mike Gung, as she was volunteering to sign in guests names into the guest book.  She stumbled with his last name for a while, as he explained his name, "Gung".  He recognized her throughout the New Year's party, although my mother denies remembering him and anything else he did at the party.  Somehow, my father found out her name, and eventually wrote her a letter in Chinese to ask her out on a date. 

My father was from Tong Shiao, Taiwan, which is an independent Republic of China.  It is political renegade country that formed itself democratically apart from their Communist counterparts.  My father was the 3rd son of 5 sons, and lived in a household dwelling that held up to 200 Gung's family people during one point in the heydey of that small little fishing and farming village.  However, my father did not want to live a life of farming, which was made up of days baking in the blistering sun, bent over picking at rice patties, while loud buzzing insect sounds filled the hot air.  So, he asked the Gung's family if he could go out on his own.  He first tried to open a fruit stand in the market place, because he saw how watermelons and bananas were selling at astonishing prices, so he wanted to cash in on the opportunity.  He spent all of his savings and bought alot of fruit to start his first business.  However, he soon realized that he had made a mistake, when things began to literally rot.  Although he could sell a few pieces of fruit at high prices, the rest of the fruit that he didn't sell in time, would go rotten, and all of his investments were wasted.  He went bankrupt, but did not want to go back to the family farm.  So, he chalked that up for experience and decided to go out to work for somebody else.  The Gung's family urged him to stay on the farm, because there had not been anybody in the 200 member Gung's family to ever leave the family (they had been self-sustaining for many generations), but eventually got the backing and support of my great grandfather, who sympathized with him and allowed him to venture out and find work for a small grocery store for another family in the city-side.  So, he went to the city to learn about the grocery business and about business in general.  Soon, the city folks took him into their family, and he worked in every aspect of the grocery business:  cashier, managed inventory, bag boy, cleaner, etc.  They did not have any cash registers, so he learned how to quickly calculate totals in his head (sometimes he used an abacus).  He learned to use Mandarin for business.  This experience in the city helped to set his eyes and heart in business and in a very entreprunuerial spirit, he actively searched for any financial opportunity he could find out there in the great world.

Obviously, he had heard about economic opportunities in America, where it was rumored there were golden streets and high buildings made of silver, where fruit trees produced sweet smelling peaches and apples, etc..

But he could not get a visa to come to the United States - he was denied on several occasions.  However, he was accepted by the Japanese, since Taiwan had been a colony of Japan in the 1950s.  So, he went to Japan, to work for a noodle restaurant in Namba-city of Osaka Prefecture, and stayed there for 7 years.  Through immersion, he began to pick up the basics of Japanese.  Also, for a few semesters, he taught Chinese language at Osaka University.  He was very loyal to the noodle restaurant, where he became very close to the family who owned the restaurant.  The family even asked my father to marry their daughter, so that my father could be a part of the Japanese family and business!  It would have been an arranged marriage, and I would not have been born, but my father saw how sad the daughter was when she would be forced to marry him, and somehow figured out a way to politely decline the family's proposal, so that the daughter could have her own freedom in marrying someone with whom she loved and chose.  She eventually did find another man, but she was forever grateful to my father for his understanding, friendship and devotion to her family.  They still keep in contact with Christmas cards up to today.

My father, back then, however, still had hopes to go to America, and dreams of becoming rich.  It was not until he had met and befriended a Chinese church minister during his stay in Japan, that his life was going to change.  

In Japan, my father had close connections with the Taiwanese people living in Japan.  In particular, there was an "underground" Christian Chinese Church (back then, and even to this day, Christianity is a very minority religion practiced usually by foreigners in Japan), where he attended and became friends with the head Chinese minister, Mr. Chou.  He was a member of the Chinese Christian Church for 4 years.  The minister had heard about my father's dreams to go to America, and agreed that there would be so much opportunity for him, so the minister became the catalyst for my father's dreams.  He helped to arrange a Christian Missionary Visa for my father, found some friends in America that would initally help him upon arrival, and sent him over to America, on a Christian Church sponsorship.  My father was so happy and excited, and knew instantly when he was on the plane, that he was going to "make it" and all of his dreams would come true!!

But when he landed in New York, the only work he could find was relegated to the restaurant business.  But he did not complain and quickly went to work as a dishwasher in a restaurant in a back alley of Chinatown.  He had so many dishes to do, remembering the endless piles and piles of dishes!  But, he kept working hard.  He had faith.  He followed the cultural expectations that America had on Chinese people, and he worked hard in Chinese restaurants.  There weren't any other jobs or opportunities out there for him, other than work at a Chinese restaurant.  So, he worked at various Chinese restaurants, learning everything he could about the restaurant industry.  He eventually found himself in Tallahassee, Florida, where he worked as a head chef at Lucy Ho's Chinese Restaurant.  However, his inborn entreprenuerial spirit eventually kicked in, and he decided that he wanted to open his own restaurant himself.  The owners of Lucy Ho's Chinese Restaurant was so mad and cursed him for leaving.  But he couldn't resist the opportunity.  He had also met my mother there in Tallahassee.  They spoke Mandarin to each other, but he attempted to learn her Cantonese language.  They dated, and he shared his dreams of opening a restaurant with her, and she told him that she wanted to help.  So they got engaged.  He went up and down the East coast of America from Florida to Canada on I-95 and I-75 in search of a place to call his own.  After weeks of traveling, he could not find a suitable place, and was about to admit failure, when all the sudden, as he was driving back down from Atlanta, passed Macon, he spotted a sign that read "Valdosta".  He had not heard of "Valdosta", but thought that the town must have been pretty significant if the government would have made a big green sign on the road about "Valdosta".  So he decided to check it out.  When he got there, he scoped out the restaurants and noticed that there was only one ethnic restaurant:  Willy's Hoffbrau, which was German.  He was very surprised, and immediately went back home to Tallahassee to tell my mother about the potential.  My mother was thrilled.  So, my father went to Valdosta to work on building his dream restaurant.  My father gave my mother all of his savings to buy dining furniture and equipment from New York, where she needed to drive up there to pick everything up.  After two weeks of no word from my mother in New York (long distance calls were too expensive, and they could not afford such luxury since they only had a little bit of money), my father became worried.  He thought my mother had took all of his money and left him!  But eventually, my mother had returned home with all of the supplies, and this was a big relief and final assurance for my father. They then got married.  And they started their lives in "Valdosta", Georgia, where they were accepted as new immigrants, willing to work hard and lead quiet humble lives.

