Psycho-Social Adaptation and the Meaning of Achievement for Chinese Immigrants (Series: New Americans (LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC).)

The New Americans Recent Immigration and American Society

Edited by Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco

A Series from LFB Scholarly

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Psycho-Social Adaptation and the Meaning of Achievement for Chinese Immigrants

Lee-Beng Chua

LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC New York 2002

Copyright © 2002 by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chua, Lee-Beng. Psycho-social adaptation and the meaning of achievement for Chinese immigrants / Lee-Beng Chua. p. cm. -- (The new Americans) ISBN 1-931202-22-2 (alk. paper) 1. Chinese Americans--Social conditions. 2. Chinese Americans--Ethnic identity. I. Title. II. Series: New Americans (LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC) E184.C5 C552 2002 305.895'1073--dc21 2001006810

ISBN 1-931202-22-2 Printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Table of Contents vii

Acknowledgements Chapter 1

Introduction

1

Chapter 2

A Conceptual Explanation of Achievement Motivation

15

Chapter 3 Chinese Immigration to the United States

25

Chapter 4 From Process to Methods

35

Chapter 5 Family Profiles

47

Chapter 6 Zheng-zha-qiu-cun

63

Chapter 7 The Logic of the Worldview of Confucius

97

Chapter 8 Cross-Cultural Resettlement and Issues of Meaning-Making

109

Chapter 9 Narrative and Meaning Making

123

Chapter 10 Conclusion

137 v

Epilogue

Researcher’s Reflection

145

References

149

Index

163

Acknowledgments The completion of this book was inconceivable without the generous support I received from many people. Considering I have limited space to acknowledge everyone, I will mention four groups of people whose assistance was indispensable to the completion of this writing. First, I thank all my Chinese immigrant informants. Amidst their struggles to overcome the daily demands and necessities of life, they generously spent their time, revealing to me their experiences in this process of cross-cultural resettlement. Without their narrative disclosures– pertaining to sacrifices and compromises, endurance and hope, tears and laughter, failures and successes– I might still be flirting with irrelevant speculations or theoretical aestheticism. Quite frequently and with last-minute notice, they had to cancel my scheduled interviews with them whenever freelancing opportunities arose. They regretted the inconvenience they might had caused for re-scheduling or re-re-rescheduling another interview. But I wish they knew it was I who felt sorry about the burden I had imposed upon them. I understood how important the freelancing was to them. In ways that they might never realized, they had stretched my empathic capacity. A twist of the familiar fable should aptly characterize their impact on me. Quite magically, they had transformed a conceited hare into a drudging tortoise. Now a dawdled and more persistent tortoise, I managed to complete and dedicate this piece to them. Regretfully, because of confidentiality, I cannot thank them by names. But I have carved their faces on the tablet of my heart. Second, to the three professors whose help was instrumental. Professor Robert LeVine, my academic advisor during my graduate school days, supported my intellectual and personal development in precisely the way in which I needed such guidance. He inspired me to work on a path toward scholarship. Professor Tu Wei-Ming prompted me to explore the dynamic interplay between culture and self. He inspired me to locate my work among Chinese immigrant families within a larger Chinese cultural, historical, and political context. I am particularly thankful for the opportunity he gave me to assist him in teaching Confucian Humanism and Community, one of the core courses at Harvard College. He has invariably deepened and broadened my thinking about fundamental issues related to Chinese cultural traits and their implications to the underlying nature of human motivation. vii

To Professor Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, I am particularly indebted to and inspired by his works that confront the complexities of human solidarity in the context of immigration. His prolific and admirable scholarship often reminds me of my own humble intellectual endowment. The third group was composed of my peers. Their critiques and editorial advice have made this document more readable prose. I want to thank Beverly Smith, Phil Larratt-Smith, Sister Meta Reid, and most specifically, Catherine Fabio and Sue Peligian, for their consistent input and encouragement. The fourth group of people to whom I am deeply indebted is my family member. My deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Tan KahHuay and Chua Bock-Eng, whose nurturance of my personal development has injected in me a sensitivity that I could see in how the immigrant parents in this study nurtured their children. I am also very grateful to my siblings and my relatives. The formative years I spent with them meant a lot to me when I try to understand the dynamics of family socialization in the immigrant families. I also want to thank Madame Leung Wai Man, Peter and Angela Leung, who, in subtle but substantive ways, nurtured and sustained me with their unfailing support. They all trust my competence to complete this work, when I lacked the self-confidence and motivation. Finally, I owe my greatest debt and gratitude to my wife Heiming Leung, whose patience brought forth the fruition of this work. I regret that Heiming, to whom the book is dedicated, did not live long enough to witness the birth of this book. Our daughter Enlin, whose abundant grace, an embodiment of her name, had prevented the book from being aborted, sustained me in the process of completing this work.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The night before our departure, my daughter asked, 'Baba, why should we Chinese move to the United States?' I didn't know what to say exactly. I replied by asking, 'Should we give up the immigration visas that we have waited for all of these years?' Unhappy with my response, she remained silent. When she had gone to sleep, I thought about the question she had asked me. I felt a moment of tixiaojiefei [I could neither cry nor laugh]. -Mr. Tin My parents always remind me that I am their only hope. They said they left China so that I could have a better future in America. Why did they have to do this for me? Often I ask myself this question… There is a burden of give and take in my relationship with my parents. I am often bothered by the feeling of wukenaihe [a sense of helplessness and uneasiness]. I work hard but still feel that I am not doing good enough… My mother is sympathetic of my situation, but my father is less understanding. I try to avoid him. -Mei Kung This work attempts to understand the relationship between culture and motivation; Chinese cultural motivation in particular and cultural psychology in general. The nature of this inquiry naturally gave rise to a second search, a quest for my identity as a researcher. (I am an ethnic Chinese man who emigrated from Singapore to the United States in 1987.) Consequently, this document reflects my own struggle with cultural and ethnic identity. I have allowed my respect for the experiences of thirteen Chinese immigrants to inform my inquiry, while 1

2 maintaining enough distance to probe into each of their cross-cultural situations resettling in the United States. This might seem to risk my subjectivity. But it is impossible to acquire the necessary inter-subjectivity, indispensable to a study such as mine, without attending to my own subjectivity. To borrow a phrase from the psychoanalytic anthropologist George Devereux (1967), “Insight must begin from home.” This study is also a quest for a clearer understanding of what it means to be Chinese or to raise a Chinese or Chinese-American child in the context of contemporary American society. I am confronting the type of observations that Graubard raised in the 1991 issue of Daedalus, “The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today.” Graubard believes one common perception of the crosscultural situation focuses on… the Chinese diaspora, emphasizing the extent to which the Chinese, like certain other peoples, have wandered the earth, settling in widely disparate corners of the globe, living in substantially different political and social circumstances, managing always to maintain a distinctive culture (Graubard, 1991, p. v).

Another common perception is that Chinese culture, the generic term symbolizing the vicissitudes of the material and spiritual accomplishments of the Chinese people, has undergone major interpretive phases in recent decades and is now entering a new era of critical self-reflection (Tu, 1991, p. 1). How is it possible to merge these two observations and to “always maintain a distinctive culture" in the presence of so-called vicissitudes? Even if such perceptions are not mere generalizations, I believe each of them has captured only one side of a more complex reality. In keeping to a self-reflective, critical perspective required for my proposed method of discourse, I often wonder whether my own sense of motivation or that of my daughter’s, who was born and is being raised in the U.S., or that of Chinese-Americans in general is truly collectivistic and socio-centric by nature, as it is frequently characterized by social scientific studies on Chinese achievement motivation. If so, where did these characteristics of collectivism and

3 socio-centrism originate? What is the effect of such characteristics on the will to achieve? If this collectivistic character derives from an integrated cultural whole inspired by a Confucian worldview, is it possible to keep it intact for those of us who settle elsewhere and choose to identify ourselves as Chinese in spite of or perhaps even because of the pressures of cultural discontinuity in cross-cultural resettlement? In discussing the interchange of culture and self, the practical issue at hand is to avoid forming an arbitrary dichotomy between culture and self. In other words, we could ask how can Chinese or ChineseAmerican parents arbitrate between a cultural tradition that should be preserved and a discontinuous culture in which their children are growing up? Two extreme situations result from such arbitration: to fall prey to uncritical and nostalgic views of an idealized Chinese weltanschauung that promotes harmony and order, or conversely, to succumb prematurely to an attitude which dismisses the Confucian worldview as a cumbrous burden, incompatible with the present and future modern world. As I struggled with these questions, I grew more conscious of the relationship of culture and self to human motivation. I have tried to refrain from drawing stereotypical conclusions. Characterizing the motivational patterns of Chinese as collectivistic and socio-centric is as limiting as depicting the motivational dynamics of the west as uniformly individualistic and autonomous. Adopting a dialogical mode of inquiry, this work looks outward to existing theoretical frameworks. To address the issue of continuity and discontinuity I also look candidly inward at the personal construction of achievement motivation. Looking at individual motivation helps us to understand how a person — an active agent with pragmatic concerns and moral considerations — relies on different cultural capital and symbolic resources. It should be noted that this motivation might include either support for or ambivalence about a particular cultural tradition. This outward and inward inquiry captures the reality of everyday human condition. It reflects how, in the everyday world of urgency and necessity, cultural meanings interplay with individual orientation and engage each other to constitute an individual's underlying motivational construct. The four Chinese immigrant families I interviewed consist of thirteen people. I was provoked by their remarks to look for a more

4 contextually relevant view of achievement motivation from which I could consider their process of meaning making and self-construction. To them, the notion of culture or cultural resource is not merely a series of academic propositions, but a lived and living reality. Their crosscultural existence, with its randomness and chance encounters, highlights the potential and the capacity to adapt to the demands of everyday life. Their vibrancy underscores individual active construction of personhood and erodes the notion of fixed paths of human development. In the context of cross-cultural resettlement and the dynamic culture-self interplay, I see a new vantage point from which to revisit the complex question of Chinese identity.

Beyond the Culture-Self Dichotomy The interplay of self and culture that shapes individual motivation is complex. Since the formation of motivation is usually individual and often involves a constellation of many factors reducing that interplay to a simple dichotomy between culture and the self is impossible. Once raised, the question of human agency renders inadequate explanations that rely either on an overly contrived cultural framework or on a radical view that grants individuals unbounded freedom to constitute themselves. Two extreme approaches bound the spectrum of responses with which people would solve this difficult question. The first approach is culturally deterministic and assigns all causality to the influence of culture. In other words, there is no motivation that is not governed by culture. The second approach is more individualistic; by nature, psychological. It argues for the free agency of individuals who are viewed as responding to various drives and who act on the basis of choices that are somehow independent of culture. Both approaches are problematic. The first approach not only ignores the possibility of free agency but also does not satisfactorily explain how precisely culture can lead people to do what they do (D'Andrade, 1992; 1995). If, for example, they behave according to cultural norms, what makes them do so? But if they do not act according to cultural norms, what other symbolic resources are available to them? Further, how do they absorb cultural messages? Surely the way in which people interpret the symbolic resources of a culture requires greater attention. The second approach, on the other hand, celebrates the absolute free agency of individuals. While

5 avoiding the extreme view of cultural determinism, this approach risks reducing human motivation to a free-flow of individualistic "relativism" (Spiro, 1984). In short, "extreme collectivism only understands man as a part", whereas "extreme individualism only understands a part of man" (Turner, 1985, p, 190). Mindful of the problems inherent in this duality, I allowed myself to be guided by newer insights about individuals' frames of thought. My concern for a more ‘contextualistic’ perspective on my informants' experiences with cross-cultural resettlement provoked a decision to reject a simple 'deterministic' model of human motivation. I set my research priority to explore the semiotic aspect of culture and how cultural resources, combined with the creativity and intention of human agency, were implicated in each informant's meaning-making process, particularly meanings of achievement motivation. I sought to understand their actions by developing a deeper sensitivity to the realworld conditions in which they lived. I relied heavily on their narratives in order to do this. The two excerpts at the beginning of this chapter, for example, underscore the primacy of each speaker's human consciousness, exemplifying their participation in everyday life. The trans-oceanic journey and cross-cultural human development of the individuals within the families I studied offered me insights into the fusion of culture and personal motivation. They shared information with me about how they made sense of their old and new symbolic worlds, about what it was like to yank their roots from Chinese soil, and the difficulties of trying to replant them in American soil. They spoke of striving to maintain some identification with their homeland; about how they tried to adhere to "old ways" and about the pressure to "go native" in order to accommodate the host culture. They spoke of persevering buyiaofangqi [not giving up]; of not giving up the opportunity to reinvent a life and personhood in this new land. The informants' narratives helped to shape my research focus. They made it clear that immigration was much more complex than simply uprooting and replanting. They took me to the wide space somewhere between where they remained suspended in mid-air, unsupported. I discovered the vulnerability of their roots and witnessed the possibility that some of them might not survive the transplant. Studying their resettlement processes entailed acknowledging that their behavioral and psychological orientations were in a state of constant flux. In the complicated interplay between culture and individual motivation, I could see how different realms of experience

6 informed each other. They demonstrated how being shaken loose from their cultural embededness caused a sudden transition and disorientation that ushered them through an ongoing process of psychocultural adaptation. It was my realization of this suspended state that helped me to situate my study. It is by understanding this suspension that I could begin to explore and understand the experiences of my informants.

Shaping the Focus of My Research When I began thinking about a research topic, I had not even considered studying immigrant groups, let alone their achievement motivation. However, I was profoundly affected by an experience that motivated me to look more deeply at how Chinese immigrants perceive achievement and how they make sense of their own achievements within the larger community. I was a volunteer at a community service agency in Boston's Chinatown where I taught English to newly arrived Chinese immigrants, and met many other immigrants. One night I received a phone call from a Chinese man who had immigrated to the U.S. and left his wife and children behind until he could afford to send for them. He was plagued with suicidal thoughts. I listened as he cried about what he perceived as his failure as a Chinese son, a Chinese man, a Chinese husband, and a Chinese father. He sobbed in convulsions as he revealed his life story to me. I responded to his plight with deep sympathy. This experience stayed with me. I felt a compelling emotional and intellectual force within me, a force greater than I had ever experienced during the many emotionally-charged intellectual discussions I had participated in at Harvard — all centered around the question, "What does it mean to be Chinese?" Caught in abeyance, somewhere between Harvard and Chinatown, I discovered that making sense of the lived experiences of these immigrants in Chinatown would present my greatest intellectual challenge. This tension provoked me to look more closely at myself, partly as a Chinese man who grew up overseas in Singapore and partly as a social scientist in the U.S. studying Chinese culture-related issues. I began to wonder if a strong relation between culture and individual motivation does exist. For example, what would be the cultural beliefs and values that I might have internalized? How did I come to have the

7 values I have? I do not remember learning these values, which nonetheless were internalized by me at an early age. How have these values affected my sense of who I am and of what I ought to become? These questions reify how cultural meaning strengthen and shape family socialization and parent-child relationships. For example, I pondered about how these factors continue to add layers of interpersonal meaning to my family and to the ongoing meaningmaking processes of my parents, my daughter, and myself. An additional layer of complexity involves how my wife and I, raised in Hong Kong and Singapore respectively (former colonies of the British Empire), were somehow forced to acknowledge that we were inferior. My witnessing a suicidal Chinese man's overwhelming sense of hopelessness sent me reeling backwards where I found myself revisiting my childhood. I realized that I had, sometime during my childhood, unconsciously internalized values about the inferiority of Chinese people, especially in the presence of white power. This made me aware of the intensity of the interplay between culture and socialpolitical contingencies. What kind of cultural values, I wondered, had this man internalized? The question of "what it means to be Chinese" cannot be divorced from the vicissitudes of cultural resettlement. This Chinese man perceived himself a failure, and therefore contemplated suicide. While comforting him, I perceived that his distress was caused in part by the disparity between his ideal pattern of behavior for a Chinese man and his failure to achieve it. Thus began my inquiry into achievement motivation among Chinese immigrants. In my experience, Chinese culture and identity are a living condition grounded in the everyday. The confused joy and tears of immigrants whom I subsequently have met provided my inquiry with a renewed impetus and a sense of direction.

A Focus on Achievement Motivation On a superficial level, this work investigates the construction of meaning, probes the subtleties of human relatedness, and presents the complex condition of resettled immigrants. But what unifies these three topics, as the following pages will show, is a clear focus on the meanings of achievement. Initially I was interested in exploring the broader issue of how my respondents had adapted to a new environment and culture. What kept surfacing, however, was a motif of educational achievement, distinct

8 and defining to the informant’s mind, but elusive to me. Once I became more sensitive to the emotional undertones of my informants' narratives, I discovered rich layers of meaning that had hitherto escaped my notice. As I listened more closely to these narratives, I unearthed layer upon layer of assumptions concerning what was understood as success. In setting my focus I have avoided using quantifiable measures, such as the attainment of certain scores on a particular achievement test, in favor of the symbolic aspect of achievement and its attendant meanings. I examined the thirteen informants’ experiences about what they had undergone and what they dream of becoming? After carefully reading and re-reading these dense, emotionally charged narratives, I found the stories of these families were more complicated than mere matters of politics and education. Previous socio-political and culturalhistorical factors, as well as interfamilial dynamics and social pressures, had clearly shaped each informant’s presentation of his or her individual understanding of achievement. As such, they too must receive due consideration. The narratives of my informants, fragmented and rambling though they are, possess an inner logic of their own. Closer examination revealed a structure obedient to the temporal spectrum of past, present, and future. At this point my pursuit took a new turn. I adjusted my theme of achievement again, from a narrow focus on educational achievement to a common vision of achievement in life, even as a way of life.

Personhood as an Achievement My informants’ narratives closely relate to the construction of personhood. As an abstract concept, personhood is the instinct ability to recognize–creatively and continuously–one’s conception of oneself, and how that self integrates with a particular set of social circumstances. The informants reacted profoundly to a number of issues connected with personhood: the dynamic between interpersonal and familial self; the ways in which culture and religion enrich a dimension of the self; and the question of a personal and a collective identity. It is in the context of resettlement that I will comment on the relative strivings, conscious or unconscious, of my informants towards

9 the notion of their personhood, from the intra-personal to the cultural level. I adopted an opened-ended approach to my research. The complicated interplay among the various factors at work in the crosscultural resettlement process was taken into consideration. I attempted to understand how it was informed by diverse kinds of experience – for example, culture shock, the interpersonal dynamics between parent and child, the symbolic and directive motivation endowed by religious and spiritual resources – together with a new vision of life. I wanted to understand how these factors contribute to the ongoing construction of personhood, which is transformative and affects achievement motivation. The narratives echo a statement aptly made by Eliot Deutsch (1992): A person is a creative articulation, in varying degrees of rightness, of his or her individuality within the matrix of social community and within the enduring reality of the self" (p. 3). In light of this perspective, I view personhood not as a fixed entity but as a transformative act, an act of achievement rather than as a given.

Making and Remaking Meanings of Achievement Uprooting and replanting has a metaphorical bend. The vivid Chinese concepts of gen [root] and tudi [soil and ground] appropriately convey the formation of individual or collective identity. The metaphor of gen helped me to understand why my informants uprooted themselves from Chinese soil and replanted themselves in American soil. While living in China, they were inundated with a mythical “land of opportunity”. They received letters from relatives who had already immigrated, telling of their children's outstanding educational achievements in U.S. schools. They watched American movies and read books that depicted America as a place where tiny acorns could grow into mighty oak trees. They thought that in China, no matter how hard they work, they would grow only so much. In China, social resources limited the possibility of growth. The meritocratic soil of the United States, they believed, would be yangliao [nourishing]. If they left China and moved

10 to the U.S., their children could grow and flourish. Their children would attend resourceful American schools and excel, bringing honor and pride to the family. They would have the sort of careers – in medicine, science, or law – that China would have denied them because of severe competition. Their success would improve the social status of the family as a whole. The entire family would put down strong, proud, thriving roots in American soil. The American dream, the mythical America of opportunity, was indelibly stamped on the imaginations of these immigrants-to-be, these parents who had not yet immigrated. Once they came to America these immigrants observed, first hand, how their family connection was strengthened by the ordeal of adapting to a new social climate. Parents were expected to provide food, clothing, safety, shelter, and access to good schools for their children. Children were expected to study hard and excel in school. Achievement, and particularly educational achievement, was of the utmost importance. The success of the entire resettlement enterprise depended upon children who visibly were to profit by the transplantation. Their success strengthened the roots of the family. The narratives are full of poignant episodes of interpersonal connectedness [renqing and qinqing] and reciprocity [huobao]. They exhibit the subtle conflicts and misunderstandings, the avoidance and the uneasiness that complicate relationships within the family. At times the narratives betray ambivalence towards the family unit itself.

Chapter Organization The title – Uprooting and Replanting: Making and Remaking Meanings of Achievement – is a guide to the structure of this study which is divided into three sections: the foreground, middle ground, and high ground. All three sections highlight the primacy of my informants' concrete human consciousness and attend to their participation in everyday life. The foreground section addresses conceptual matters related to achievement motivation and socio-historical issues related to Chinese immigration. It consists of three chapters, including the introduction. Chapter 2 concerns issues related to theories of Chinese patterns of achievement motivation. It begins with a description of two theories of human achievement motivation – the individualistic model and the collectivistic model. I briefly explain why it has been persistently

11 characterized that Chinese achievement motivation is collectivistic in nature, and how this notion of collectivism developed. Chapter 3 offers an overview of Chinese immigration to the U.S. by locating the immigration in a larger historical and socio-political context. It reviews the extent to which the Chinese, during the last century, have been flooding to this "land of opportunity". Immigration laws restrictions are also discussed. This serves to locate the historical “situatedness” of the informant families within a broader temporal flow. This is followed by a discussion of the contemporary socio-political reality of Chinese communities in this country. It serves to correct the notion, as it is normally portrayed, that Chinese communities in the U.S. are monolithic in nature. The second section of my work–the middle ground section–is filled with ethnographic details describing my entrance into the field and the negotiation of the research relationship, and collection, interpretation, and presentation of the data. Chapter 4 recounts the research process, highlighting the inductive nature of this research inquiry. I explain why I incorporated a hermeneutical and phenomenological approach in my interpretive strategy. I also justify my use of narrative as the genre with which to present my findings and interpretations. Chapter 5 presents a profile of each family – anchoring them in historical and cultural circumstances; capturing the contours of child rearing and family socialization; characterizing the dynamics of parent-child relationships, as well as the process of cross-cultural adjustment. Chapter 6 presents rich narrative accounts and commentaries about past, present, and expected future experiences of these immigrants. In this chapter I extract several themes revolving around meanings of achievement, themes necessary to contextualize within the situation of personal engagement. I categorize recurring themes and native concepts like: ziwuogangzie [self-perception], xiao [filial piety], huxiantiliang [mutual understanding], and huxiangyilai [mutual dependence]. The final section, high ground, relates these immigrants' "local knowledge" and their cross-cultural experiences to issues of a more theoretical nature. The main objective of Chapters 7, 8, and 9 therefore, is to abstract a panoramic view of the trans-continental journey traveled by these immigrant families. These chapters move from the personal and particularistic dimensions to more public issues and general theoretical implications.