Even though my parents were somewhat successful in a small Southern town, they were always quick to point out that their success was only because the Valdostans were kind and supportive of them.  My family afterall owed their success in many ways to how Americans welcomed them as foreigners, especially in the South, where the "welcome" is a part of the southern culture of hospitality.  They became involved in the community, was a member of Rotary International, the Valdosta Country Club, and continued to serve Valdosta for over 29 years.  My mother continued to take a few classes in Business at Valdosta State University, and even took 3 semesters of Japanese language.  She feels confident in her English conversation skills, but remain insecure about her grammar and business writing skills.  However, she is asked occasionally to volunteer to tell about Chinese language and culture in the public schools, which she enjoys to do from time to time, without worrying about her English speaking and presentation abilities.

Through my years growing up, I was exposed to Mandarin Chinese in both the restaurant and at home with my family.  I was a child speaking Chinese with my family and sisters and it felt very natural -- the language in which I had been mothered, so I knew how to talk to everybody in Chinese. Throughout my elementary years, I went back and forth to schools in Taiwan and America, switching languages.  However, it was not until 3rd grade that my grades were dropping and my parents suspected that I had problems due to a language barrier.  So, they decided that I had to improve my English.  That's when they started speaking English at home.  Even though I was starting to speak English, I was very far behind.  What made things worse, was how my parent's English was "broken" and rife with grammar and pronunciation mistakes.  They became a terrible model of English for me.  However, they continued to send me to extra tutoring, drilled spelling words into me and was determined that I would not have the same linguistically-limited fate as they would.  They knew that English carried power and influence, and I had to learn English if I were to "dominate".  So, I learned English as a Second Language around 10 years old, during 3rd grade, and I had a lot of trouble with school in America -- I never read, never did my homework, and was struggling with my subject content due to a mild language and cultural barrier. However, luckily for me, one of my teachers, Mrs. Campbell, noticed that I was Asian, and somehow, assumed the Asian Model Minority idea that I was a bright kid. Positive racism. None of my test scores indicated that I was gifted, but for some reason, she thought I was another one of those “smart Asian kids”.

So, she recommended me for the gifted program. I remembered struggling even more in that program, but somehow, because my teachers "believed" in me and had high expectations of me, I gained more confidence and started "hitting the books" like every other gifted kid. I started acculturating into the “gifted” culture, and eventually won various state spelling bees and obtained the middle school's English award with the highest GPA in the school.

Eventually, I caught up, although I felt my Chinese suffered.  I mostly know the basics and can have a normal conversation in Chinese, but I did not continue to develop my "academic" Chinese.  However, people in America had always assumed I could speak Chinese and generally regarded me with wonder, as an anomaly, upon discovering that I was American-born and assuming that I was Chinese-fluent.  However, it is said that a typical Chinese student cannot read the Chinese newspaper until 6th grade.  I only studied Chinese off and on until 3rd grade.  I can say a lot of foods in Chinese, because I grew up working and using Chinese in my family's Chinese restaurant, but if you were to give me a newspaper as ask me to read it or listen to the news in Chinese, then the chances of me comprehending the quite "academic" Chinese would be slim. I believe that I am a product of “subtractive bilingualism”, in which the my ability to speak the Chinese language was be taken away (subtracted), while English gradually and dangerously took over.  I had to learn English, because America was a society where the majority of its people predominantly spoke English.  Without respect and a positive attitude towards the less powerful “minority” language, bilingual fluency can quickly deteriorate and regrettably, a majority of students do actually end up becoming unsuccessful in maintaining their first language.  In fact, research now shows that 80% of all English Language Learners who begin elementary schools in America will ultimately lose their ability to speak their mother language by the time they get to high school.  Yikes!  This statistic described me perfectly.

Despite this "language death" phenomenon, I have tried to continue to try to resusitate my heritage langauge by offering a small class on beginning Chinese language (they say that you can learn it while you teach it), and I have been studying Japanese at college and overseas as I worked and live in Japan.  The Japanese language borrows Chinese characters in their writing system, so there is a connection to improving my Chinese as well.  Currently, I can read about 500 characters, out of the 32,000 characters that a typical college-educated Chinese student must know and recognize.  That is quite a deficit, and I am finding that I must learn my Chinese all over again, but I never give up hope that I will be able to speak Chinese well.  Therefore, I am making this website project to share information about what parents can to do raise their children bilingually.  I figured that the best thing parents can do is to hard-wire the language into their children's brains while they were young so that after they forgot everything, they would still be able to learn it later in college and not have an accent.

There are many other stories out there, including what other parents did to teach their children their language.  There are Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Filipino, Italian, Swiss, Spanish, German Greek, and French parents who have had success in raising their bilingual children, so I encourage you to read about them.  I have provided links to them in this website, as well as a references to books and articles.  Enjoy!

-- Emily Gung