12 Chapter 7 revisits some very old Chinese cultural concepts and values. I explore the underlying visions that inform Confucius' organismic unity; a Trinitarian relationship between heaven, earth, and mankind. I examine how that vision shaped Confucius's ideal conception of the moral community, family socialization, and the cultivated self. Taken as an ideal conception, I explore whether Confucian high cultural order, not withstanding the modern influence, remains a dominant static cultural structure and an "unproblematically intergrated whole" (Schwartz, 1992). Along this reasoning, I ask in what ways do these immigrants, in the midst of plurality in a modern and cross-cultural life facing various commitments, still conform to the Confucius values and in what aspects the immediacy of everyday demands might have dislodged the Chinese from their Confucian haven. The notion of xiao [filial piety], for example, prompts me to seriously consider the influence of Confucian tradition. Chapter 8 draws on one particular immigrant's cross-cultural experience in order to explore two theoretical issues: the cultural dimension of human agency and the psychological dimension of culture. This culture-self interplay explores the semiotic aspect of culture and how cultural resources, combined with creativity and intentionality of human agency, are implicated in the individual meaning-making process. In this regard, the trans-oceanic journey and the cross-cultural human development of these immigrants offer insights into the fusion of culture and personal dichotomy. Chapter 9 reflects on the role the narrative mode of inquiry played in this study. Assessing its descriptive prowess at capturing meaning making in context, I juxtapose this mode of inquiry with paradigmatic inquiry, as compared by Bruner (1986, 1994). It is in this chapter that I revisit the culture-self dualism raised in earlier chapters. Finally, the conclusion sums up how a more reciprocal perspective of interpersonal interaction can embrace varied and realistic aspects of human motivation, in view of the individualistic-collectivistic models of achievement motivation. I end my exposition with an attempt to bring the persistent split on cultural and personal meanings, tackling the "problem of meaning" as it is debated in the realm of social science today. Use and presentation of excerpts At the beginning of each chapter I use at least one excerpt or quotation as a way of broaching the issues with which that chapter is concerned. I

13 hope it will serve as an organizing device to unify the topical and thematic issues of the proceeding chapter and within my work as a whole. Since I have gleaned my observations from the rich evidence of the interviews, I have included numerous lengthy excerpts. When necessary, I have used them more than once. Phonetic systems and translations Because of potential problems in translation, I relied heavily on the use of the Pinyin phonetic system. I conducted the interviews in Chinese and Cantonese. Therefore, all of the quotes and narrative excerpts are translated versions of the informants' actual words. In some cases the Chinese words could not be adequately translated into English. This posed special problems because certain words and concepts have special significance to my analysis. I have decided to present them in Chinese font followed by the approximate English translation. All Chinese fonts used are in the simplified system as it is currently employed in mainland China. In order to preserve the authenticity of the statements, particularly when translating native concepts where subtleties are mostly lost in translation, I kept the Pinyin. In cases where the meaning of a term required fuller explanation or when there is no exact or even approximate term for it in English, I provided an explanation of the term. In all cases I use Pinyin versions in addition to the Chinese characters.

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CHAPTER 2

A Conceptual Explanation of Achievement Motivation

My parents were immigrants and were more concerned with survival on subsistence level means for a long time. When my dad finally made it to more comfortable living, he really tried to instill the hardworking, American-dream-can-come-true ethic in all of us (Wu, 1984, p.88) . More than four decades ago, commenting on the dichotomous formulations of the relationship between culture and self, anthropologist Sir Raymond Firth (1954) acknowledged the great problem of reducing the acts of individuals to the regularities of a social process (p. 11). A little earlier, another anthropologist Melford Spiro (1951) disagreed with this artificial dichotomy, stating that it was "a function of our own highly disorganized cultural heritage" and a consequence of "contemporary fallacies of thinking about them" (p. 19). The wisdom of Firth and Spiro reminded me that individuals are free human agents and exercise their agency within cultural contexts. This understanding guided me throughout the stages of my research design. In my study of the psycho-cultural adaptations of four recently immigrated Chinese families, I was determined not to slip into the cultural deterministic thinking Spiro and Firth illuminated. In what follows, I examine what gave rise to the characterization of Chinese achievement as collectivistic-oriented. I see this characterization as a reactive response to the once hegemonic, individualistic model from the eastern intellectual tradition. I describe these two predominant theories – the individualistic and collectivistic – to explain human achievement motivation. I also briefly review 15

16 research attempts that have moved beyond this binary mode of perceiving human achievement motivation. This theoretical beginning explains my need to deepen and explore the inner dynamics within each of these two bipolarized models. I believe it calls for a complementary bottom-up perspective, one that is supported by phenomenological details that will contribute to the current understanding of the dynamics of human reciprocity and achievement. These phenomenological details will enrich the landscape of the top-down collectivistic approach. Since these terms, top-down and bottom-up, are used quite frequently in the ensuing chapters, a quick explanation will be helpful. If a top-down approach is analogous to a general survey of a landscape, then a bottom-up perspective is understood as the details and nuances in that landscape. Though I emphasize a bottom-up, phenomenological perspective in this study, I also value the top-down approach. Both approaches capture different facets, provide different descriptions, and enrich the discussions about the related issues.

The Individualistic Model The individualistic model of achievement motivation was proposed by psychologist David McClelland and his colleagues. They conceptualized achievement motivation as a need for achievement (McClelland at al, 1953). They defined an achievement goal as "competition with some standards of excellence" (p. 110). These standards of excellence, presumably imposed by the culture or by parents as representative of the culture, imply an urge to compete with or to meet particular expectations. According to McClelland meeting the standards produces positive effects, while unsuccessful attempts to meet the standards elicit negative effects (p. 275). McClelland argued that the origins of achievement motivation lie in the stress placed on independence training by the culture or family in which a child is raised (1961). He presupposed that "autonomy" is a prerequisite to a person's healthy psychological functioning. A person's need for achievement, he posited, also refers to a person's incentive to excel in his or her own standard of excellence. Therefore, in addition to the influences of the culture and the socializing agents, the drive and motivation to achieve is intrinsic. That is to say, high achievers derive emotional satisfaction and reward from mastering and advancing one's own standard of excellence.

17 McClelland's emphasis on intrinsic motivation counters the common notion that the high achiever is driven to excel by external rewards, fame, and fortune. He argued that he chose not to develop a theory of motivation or a method of scoring for achievement motivation which would only apply to middle-class white American males. His theory, he stated, “is more general than that and should apply to children in all cultures" (1961, p. 289). This individualistic model of achievement, McClelland claimed, has universal validity. It is a paradigmatic model that harnesses an empirical method of verification in its ingenious and relentless search for objective indexes of human motive (LeVine, 1982).

The Collectivistic Explanation McClelland's theoretical framework and findings have encountered criticisms, especially his claim about the universality of the individualistic model. A common criticism seems to be that McClelland "over-generalizes western European and American psychological patterns as the only possible ones expressing need for achievement" (DeVos, 1973, p. 181). Various cross-cultural studies examining achievement motivation undermine McClelland's claim. The work of Caudill (1952), in his study of Japanese-American personality and acculturation, is a good case in point. Other large-scale studies, most notably by DeVos (1973) in Japan and Stevenson & Lee's (1990) study of Chinese communities, offer alternative explanations. These cross-cultural studies conclude that achievement motivation must be understood within the cultural contexts of the people being studied. DeVos (1973) found that Japanese individuals displayed a very high need for affiliation as well as a concern for nurturing and dependence. He challenged McClelland's claim of the universality in his psychological theory of achievement motivation explaining that Japanese people tend to feel a social sense of belonging as opposed to the self-reliance and individualism observable in American middleclass society. Other comparative cultural studies underscored other factors such as ethnicity and religion. Rosen (1959), comparing the ethnic variations in achievement from samples of Canadians, Italians, Greeks, Jews, Negroes, and white New England Protestants, concluded that class and ethnicity are more important than religious affiliations in explaining

18 observed differences. Antithetical to McClelland's individualistic and autonomous model of achievement motivation arose a collectivistic model which addresses the issues of achievement motivation.

A Collectivistic Model in Chinese-Related Contexts Asserting that achievement motivation must be understood within the cultural context of the achievers, studies of Chinese people found a motive of achievement that carries strong social significance. This emphasis on the social significance of culture is the antithesis of McClelland’s highly individualistic understanding. These researchers, invoking Confucian values, implicated the role of Chinese culture, as well as parental belief, in explaining Chinese achievement motivation. Various studies have correlated traditional values with Chinese descendents' high educational attainment (see Cheung & Lau, 1985; Epstein, 1987; Hirata, 1975; Ho & Fong, 1990; Lee, 1989; Siu, 1993a, 1993b; Sue & Kitano, 1973). These values include filial piety, communitarianism, obedience, family pride, and the emphasis on effort over innate ability. In these studies, Chinese cultural traits, noticeably inspired by the Confucian belief in human malleability and selftransformation, were strongly associated with educational endeavors and values essential to self-cultivation (see Chen, 1981; Chen & Uttal, 1988; Hirata, 1975; Pang, 1990). These values are intertwined. The teaching of filial piety supports parental authority. Such authority is more easily exercised in a Chinese family setting (Ho, 1986; Hsu, 1985; Yang, 1986). Likewise, because obedience from children is culturally mandated, children are more likely to yield to their parents' or elders' demands for hard work. Parents invest considerable time monitoring their children's academic progress to ensure good results and to save face while maintaining family pride (Chen and Uttal, 1988; Sung, 1987; Tan, 1989). This cultural faith in collectivism is based on the agricultural economic worldview and the Confucian ideal of an organismic unity. Yang Kuo Shu (1981, 1986), a notable social science scholar of indigenous Chinese, characterizes the five crucial attributes of the idealized Chinese social structure and functioning:

19 1. the hierarchical organization of social institutions; 2. the collective functioning of social and cultural orientation (individual submission to family, group, or other collectives in social functioning); 3 . generalized familization (the family serving as a general model for the organization and functioning of social groups); 4 . structural tightness (social roles and their relationships being highly rigid in their prescriptions and enactment); and 5. social homogeneity (social norms stressing local uniformity rather than diversity).

The New Crossroad: Collectivity and SocioCentrism Though it is generally understood and accepted that the emphasis on collectivity and socio-centrism explains Chinese motivation, a more detailed specification of how the two are interrelated is not usually given. The Chinese collectivist and socio-centric national character grew out of the ideal of the ancient agricultural social orientation (Chao, 1983; Hsu, 1985; Lau, 1992). Collectivism and socio-centrism, so defined, imply that individual interests are generally subordinated to the good of the collectivity (Hui, 1988; Leung & Bond, 1984). While these discussions are valuable, I would suggest that the collectivistic and socio-centric models still lean toward individual motivation as a direct and traceable reproduction of social and cultural traits. Based on linear causality, the analysis presents a collectivistic and socio-centric model of Chinese motivation and suggests a high degree of psychological sharing within the ethnic group (Ho, 1986; Lau, 1992; Leung & Bond, 1984; Lopez, 1990; Yang, 1986). Similar to more super-organic and deterministic definitions of culture, the top-down cultural analysis of Chinese achievement motivation travels along two routes. First, insofar as it operates as a unidirectional analysis, Chinese motivation is directly precipitated by a long Chinese cultural heritage. The quotation of classical dictums, which together compose an ideal, takes the place of actual instances in which this heritage is elaborated upon and/or contested. Second, this kind of analysis tends to discuss the transmission of cultural values as a larger group process, overlooking the issue of more particular trans-

20 generational interaction where individual psychological processes act to shape and redefine these values. This kind of analysis sometimes skims traditional Chinese cultural values and describes the social character of Chinese-Americans in similarly monolithic terms (Tong, 1971; Takagi, 1973). Therefore, it is often believed that the concepts of independence and individualism, strongly emphasized and highly valued in American culture, have relatively little meaning for Chinese families socialized in a traditional manner that stresses interdependence and affiliation (Hsu, 1985). But Fei (1948), for example, has reminded us that the Chinese also desire and treasure personal rights and interests. Feather (1986) and Lau (1992) also highlighted the fact that Chinese desire individualistic goals such as autonomy, independence, self-respect, and accomplishment. And like westerners, they react against restrictive control and domination. Furthermore, Lau (1992) emphasized the need to distinguish between Chinese wishes on the one hand and behavior on the other. He argues: Chinese are not necessarily more collectivistic; they have to behave like this as it is a fact of life in a collective society. Chinese are individualistic and collectivistic. They have individualistic wishes, and collectivism is a means to fulfill those wishes in a collective society. (p.366) Often, Chinese achievement motivation in such contexts is described in group terms having to do with "national character" and/or with a paradigmatic mode of thought. This simple causality cannot handle complex phenomena such as the issue of motivational dynamics. For example, the Chinese self, within such categorical and paradigmatic characterizations, is often described as unindividuated in contrast to the western individuated self (Marsella, 1985; Hsu, 1985). Laying the groundwork for thinking about Chinese motivation, Ho (1979, 1986) and Yang (1986) assert that members of a Chinese group are expected to subjugate their own inclinations to group requirements, even to make personal sacrifices in the interest of the group. If cooperative efforts toward achieving collective goals are emphasized more than individual competitiveness, then achievement or motivation solely for individual purposes is seen as selfish in the Chinese context

21 (Ho, 1986; Hsu, 1985). Indeed, the word referring to self [si] is also related to words that mean "selfish."

Beyond the Individualistic and Collectivistic Dichotomy I am not espousing individualism over collectivism. It is also clear that I am against the understanding of human action and motivation as merely a replication of culture. Free-flow individualism bestows a kind of romanticism on individual agency with unbound freedom to assert or interpret itself and its motivations as it pleases, whereas cultural determinism renders human beings cultural robots. Instead, I am proposing a cultural analysis supported by ethnographic details, bottom-up individual evidence, and an understanding of the meanings behind this individual behavior. Suarez-Orozco (1989), in a cross-cultural study of Central American immigrants, surpassed the dichotomous discourse of achievement motivation. He explored the contextual and contingent factors that fueled the individual motivational dynamics of his immigrant informants. He was sensitive to aspects of socio-cultural and political situatedness. He examined how these aspects shaped the dreams of Central American immigrants: "to become somebody through hard work and study, flourished in a specific cluster of social perceptions and interpersonal concerns" (p. 143). His inquiry moved the question of achievement motivation beyond rigid bipolarized models. By examining how motivational dynamics are embedded in a "socio-cultural matrix of family and community cooperation, affiliation, and mutual nurturance," Suarez-Orozco broadened the dichotomous individualistic-collectivistic vision (p. 158). He emphasized family dynamics that foster a high need for achievement. Driven by their desire to help others (for example, their relatives in Central America), the immigrant children he studied strove to achieve. Their motivation to achieve is driven by their underlying feelings of guilt for the opportunity many others did not have to leave Central America, as well as by the knowledge that one or both parents struggle to keep their family safe in the United States. Likewise, Sung (1983) and Siu (1993a, 1993b), studying immigrant children in Chinatown, emphasize socio-cultural and

22 historical factors. They underscore how these factors influence the adaptation process and hence the motivation dynamics of these children. Siu (1992) stresses how Chinese-Americans cope with both instrumental and expressive adaptation, noting that the coping strategies they employ are essential to understanding their achievement dynamics. For example, at the instrumental level, they adapt by adopting English and pursuing education as a means for economic advancement and social mobility.

Understanding Meanings of Achievement in the Context of Immigration Despite the controversies and disagreements about achievement motivation, the strengths and weaknesses of previous research has helped to shape and inform my work. These studies have provided insights from which subsequent researchers (like myself) can continue to deepen their understanding of achievement motivation. As a result of their insights, I adopted a reflexive attitude in my own field investigation. I became more attuned to the reality of how Chinese immigrants landed on American soil and to how they were motivated both by historical contingency and personal choice. Their east-west intercultural encounters suggest the vivid impact of "a particular worldview on anthropological conceptualizations of the self" (Wikan, 1995). Accordingly, this intercultural encounter has also impacted the individual and his/her active re-conceptualization and individual construction of meaning. I propose this to include, for example, that of parental authority, filial piety, family socialization, the virtues of communitarianism, obedience, and achievement motivation. The unique cross-cultural situation provides a venue to reflect on the broad strokes characterized by the top-down cultural perspective. This top-down cultural view of the collectivistic pattern of Chinese achievement motivation is based on important assumptions. It sees achievement motivation shaped by cultural heritage, and it emphasizes the transmission of cultural values as a group process. More importantly, it takes the notions of collectivism and socio-centrism as a given, and thereby, in linear logic extrapolates a collectivistic and socio-centric model of Chinese motivation (see Ho, 1986; Lau, 1992; Leung & Bond, 1984; Yang, 1986).

23 This deterministic view of culture, and its analysis of Chinese motivation, assumes a high degree of intra-cultural coherence within Chinese ethnic groups. Quite often Chinese achievement motivation viewed in this theoretical context is still embedded in group terms reminiscent of "national character". Though valuable in the sketch of the broader picture, this top-down view implies that individual motivation is a reproduction of social and cultural traits. This broad view does not attend to local issues. The specifications between how culture actually interplays with an individual’s motivational drive are not systematically addressed. The top-down approach, lacking detailed phenomenological accounts, has yet to show how the descriptions of collectivity and socio-centrism – whether as "knowledge system" (Lutz, 1988) or as "cultural model" (Holland & Quinn, 1987) – are psychologically meaningful to, personally experienced, or creatively interpreted by members of present-day Chinese communities. Thus the restructuring and the deepening of their cultural knowledge, the intersection of individual biographies, the underlying motivational striving, along with ethnic identity and collective histories all play a part in the processes and experiences by which the individual comes to formulate his or her own concept of self. Understanding different underlying motivational constructs that emerge from this cross-cultural perspective entails knowledge of the complex ways in which individuals interpret their worlds and how researchers interpret these acts of interpretation. I realize that my informants, who were caught in the dilemmas of resettlement, could not always rely on the previous cultural support provided by tradition and rules of everyday life in their homeland. The impact of a new worldview in this cross-cultural setting combined with economic, language, and problems of subsistence have drastically altered their conceptualizations of family socialization, of self, and particularly, of meanings of achievement motivation in a world of "urgency and necessity" (Bourdieu, 1990; Wikan, 1995). But in other instances, they re-discovered the beauty and wisdom of the cultural teachings they had previously taken for granted. By now it should be clear that in order to grasp the contextual motivational dynamic, a top-down descriptio
n of a general cultural landscape needs to be supplemented by a bottom-up view. Thus, I am inclined to adopt a dialogical approach. I believe that it is through a dialectical process of looking outward to existing theoretical frameworks on the one hand, and taking a candid look inward at the

24 personal construction of achievement motivation on the other hand, that we may find ways to adequately address the issue of continuity and discontinuity of cultural tradition in conjunction with individual motivation. While appreciating the characterization of the Chinese motivational pattern as collectivistic and western motivational dynamics as individualistic, I recognize the limits of such views. Different realms of human experience inform each other in the complicated interplay between culture and individual achievement motivation. I agree with Wikan (1995), that as we attend to the real individuals we study—listening to and observing their conditions and lived experiences—these individuals will show us that when their "lives shift," we as researchers shift with them.

CHAPTER 3

Chinese Immigration to the United States

Our ancestors were sold and came here as cheap laborers, or you can also say that they were slaves. They dreamed of saving enough money or gold to redeem themselves. They waited to pack and, with money, return home, for good! For me, it is quite a different story. I was voluntarily smuggled here. -Mr. Chang

A Long Journey To grasp the profound meanings expressed by Mr. Chang and the other informants in my study, it is essential that I present a broad overview of Chinese immigration history in the United States. This chapter intends to trace the extent to which the Chinese, during the last two centuries, have been entering this "land of opportunity", under different historical and socio-political circumstances. This review will also set the scene for understanding the contemporary socio-political reality of Chinese communities in this country. This will help us appreciate the long journey the Chinese-American community has traveled, and how this journey gradually diversified the make-up of a community often and easily misunderstood as monolithic in nature.

25

26

Revisiting Chinese Immigration History in the United States In the 1850's, Chinese workers predominantly from southern China played a role in America's social development, mostly in terms of joining its labor force. Partly because of the California gold rush, but mostly compelled by domestic unrest and poverty in mainland China, the influx of Chinese laborers to California and elsewhere continued to grow. The first wave of Chinese immigrants was mostly composed of peasants who were recruited by American businesses to work as contract laborers. These sojourners were drawn here by an alternative to wage labor in the mainstream labor market (Portes, 1992). They worked as miners, railroad builders, farmers, and factory workers. Although Chinese workers represented only one percent of California's total population, by 1870 they represented twenty percent of that state's labor force (Siu, 1992, 1993a, 1993b; Takaki, 1973, 1989; Wang, 1991;). The California depression of 1876, however, altered the fate of these Chinese laborers. During this time American tolerance for Chinese immigrants diminished. In the “pleasant days” of good economy, American laborers in the west were not feeling threatened by cheap, exploited Chinese laborers who were paid lower wages than the white workers. But during the depression, Chinese laborers became targets of attack. They were categorized as "yellow peril". White worker hostility toward the Chinese laborers surged with cries, “They’re taking away our jobs!" As the roar grew and the oppression of Chinese workers escalated, the violence and persecution against Chinese people increased. In 1879 President Rutherford Hayes located the "Chinese problem" within a larger context of race in America society. Hayes stated: The present Chinese invasion was pernicious and should be discouraged. Our experience in dealing with the weaker races – the Negroes and Indians – is not encouraging… I would consider with favor any suitable measures to discourage the Chinese from coming to our shore (see: Lyman, 1971, p. 175; Miller, 1969, p. 190; Takaki, 1989, p.103).

27 The "Chinese Problem" persisted and in 1882 anti-Chinese immigration legislation was enforced that lasted for the next six decades (Takaki, 1989, 1993). In the following pages, I will briefly discuss three U.S. politicalhistorical periods that epitomize the Chinese-American ethnic odyssey, and reflect on the discriminatory policies the U.S. Government used against immigrant Chinese as well as against other immigrant populations. I identify and refer to these periods according to their legislative names. For example, there is the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943); the Exclusion Act Repeal (1943 - 1965); and the Post Nationality Act Amendments (1965 - present). Chinese Exclusion Act Era (1882-1943) In 1882, the United States Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. This was the first U.S. law aimed at preventing immigration and the naturalization of Chinese immigrants. The efficacy of this act, fervently supported by many American "Chinese-must-go" sentiment, was reflected in numbers. Chinese people were denied immigration to the United States. Within the span of five years from 1882-1887, the number of Chinese who immigrated to the U.S. dropped from 39,500 to 10 (Siu, 1992; Takaki, 1989). Meanwhile, Japanese, Korean, and Indian workers who had been living throughout the U.S. were summoned to the west coast by industrialists in order to replace Chinese laborers in their factories. Because of the competition among the other Asian ethnic groups, Chinese laborers were no longer the only source of cheap labor. They experienced tremendous difficulty trying to keep their jobs. To recall, Chinese workers wanted to stay in the U.S. only long enough to earn a certain amount of money, and then to return to China with their wages. But very few of them managed to save enough money to return to China. The Chinese Exclusion Act not only excluded them from working in the U.S., it also stranded them in a foreign land with too little money to survive. New York companies needed cheap labor and were able to provide acceptable refuge for a proportion of workers. So many displaced workers fled to New York to escape xenophobic persecution in California. Some laborers even became small entrepreneurs themselves (Portes, 1992; Zhou, 1992). Since they could still not receive regular wages that Americans would get, some Chinese workers ventured, with the money they had saved, to open hand laundries and cheap

28 restaurants. The laundry business–until machinery was invented and laundromats developed–was the "backbone economy" in New York City’s Chinatown (Zhou, 1992). In 1920 about 37.5 percent of all Chinese workers were involved in laundry work (Chen, 1981) until this form of economic activity was replaced by the prevalent use of steam and machinery. At the time this way of making a living was an improvement from their lives in California. In 1924 federal legislation re-opened a small door. It was small enough only to allow – not laborers – but Chinese graduate students to pass through. This opened the way for highly educated and progressive Chinese to come to the United States. The Exclusion Act Repeal Era (1943 – 1965) World War II marked a new historical era for Chinese-Americans. U.S. Chinese immigrants experienced a more favorable social climate because anti-Asian sentiment moved from a dislike of Chinese immigrants toward a dislike of Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Meanwhile, Chinese-Americans counted on the U.S. government to reexamine its discriminatory policies toward them. The re-examination turned out to favor future Chinese immigration. It took three separate acts across ten years to repeal the Exclusion Act of 1882. In 1943, the Magnuson Act and in 1946, the War Brides Act made it possible for Chinese wives of U.S. citizens to enter the U.S. (Siu, 1992, p. 24). In 1953, the Refugee Relief Act passed in response to the Chinese communist regime that came to power in 1949, enabled mainland Chinese citizens to immigrate to the United States. By 1960 the Chinese population, rising to 237,000, had increased six fold from the time of the Exclusion Act of 1882 (Tsai, 1986). Betty Sung (1983), a sociologist and veteran social activist in New York’s Chinatown, vividly documents the consequences of the changes in the immigration laws. She makes insightful observations about the dilemma of well-educated, overseas Chinese students. Sung posits that although they were relatively few in number, these students added diversity to the former laboring class. They came to the U.S. seeking higher education immediately after World War II. Many of them aspired to assist in reconstructing their country after they had completed their academic training in the U.S. But Mao Zedong's victory over the Nationalist Government in 1949 altered their fate. These students forbidden by the U.S. government to return to China on the grounds that they had knowledge and skills that might be used

29 against the U.S., especially with the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 (Sung, 1983, p. 23). Once again the Chinese found themselves stranded in the United States. The 1950s invited a different socioeconomic group – the intelligentsia -– to join the ranks of Chinese living in the United States. Many former officials and people associated with the Nationalist Government who had fled to Taiwan eventually sought refuge in the United States (Sung, 1983). They were either granted political asylum or were permitted to enter or remain in this country under a number of Refugee Relief Acts enacted in 1953, 1957, and 1959 (Kung, 1962: 118-120; Sung, 1983, 24-25). This new social group and the stranded students "were of the educated or monied classes.” As such, they injected a new socioeconomic tier into the former laboring class. The Immigration Act of 1965 “further increased the ranks of the professionals and educated by granting them occupational preference" (Sung, 1983, p. 25). Post Nationality Act Amendments Era (1965 - Present) The Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. had a positive effect on immigration laws for Asians. The 1965 Immigration Law was nondiscriminatory and open to all Asians. It also fulfilled two objectives: to reunite families and to increase labor supply (Siu, 1992, p. 27). During the three-decade span between 1960 and 1990, the Chinese-American population increased approximately seven fold from 237,000 to 1.5 million (U.S. Census, 1991).

Contemporary Chinese-American Communities In recent years political changes in the Chinese world of east and Southeast Asia, combined with far-reaching changes in the American immigration laws, are greatly increasing immigration to the old traditional Chinatowns as well as the suburbs of the American east and west coast. The Chinese-American community today is the fastest growing Asian American community in the United States. Its population remains the largest of all Asian American communities (U.S. Census, 1996). There is great diversity within the Chinese community. Chinese immigrants come from diverse worlds, including: Taiwan, Hong Kong, and communities in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia,

30 Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand. In order to understand the increase in Chinese immigration and how it affects the demographic shift, it is important to understand the distinction between the generic category of Chinese and their geographical origins. In what follows, I will briefly describe the dynamics of emigration of three contemporary Chinese immigrant groups: those from mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They constitute the largest number of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. today. In the late 1950s and most noticeably in the mid 1960s, Red China had been experiencing tumultuous political change. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) is a case in point. It was a period that made emigration virtually impossible. The cold war between China and the western countries made it impossible for Chinese mainlanders to take advantage of the reformed U.S. immigration laws. However, entering a new economic and political era in the early 1980s, China gradually relaxed its laws regarding emigration and Chinese citizens began emigrating. In the second half of the 1980s, 93% (182,766 of the 196,413) of Chinese applicants approved to migrate to the U.S. did so for reasons of family unification (Zhou, 1992). In the case of Hong Kong immigrants to the U.S., there were various phases of emigration. The earliest one began when the Communist seized control over mainland China in 1949. The other large-scale emigration from Hong Kong to the U.S. occurred in the early 90s, due to the impending 1997 deadline for the British colony of Hong Kong to be transferred to the sovereignty of communist China. The event in and of itself created apprehension. It was intensified by the military crackdown on the student democracy movement of June 4, 1989. Before the crackdown, the Chinese government had attempted to assuage the political fear of Hong Kong people with regard to the transference of power by constantly reassuring the affluent Hong Kong islanders of their political autonomy. However, the military act exhibited by the Chinese government during the crackdown, shattered the political faith of Hong Kong people in the impending new political administration. Therefore, the early 1990s witnessed a more urgent rush of Hong Kong immigrants to the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Singapore—among whom are some of the "wealthiest, most talented, and best-educated" (Zhou, 1992, p. 72). But one year after the 1997 peaceful transition, Hong Kong witnessed increasing numbers of repatriates, especially those who had

31 been granted rightful citizenship by the respective countries that adopted them. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, Taiwanese immigration to the U.S. had developed a strong political undertone. The increasing tensions between a communist China and an affluent Taiwan, accompanied by bilateral, belligerent verbal exchanges and exhibitions of weaponry motivated Taiwanese migration. In the early 90s, when signs of war across the China Strait overshadowed mere military rhetoric, migration especially increased. Because of the spectacular economic development in Taiwan, most noticeably in electronic technologies and finance, in the last two decades Taiwanese immigrants to the U.S. reflect an immigrant group with conspicuous financial resources. Both the wealthy Hong Kong people and Taiwanese settle mostly in affluent U.S. suburbs.

The Bipolarity in Chinese-American Communities As a result of the apparent changes in Chinese immigration to the U.S., the structures of the Chinese-American communities and the proportion of American-born Chinese to overseas born-Chinese has changed dramatically. In the 1960's, the ratio of domestic versus overseas Chinese was six to four. By 1980, the ratio reversed (Takaki, 1989, p. 421). This demographic make-up characterizes the Chinese population in America today as primarily an immigrant community (Siu, 1992, p. 28). Today, there is a prevalent cultural “stereotype that characterizes Chinese-Americans as both over-achievers and the model minority. Whether or not this is a fair characterization is a complicated issue, beyond the scope of this chapter. But the stereotype highlights a subtle scene of the immigration selection process. It also captures a sociopolitical dynamic that was predominantly different from the historical climate of the previous century. It is a new scene of "brains" replacing "brawn,” considering the stark contrast between the historical "yellow peril" and the contemporary portrayal of “the model minority". However, this rosy stereotype that characterizes the success story of Chinese-Americans

32 and highly educated immigrants could easily gloss over the social reality of another group of hard-pressed Chinese immigrants. Beyond the surface perception that there is a high degree of commonality among the Chinese communities in the U.S., there are other facades that reveal their intra-cultural heterogeneity. For example, the recent rapid influx of newly arrived Chinese immigrants from various social, intellectual, political, and financial backgrounds has created a unique demographic shift, resulting in the emergence of two distinct social groups within the Chinese-American community: the privileged uptown Chinese and the less affluent downtown Chinese (Siu, 1992; Sung, 1987). Though this bipolar characterization, some might argue, creates another stereotype, it does reflect differences of strength in each group's economic viability and place within the larger culture. The "uptown Chinese," mostly professionals, constitute more than 45 percent of the Chinese-American population (Hu, 1989; Kwong 1987). This group is mostly made up of people from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Also making their way up the professional ladder in the uptown group are mainland Chinese, intellectual elites who attended American graduate schools in the 1980s. Uptown Chinese people tend to live in suburbia, are highly educated, and enjoy higher incomes than the national average among both Americans and Chinese-Americans. The "downtown Chinese," mostly manual and service workers – recent immigrants or old settlers – constitute another 40 percent of the Chinese-American population. This group, predominantly from the southern coast of China, lives in Chinatowns and tends to be deficient in English with little education. Seventy-one point four percent of the Chinese-Americans in this downtown group do not hold a high school diploma and 24.7 percent of them live below the poverty level (Kwong, 1987). This uptown/downtown bi-polarity reflects the reality that different Chinese-American communities with divergent cultural, educational, economic, and political resources have employed different strategies to mobilize their social capital. Similarly, different residential environments, income, and educational levels – all mediated by Chinese values and influenced by the surrounding non-Chinese environments – tend to lead toward diverse parenting strategies and family socialization practices, as well as individual interpretations of academic achievement motivation. In short, each community creates for itself a unique indigenous ethos.

33 In contrast to the "non-assimilable" stereotype their forebears had been assigned, Chinese in America today are viewed through a more positive racial stereotype, the "model minority" (Brand, 1987; Kasindorf, 1982). By the latter part of the twentieth century, the achievements of Chinese-Americans and other sectors of the AsianAmerican population in terms of their educational levels, occupational status, and income have come to be considered exemplary. This transformation from the once downtrodden underclass thought of as "the yellow peril" to the current model status has its complicated historical process. Chinese-Americans in the U.S. today have gradually assimilated into and been received by mainstream society. Previously relegated as incompatible with the "American character," Chinese cultural traits today are hailed in social and educational research (see Chen & Uttal, 1988; Domino & Hannah, 1989; Hess, Chen, & McDevitt, 1987). This research highlights the correlation between culture and achievement motivation: stating that Chinese culture traits instill in Chinese-Americans the orientation and the resources with which to excel. Their motivation, these studies suggest, is based on a collectivistic orientation, making it primarily socio-centric and group-oriented in nature.

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CHAPTER 4

From Process to Methods

The research relationship that you establish is often conceptualized as "gaining entry" to the setting or "establishing rapport" with the individuals that you study. I think these are misleading ways of thinking about this aspect of your research… Viewing this process as "negotiating entry" (Marshal & Rossman, 1989) or "gaining access" (Bogdan & Biklen, 1992; Gleane & Peshkin, 1992) has a number of drawbacks. First, it implies that it is a single event, that once "achieved," requires no further thought, and downplays the continual negotiation and renegotiation of your relationship with those you study. (Maxwell; 1996, p. 66) While attending graduate school I volunteered in Boston's Chinatown community. On Saturdays I taught conversational English to a group of recently arrived immigrants – Chinese men and women mostly over the age of 45 – who were anxious about their English proficiency. All of my students, except for one Vietnamese person, were from the southern provinces of mainland China. Due to the dialects, I had difficulty finding a common language in which to conduct the lessons. Fortunately, I was raised in various ethnic communities in Singapore that equipped me with a wealth of Chinese language skills. In the end, the class was conducted in Mandarin, the predominant language spoken in China, with occasional references in Cantonese which is the preferred dialect in Guangzhou and is also another dialect of southern China, Caozhou. It was a difficult and tiring exercise. Each three-hour lesson left me exhausted. My students, however, rewarded me with parcels of Chinese 35

36 food prepared in their homes. On a small scale, this language exchange for food exemplifies the give-and-take that came to characterize our relationship during the months we studied together and in subsequent months, when another batch of students formed a new class. O u r association outside the classroom enabled us to develop a relationship that was not limited by my role as teacher nor theirs as students. Community events, as well as at-home gatherings of newly-arrived immigrants, provided a neutral forum for us to talk in a casual setting about the strain of adapting to the demands of a new environment. Sometimes they asked for my help. As our interactions increased, so too did my responsibilities. I found myself being consulted on matters such as the education of their children, health care, and employment. In addition, I translated and explained the English documents they had received from government agencies. On their behalf I negotiated with utility companies when billing discrepancies arose. In three instances I served as their translator in court and in other settings pertaining to legal matters. At times, however, I was unable to comply. Although I usually tried to honor their requests, sometimes I refused. This was usually because the request involved taking risks that might prove detrimental both to them and to me. Typically those risks involved something having to do with improving their children's educational opportunities. The nuances of what is held to be legal are as different in the U.S. than it is in mainland China, as is the dynamics of interpersonal relationships. This awareness inspired my research. My hands-on involvement with the lives of these immigrants helped to foster an understanding of how newly arrived persons with a Chinese background constructed meaning. To refer back to an episode related in Chapter 1, my struggle to comfort a potential suicide victim was a lesson in how I might best attend to the anxiety and disorientation experienced by immigrants. That concrete experience gave rise to the notion of wholeness, to a holistic engagement with everyday emotional turmoil. The complexity of conventional methodologies that address meaning making had me grappling with some fundamental research issues, particularly with the matter of interpretation. Only after two years was I sufficiently comfortable with these issues to officially propose my research topic to the dissertation committee. Since I was extremely familiar with my research site, I decided to begin the search for participants by word of mouth, starting from my

37 students and from those whom I had met in the community. As time went by, my role in the community gradually changed from that of a teacher to that of a social researcher. Thus I had already immersed myself in my research site when my topic gained the approval of the dissertation committee. The formal step of "negotiating entry" into the research site was unnecessary. To my mind, the task of evaluating my new "role" as "investigator" would be a "continual negotiation and renegotiation" of my relationship with each research participant (Maxwell, 1996). The relationship I enjoyed with these families helped my informants accept and trust me. Our shared experiences, and the dynamics of our previous interactions, were positive forces in building trust and responsibility. Also, by virtue of having close relationships with my informants prior to our interviews, I was privy to insights and information that would have been less readily communicated to another researcher. When I first toyed with the idea of focusing my dissertation study on the experience of immigration, I asked my former students and other friends from the Chinatown community on the idea. They encouraged me and added that it would be a meaningful yuyiyideshi [project].

The Four-Family Study I began my work intending to study eight immigrant families. In case some of them changed their minds, I approached more than ten families. I soon realized, however, that the problem lay not in approaching many families but in asking them to make a commitment to my study. Financial factors, families moving out of the area due to a lack of adequate employment, for example, presented the problem of attrition. The sensitive nature of my inquiry, asking people to reflect upon and talk about painful experiences (many of which they were still undergoing), presented problems in participant recruitment. At one point a man I had met in a Chinese Church agreed to participate. After I had already begun to interview him, he requested to withdraw. He was troubled by the difficulty he was having securing a job and maintaining a regular income to support his family. Our interviews had the unfortunate effect of stirring up tumultuous feelings that grew worse with subsequent reflections. I respected his decision to withdraw in spite of the substantive data his story revealed. Later, perhaps in an effort to repay my kindness towards his family, he volunteered to participate once again, this time with his family.

38 Eventually I accepted the uncertainty and reality of field investigation. My sampling procedure was not statistically random. As is true in most anthropological and ethnographic work, the availability and willingness of the informants determined the amount of participants. Hence, a small number of families participated in this study (Suarez-Orozco, 1989). In the end I settled on four families of informants. One family resulted from the situation described above. Two other families were referred to me by students and friends, and the fourth family was referred to me by a former student. Working with just four families allowed me to place an emphasis on meaning-making processes. It was essential to focus in-depth on many details. It is worth noting that my respondents were not simply "four families." They were also thirteen individuals, each with his or her habits of meaning making and with an individual perspective on the immigrant experience. I hope to compensate for the narrow breadth of my study with depth. These narratives have offered rich accounts of personal experiences that could not have been explored with such attention had the pool of informants been larger. As in numerous anthropological or ethnographic studies that draw on in-depth materials provided by particular informants, I believe my study can attain a deeper understanding of the cross-cultural mind at a particular place and in a particular setting.

Data Collection My data collection derived mostly from the rich narratives and dialogues of my informants. I had a particular eye out for remarks or thoughts which disclosed how making and remaking the meanings of achievement function in a cross-cultural environment. Each interview was at least 30 minutes, with some lasting over an hour and a half. I conducted at least one interview with all the thirteen informants. There were four individuals, however, who were more readily available. I interviewed them at least three times. I managed to conduct three dyadic interviews (two mother-daughter sessions, and one father-daughter session), and chose to tailor my initial plan to hold one “focus group” interview with each of the four families so as to include these valuable dyadic conversations. The situation with two working parents who often relied on last-minute changes, prevented the presence of both parents at a single interview. Further, through

39 individual interviews, I was able to recognize the interpersonal tensions within these families. I was worried about the downside of interviewing parents and children together. But since these were dyadic interviews, the dynamics allowed the interviewees to express themselves and their experiences and feelings freely. They revealed things that they would not have normally spoken to each other about. For example, in an emotionally intense situation, a father suddenly sobbed convulsively. His daughter, who felt her father was an emotionally restrained person void of feelings, began to cry along with him. She gave me a handmade card a week later thanking me for arranging an interview of this sort since, as she wrote, “I did not know that my father had tears." I became more relaxed as an interviewer and learned to balance structure with flexibility, to encompass spontaneous opportunities, and to follow unanticipated paths of human relatedness in delicate interviewing settings. All the interviews were extemporaneous in nature. At first I thought of beginning with structured interviews, planning to raise questions I had thought important to their crosscultural adaptation. After the first interview had begun, however, I found that some of my questions were not well suited to my informants’ concerns. So I started to improvise questions based on their disclosures. I let them lead the discussion when and where they wished, while at the same time gently orienting their comments toward my interest in cross-cultural resettlement. The informal atmosphere of the interviews promoted responses that were narrative rather than categorical. I believe that my flexibility has proven crucial to my success in encouraging my respondents to reveal their meanings of achievement. I listened to their stories with great enthusiasm. Many of them began to enjoy the interview and told me later that they enjoyed simply being heard. They also teased themselves for being drawn into talking so much. At least three adults claimed that at first they thought of my academic interest as a waste of time. They gradually changed their opinion and told me that I was conducting meaningful work. "Ze shi hen you yi yi de gong zou” [This is a work of significance]. One father and mother acknowledged that they had experienced acute loneliness and lacked companionship. They told me they looked forward to and enjoyed the interview opportunities with me. An adult male informant replaced the technical research term chi fang [interview], with a Chinese concept, tan xing shi [speaking hearty matters].

40 I did not collect my data solely through scheduled interviews. The other roles I played in the lives of my respondents sometimes prompted them to telephone me in order to talk about their difficulties. A few times, in the context of a long telephone conversation, my study took a new turn, encouraging me to probe into deeper issues I had overlooked. When I sought my informants' permission to include "unsolicited materials", they agreed, remarking about how du shu ren [academics–and as they said it, it was uttered with a slant connoting, ‘book worm’] are so quiquizhizhi [rigid] and mafang [troublesome] in the research process. But there was a subtle message in their half mocking remarks. These respondents' comments about my "rigid" concern regarding logistic matters of research implied that they perceived their interaction with me as a landscape of human relationships – a setting larger than that of the context of research activities. Whereas I saw myself as an interviewer, a field researcher, a qualitative researcher with a phenomenological bend, they saw me differently. They received me as another human being, a friend, a teacher of Chinese descent of different "fate" from an affluent city-state of Singapore, and a "successful" and "intelligent" graduate student in a prestigious institution with a "bright" future. In some way, their more relaxed attitude and at times blunt and dry humor liberated me from a rigid view of conducting a research study. In my conversations with them, I began to grasp the full meaning of Bakhtin's (1986) statement that all inquiry and research is fundamentally conversation. I also appreciated the gist of Buber's (1937) notion of "I and thou", thus blurring the dichotomy of subject and object. While becoming personally attuned with my informants and their narratives, and drawing closer to their inner feelings, my inquiry did not necessarily become more subjective. After all, I was aware that I relied on their generosity and their fragments of narratives to gain understanding on matters related to my research. Reciprocally, as I came to believe that I was truly engaged in understanding their disclosures, they became more open and receptive to my inquiry. I am not claiming that my rapport with my respondents transformed me into a clairvoyant researcher capable of extracting information that surpassed the usual latitude of human perception. I did, however, sense that my getting in touch with these informants' inner feelings – feelings which I perceived to be valuable (crying or

41 laughing as they told me their stories) -- prompted me to reach deeper into their narratives.

Fragments of Narrative Disclosures This interpretive study is not designed to sketch the universal laws of human motivation. Seemingly disjointed, these narratives are fraught with remembrances of cultural do’s and don’ts. My analysis depends on the narrative fragments of my informants, steeped though it is in issues of interpretation and problems of meanings. Each fragment took shape as part of a broader experience of life which was constantly being reshaped by the interplay and dynamic of intra-personal, interpersonal, and cultural experience, as well as by the urgencies and contingencies of everyday life. While each individual draws upon different symbolic resources, my respondents' recollections exist in a temporal flow that has them shifting between the past, present, and future. Thus, even though these memories and symbols do not necessarily occur in chronological order, that is, they do not compose neat spatial patterns, they provide a way for my informants to reflect and draw upon and construct meaning. I searched for a more holistic framework that would include issues of time and space in particular ways. With respect to time, for example, that this study occurs in the 1990s provides a point of anchorage and of continuity for my informants' lives. With respect to space, the social reality of the Boston Chinatown, and in particular, the low-income neighborhood where my informants live, ground my abstract questions in a specific environment. It is more difficult to understand these immigrants as fusing different temporalities than to examine them as though frozen in a static and discrete time frame. The aim of this study is to explore how these immigrants suspend themselves in webs of significance they themselves have spun, and how spinning these crosscultural webs enrich their meanings of achievement. The fragments I have chosen to include in this paper are my respondents’ disclosures. They underscore the irreducibly rich, complicated, and at times conflicting dimensions of a genuine human condition. They divulge the nuance of human relatedness. But they are also at times too fanciful, implying too many things, posing too difficult a task for a "right" interpretation. My focus is on how their narratives convey shades of human relatedness that affect the creative act of meaning making. Taking a closer look at this process, I reflected

42 on the sort of interpretive issues that arise in the field. In order to grasp the nuances of merging understandings I also need to improvise and be willing to use a new and different perspective.

Developing a Narrative Framework My inquiry, based on an effort to capture how my informants construct meaning in concrete socio-cultural contexts, required me to study the narratives in complex ways; sorting out the many layers intertwined within a process of meaning making. It began with discerning frameworks of mediated meaning structures — knowing how and why, at a specific time and place, under certain circumstances, meaning making was taking place. Such a process is not linear, but rather irregular and inexplicit. Geertz (1973) characterized this sort of interpretive enterprise as an entanglement of complex conceptual frameworks, many of them superimposed upon or interlocked on one another. Phenomenological and hermeneutical principles became increasingly relevant as I tried to wrestle with my informants' multifaceted meanings of achievement. To explore how my informants’ intra-personal motivations were fueled by their “outworld” (the interpersonal dynamics and the patterns of family socialization), the larger psycho-cultural climate, historical and political experiences, as well as their cross-cultural adaptation experiences, had to be taking into account. As I was wrestling with the issue of public/private or outer/inner, I found Alfred Schutz's The Phenomenology of the Social World (1967) relevant. Schutz’s work highlights the use of objectivity and subjectivity to study people. Influenced by Max Weber, he stressed that if the subjective side of the person is left out of the investigative process, then the researcher does not have access to the personal meaning and motivation which creates the human action. Phenomenological/Hermeneutical Inquiry A major tenet of phenomenology is that human experience is not a set of unrelated activities, but rather a constituted, meaningful, and ordered

43 understanding of the understanding (Polkinghorne, 1983, 1988). Phenomenological inquiry elects to follow the threads of personal experiences and meanings, emphasizing the subjectivity of experience. It extends the realm of shared meanings and confronts how subjective meanings interact dialectically with the public aspect of shared meanings. The intent of phenomenological inquiry, then, aims at providing a descriptive analysis of the objective world as it appears to the subject. The central focus is on the "life-world" that is, on human experience as it is lived. The concept of 'hermeneutic circle' lent further depth to my interpretation. First formulated by the German theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and later expounded upon by German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer, the concept of the hermeneutic circle highlights the relation between parts and whole. It stresses that a part of something is best conceived in relation to the whole, or vice versa, and that grasping and constructing meaning is an ongoing adjustment between the part and the whole. The hermeneutic circle has been integral to my challenge to grasp my informants' meaning-making processes, at the same time, integral to my ability to develop and formulate an interpretive strategy. The cultural and personal contours in my informants' narratives invite rigorous interpretation. The context within which they were constructed could not be ignored. The narrative fragments presented in subsequent chapters are the result of a rigorous process of re-casting and reordering the narratives and narrative fragments. The combined strength of phenomenology and hermeneutics emphasizes the centrality of the interplay between the individual agent and the respective socio-cultural context. In other words, I am aiming to address how different realms of experience engage the complicated interplay between culture and individual motivation. How do cultural teachings and values become psychologically meaningful to, as well as personally experienced and creatively interpreted by these narrators? Categorizing and Contextualizing Narrative Materials for Analysis According to Miles and Huberman (1994), data analysis is data reduction. My analysis certainly fits the description. I was compelled to reduce around 20 hours of taped interviews, observations, field notes, and analytic memos to a manageable size without losing the essence of my informants' experiences and meaning-making processes. Using the procedures and techniques of contextualization and categorization, I

44 searched for features linking clusters or chunks of data with each other. I sorted and organized these themes and patterns that emerged from the interview transcripts. The whole process of reducing the data and of categorizing and contextualizing the evidence, was much more involved and interactive than I had anticipated. The word "reducing" implies deleting or altering the shape of the evidence until it conforms to a preexistent framework. I was quite concerned about how best to reconstruct the phenomena within a larger cross-cultural context and how to best achieve a thematic coherence in a manner that would not sacrifice the complexity of achievement motivation and the construction of self. Related concerns included finding a way to effectively manage the myriad of data and develop analytical files for storage and retrieval. I also struggled with finding a way to describe my informants' narratives; studying how particular phenomena were constructed, within the context of cross-cultural resettlement. I chunked my worries into three categories and will address each one: categorization, contextualization, and validity. Categorizing analysis In identifying the common themes running through the interviews, I allotted several categories to organize and account for the data (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992; Miles & Huberman, 1994). Within the two days that followed each interview, I listened to the interview tapes to keep them fresh in my mind, writing down my observations, thoughts, and questions as I played and replayed them. I then transcribed the tapes and wrote reflective memos. Initially, I transcribed each interview in its entirely. But I later decided that this laborious task was not especially helpful to my inquiry. I therefore relied mostly on listening, transcribing only those sections which seemed central to my investigation. Next, with transcripts in hand, I listened to each tape again and read along with the transcript. This was an attempt to examine how narratives give clues to the continuity and discontinuity of the story line – including the emotional overtones of the narrators – and how they fit into the larger picture of cultural resettlement. As my observations and reflective memos accumulated, I systematically expanded them into respective files identifying recurring themes. Having named these themes, I examined how they revealed the making and remaking of meanings of achievement. Once I had brought each interview under this scrutiny, I assembled all the emerging themes

45 and compiled them. As sufficient details from the thematic structures revealed the meanings of achievement motivation that undergirded my informants' meaning-making processes, I further examined and selected those meanings that were most salient to my informants' accounts, particularly those meanings that also reflected the reciprocal parentchild relationships. Finally, I discerned the patterns among the phenomena under study and rethought the relationships among them. Contextualizing the Narratives As I organized and analyzed my data, the overlap between categorization and contextualization began to emerge more distinctively, particularly during the last two steps of categorization. These final two steps – finding a way to reconstruct the phenomena within a larger cross-cultural context while achieving a thematic coherence – required me to be patient and sensitive, constantly refining the interplay between the two tasks. Of course, these two steps were not chronological events. I accomplished them simultaneously, each task mutually reinforcing the other. Although the process of categorization gave clues about common themes that emerged across interviews, it was the process of contextualization that enabled me to perceive the connections between the categories and the context in which they emerged. Contextual analysis left the transcripts of the interviews intact. It was better to highlight the narratives’ structural connections within a particular informant's story. I resorted to narrative summaries to remind me how various themes, derived from categorical analyses, were indeed experientially and temporally connected to the lived experience of an individual informant. But I had to resist against pigeonholing these types of experiences. Thus I contextualized the narratives of each informant's life story (or stories), which also helped me to view a more holistic picture of the data and to preserve the narratives in their natural state.

Validity: Threats to Interpretation and Researcher's Bias The interpretive study of culture represents an attempt to come to terms with the diversity of the ways human beings construct their lives in the act of leading them...it is to steer between

46 over interpretation and under interpretation, reading more into things than reason permits, and less into them than it demands. (Geertz: 1983, p.16) My focus on the process of meaning making, which was first constituted within the frame of meaning from my Chinese informants and then reinterpreted by me, entailed complex interpretation or double hermeneutics (Giddens 1976). This process of double interpretation, blending together the consciousness of the research with the experiences of the informants, often reaches a stage where it is very difficult to disentangle them. Cautious of threats to interpretation and of my researcher bias, I knew I needed, from the outset, to conscientiously question my own understandings and attempts to suspend my prejudices. The personal stories of these informants would not emerge if I imposed my own preconceptions or constructs. The task, as Winch (1964) points out, is to make room to accommodate the experiences of my informants as I entered into a dialectical relationship with them. I reduced the risk of "chance associations" and "systematic biases" by feeding back my interpretation to the informants, so as to confirm or disconfirm my findings. I then understood what role my subjectivity as researcher played in the process of enquiry. This subjectivity had to be clearly defined. In doing so, I attempted to locate my inquiry within a sociological point of view (Hamel, 1993). I perceived my subjectivity as a strength. It sensitized me to understand how my informants were articulating their experiences. It also helped me perceive the emotional dimensions that were attached to their narratives. These were so compelling that they caused me to reflect on my relationship with my own parents, a reflective act which greatly enhanced my interpretation of the core of reciprocity and its impact on the cross-cultural lives of these immigrants. As this account is too subtle to be briefly delineated, I shall, in the Epilogue, present a more detailed discussion about how I grappled with the issue of researcher subjectivity.

CHAPTER 5

Family Profiles

The Confucian proposal that we begin our spiritual journey at home is based on the strong belief that our self, far from being an isolated individuality, is experientially and practically at the center of relationships (Tu, 1993, p.143). I now intend to set the immigrant families I have studied in the larger context of their family histories, briefly describing their previous sociopolitical experience and cross-cultural circumstances. Three of the four immigrant families whom I interviewed came to the U.S. under the Post Nationality Act Amendments. I include accounts related to why these families wanted to leave their homeland and to how their arrival in a new social environment placed them face to face with the issues of employment and financial constraints. What I have excerpted depicts a family unit sustained by mutual bonds overcoming material hindrances. In this shared process, they generated energy together and confronted the demands of cross-cultural resettlement. In dealing with mundane issues – language barrier, education, and employment – religious and spiritual matters become especially significant to some of these family members. In general, these brief family profiles are a prelude to the fuller description of the reciprocal dynamics and subtleties of the parent-child relationship that will form the next chapter. The four families in this study are the Hos, the Kungs, the Tins, and the Changs. They all migrated to the United States between 1990 and 1994. The immigrant families in my study were able to come to the U.S. because of the family reunification preference system (discussed in Chapter 2) instituted by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. The first three families consist of three members (a father, a mother, and one child) and the fourth family has four members (a father, a mother, and two children), for a total of thirteen informants. 47

48 The stated age of these immigrants corresponds to the year of their arrival. I resort to this way of reporting their age because it makes it easier for me and for the readers to follow the developmental path of these families.

The Tins In 1984, Mrs. Tin's brother, who had already established citizenship in the U.S., made an application for Mrs. Tin, her husband, and her daughter to migrate to the United States. Late in the 1980s, American and Chinese authorities approved their immigration to the United States. In 1990, nearly six years from the date of their first application, the Tin family, Mr. Tin (53), Mrs. Tin (52), and their daughter, Zheng (12) landed on U.S. soil, making their first American home in New York City. The method the Tins employed in order to obtain legal permission to come to this land reveals an interesting chain of social and immigration networking. Mrs. Tin's brother's immigration to this land was associated with his wife's parents, who themselves had connections which led to their migration. The Tin family's emigration to the U.S.– as well as that of two other informant families – reflected a scenario of recent waves of Chinese immigration. The immigration marked a phase where the kinship structure of the population was broadening its base. Sung (1983) observed, "not only vertically but also horizontally to include brothers and sisters, who may also be aunts and uncles to other members of the family" (p. 25). This type of social network was important to the Tins and to other immigrant families, especially upon their initial arrival to the Unied States. They relied on these social ties to assist their transition to a foreign environment. In China, Mr. Tin had been a physician who practiced both Chinese medicine and qigong therapy [a traditional art of breathing exercises that restores physical and mental harmony]. However, his lack of a license to practice medicine in the U.S. limited his career options in America. Thus, he and his wife both worked long hours at several menial jobs. He was a janitor in a Chinese restaurant and she was a worker in a garment factory. They realized that they had very little time to take proper care of their daughter. She was therefore sent to Connecticut to live with relatives. Some relatives urged Mr. Tin to practice the Chinese arts of healing again while other relatives discouraged him. They told him

49 about the power and control of secret societies in Chinatown. They explained how these secret societies extorted "high protection fees" from businesses in Chinatown. After much deliberation, he decided not to practice medicine partly because of the secret societies, but also because he did not wish to incur the hostility from the established Chinese practitioners. One year after their arrival in New York City, the Tins were invited to come and stay with still other relatives of the Tin family. This time it was in Boston. They promised to help find secure housing and employment. In 1992 Mr. and Mrs. Tin settled in Boston and sent for their daughter to join them. Once in Boston, Mr. Tin began practicing Chinese healing on a freelance basis. However, demand for Chinese healers was low at the time. Ultimately he had to rely on his full time work as an assembly worker in an electronics plant for regular income. When the plant closed he applied for a job in the post office, “Unsuccessfully,” he said, “because my English was too poor." He began relying more on his freelancing work. On weekends he taught qigong as a physical form of self-cultivation. His reputation as a healer somehow spread to the suburbs. Successful Chinese professionals living in the suburbs began to seek him out. Eventually they even established a class dedicated to learning the art of qigong from him. Still, this source of income was not enough for his family to live upon. The employment situation for Mrs. Tin was more stable. In China she had been an accountant in a factory. Unfortunately, she could not do that in the United States because the accounting systems are significantly different. There were also certification requirements to be an accountant in the United States. In New York, she acquired a job in a garment factory. When she moved to Boston a relative helped her locate a job as an assembly line worker. The job strained her eyesight. When the factory closed down because of poor business, she was forced to search for a new job. Through a network of relatives, she secured a job performing miscellaneous chores in a beauty salon. The owner, also a Chinese woman, was happy with her work and diligence. At the time of the last interview with the Tin Family in 1997, Mrs. Tin had been employed at this salon for more than five years. For Zheng, life in America meant adjusting to a rather different set of experiences. Living as she was with affluent relatives in Connecticut, she enjoyed a more comfortable lifestyle than her parents

50 did. She ate a lot of meat, something she seldom consumed in China because it was quite expensive. Her initial struggles with speaking, reading, and writing English were mitigated by daily interaction with her American-born cousins. Hence, she acquired competence in the language fairly quickly. She studied hard and became a much more serious and superior student than she had been in China. Shortly after rejoining her family, Zheng was still feeling exhausted and "burnt out" from school in Connecticut. It was in a moment of exhaustion that she picked up a Buddhist book from her father's bookshelf and began to read. According to Zheng, that was when she realized that there was so much in the thought and rich teachings of quanying [a form of Buddhism]. At that moment, she suddenly realized that she had misspent fourteen years of her life. When Zheng was reunited with her family in Boston, she was noticeably heavier than she had been a year earlier. Her father attributed her weight gain to "too much meat." He told her she needed to eat less meat and to exercise her mind and body. The Tin family practiced zuozen [zen meditation]. In addition to this routine, Zheng, under her father's tutelage, picked up martial arts. She practiced Dayanqigong [Wild geese qigong, a nickname for a soft form of martial arts having 128 movements and emulating TaiJiChuan] and Zangzhuanggong [the most rudimentary form of Chinese martial arts with a focus on standing still with the utmost concentration and relaxation]. While zuozen is a sort of spiritual cultivation, the two forms of martial arts that Zheng practiced were meant to improve physical endurance. A brief family history Mr. and Mrs. Tin, both from educated families, grew up in a southern province of China. Prior to the Cultural Revolution Mr. Tin’s father, trained in western medicine and, fond of Chinese martial arts, was outspoken about his progressive ideas and beliefs. Well-respected in the community, he was a medical doctor and dean of a medical college. When Chinese communists took over in 1949, he still enjoyed that respect. But in the late 60s, a few years after the Cultural Revolution broke out, he and his family experienced a decline in community respect. "Things changed drastically," Mr. Tin remembered. People who respected him began to alienate him. Some even turned against him, accusing him of not conforming to the communist spirit. During those

51 years of ideological reform, Tin's father became a target of attack. He was sent to a rehabilitation camp. Shortly after he was released he became senile and then died. After witnessing his father's tragic life, Mr. Tin came to believe that as long as he lived in China, there would be no hope for his family or his daughter to thrive. For him, the past was painful, the future bleak, and the present suffocating. He thought about his daughter, her education, and her chance for a future. He was concerned that if China experienced another political movement, similar to the one he and his father endured, his daughter would be affected the same way. He began to view moving to the U.S. as a way to both prevent his daughter from experiencing the trauma he had and to give her educational opportunities not available to her in China. Mrs. Tin had comparable political memories like her husband. She too experienced the Cultural Revolution and its effects on her family. Communists severely criticized her father because he had previous alliances with KuoMingDang [the Nationalist Party]. She witnessed her father forcefully rehabilitated in order to correct what communists perceived as his "populated ideological mindset." Additionally, because they had relatives in Taiwan, the entire family was subjected to public reproach. My personal interactions with the Tins Because he was a practitioner and a teacher of the art of qigong, I addressed Mr. Tin as Tin Shifu [Master]. The implication of calling him Shifu has a strong overtone of respect and reverence. Shi means teacher and fu means father. Thus combined, calling a person Shifu implies the status of the master and teacher. I first met Mr. Tin when I came to his tiny apartment as a patient to be treated for back pain. Likewise, I addressed Mrs. Tin as Lin Shimu. Mu means mother. Addressing her as a shimu connotes a refined, social term of respect. During one of those visits I also met Zheng. She was a 14-year old high school student. Then, shy and restrained, she would at times ask my opinions about certain aspects of American culture. Gradually, when the purpose of my visit to the Tins went beyond merely receiving physical treatment, and because I had developed a close friendship with Mr. Tin, Zheng began to ask me in-depth questions more directly. She asked me to suggest books that capture the epitomized version of the culture and ethos of each of the eight universities that made up the Ivy

52 League. She asked for tips about how to study well and be a good student. Shortly before she took the SAT, she asked about things like what the minimum SAT score was to enter the "league” and she wanted to know whether I was proud of being a member of Harvard. Because Zheng's father refused to charge me for the back treatments (he believed that graduate students were poor), I repaid the family by buying books and audiotapes relevant to Zheng's college entrance examination. I also helped Zheng understand and complete the college application. I contacted my father in Singapore and related my experiences with the Tins. When I told my father about Mr. Tin's kindness, my father explained that I must reciprocate Tin's kindness. Mindful of Tin's Buddhist piety, my father purchased quality, Chinese mushrooms and air mailed them to me. The underlying cultural meaning of gift giving was deeply appreciated by the Tins. I believe through the sincere act of presenting the gift, I had conveyed to Mr. Tin my deep respect and appreciation for his kindness. Our relationship seemed to have deepened significantly since this subtle symbolic exchange. One time Mr. Tin told me that, had he not met me (a person of Chinese descent from Singapore whose political memory was so radically different from that of the Tins), he would not have revisited past events he tried hard to forget. He said elderly Chinese people who had gone through the ups and downs of the various political movements in China did not want to evoke those memories. This particular piece that Mr. Tin had disclosed to me was of great personal significance to me. It reminds me of the subtle and implicit interpersonal dynamics we had established, and how it shaped the latitude of his disclosures in our subsequent interviews. Because of this type of mutual understanding, I learned to listen for deeper meaning out from his experiences and disclosures. This sense of mutuality was also present in how I subsequently listened to Zheng, not only because of my positive rapport with her father, but also because of my newly acquired knowledge about her upbringing by her parents.

The Hos In 1991, Mr. and Mrs. Ho, both thirty-seven and their ten-year old son, Hongli migrated from a southern province in China. Like the Tins, a network of relatives facilitated their emigration. In the early 1980s, Mrs. Ho's sister had immigrated to the United States. Later she enabled

53 her father to immigrate. Her father then helped his other daughter, Mrs. Ho, and her family to immigrate to the United States. There are several distinct differences between the Ho family and the other families in this study. First of all, they are younger and consequently what they remember of the Cultural Revolution is from the perspective of a child. Secondly, Mr. and Mrs. Ho were not from highly educated and prominent families. They were from a workingclass background. In China, Mr. Ho became an automobile mechanic, while Mrs. Ho became a bookkeeper in a factory. To them, life in China was pingpingjingjing [rather stable and not too exciting]. My interviews with them were conducted in Cantonese which is the dialect spoken in the Guangdong Province from which they come. The initial months of their arrival to the U.S. were most difficult. Within an hour of arriving at Logan Airport, Mrs. Ho deeply regretted her decision. When her relatives picked them up from the airport and took them to Chinatown for dinner, Mrs. Ho looked around and thought, "Is this truly the place that we gave up all we have in Guangdong to settle here, a tiny and dirty Chinatown?" But Mrs. Ho was determined. With her keen mind and admirable practical bent, she refused to dwell on her disappointment. Three days after her arrival, though still regretting her emigration, she accepted a job in a laundromat in a working-class neighborhood of a suburb in the greater Boston area. The position had come to her attention through relatives and friends. Her motivation to learn English was so tenacious that, after a long day of working in a laundromat, keeping house, and tending to her son, she would review her English lessons before going to sleep. Mr. Ho's search for employment was not nearly as successful as his wife's. Indeed, it was several months before he finally began working part-time job at a grocery store in Chinatown. His diligence later earned him a full-time position. The next two years saw numerous moves in and out of Chinatown. They eventually settled in an apartment near the edge of Chinatown. Mr. and Mrs. Ho were then heavily reliant on Mrs. Ho's father, a widower living in community housing for elderly citizens, to see to it that Hongli was taken care of. At his grandfather's home, Hongli would do his schoolwork or watch television. Often, when Mrs. Ho returned to pick him up in late evening, Hongli had already fallen asleep. As a highly self-motivated and studious boy, he was finally admitted to a

54 competitive public school, a goal that he had set for himself. According to Mrs. Ho, he "over-demanded himself.” He consistently excelled in his school subjects. His diligence led to his being admitted to a selective public school, where he studied, in addition to his other courses, French and Latin. Now, in situations that require his parents to interact with English-speaking agencies, Hongli acts as interpreter on his parents’ behalf. During the seven years following their arrival, Mrs. Ho managed to save enough money to consider purchasing a house. Through her social network, she learned about foreclosed properties. The cost of remodeling houses inspired her to bid on a run-down house in a working class neighborhood in Boston. She secured a mortgage and hired a team of Chinese immigrant constructors. Not only did the Hos finally move into their own house, but they also rented a room to a mainland graduate student. Seven years later, Mr. Ho still works in the same store. He has thought of learning how to renovate houses, in part out of admiration for his friends who quit their grocery store jobs to become successful bidding small renovation projects. Mrs. Ho has encouraged him to do so, but because the long hours involved in that kind of pursuit might distract him from Hongli, he finally seems to have given up the idea. Mrs. Ho currently holds two jobs. During the weekdays, she manages a laundromat and on the weekends, she works in a Chinese restaurant. She is also undergoing training to become an insurance agent, targeting the untapped Chinese insurance market in Boston. She is an assertive person. She once remarked that the character of her husband is kind of too soft and too weak [ruo]. She often feels that she has to take control of big and small matters [daxiaoshiqing].

The Kungs Like the Hongs, the Kungs came to the United States through the efforts of a family network as tenuous as the Tin family story. In the late 1950s, Mr. Kung's aunt had settled in the United States. Twenty years later, when China resumed a diplomatic relationship with the west, she helped her sister move to the US, who, in turn, arranged for her son – my informant – and his family to emigrate from China twenty-two years later. In 1992 Mr. Kung still lived in a province of central China with his wife and daughter. He elected to take a leave of absence for a year from

55 his danwei [department] in the medical hospital where he worked. He set off as a visiting researcher to travel to prominent medical centers in Germany and Switzerland. He later came to Boston where he had the opportunity to visit his mother. The many "prosperous" educational opportunities available to students in Boston impressed him, as he had begun to think more about his daughter's future. His mother urged him to seriously consider transplanting his family to Boston. He agreed and she filed an immigration application for him and his family. By 1994 Mr. and Mrs. Kung, both forty-four years old, and their eighteen-year old daughter, Mei, landed on U.S. soil. A brief family history Before the communist takeover in 1949, Mr. Kung's father graduated from a medical college in Switzerland and set about becoming a famous physician. While he received an enticing offer to practice in a prestigious Hong Kong hospital, he decided instead to devote his expertise to the newly found communist China. Sentiments of patriotism [baoguo] had inflamed a group of brilliant young men who had studied at universities overseas. They were determined to bring about the convalescence of their country, allegedly the “sick man” of East Asia [Dongyiabinfu]. These young patriots were mindful of the collective history about the backwardness of their motherland because of foreign invasion and internal chaos. Mr. Kung's father was one such ambitious young man. In contrast to Tin Shifu, both Mr. and Mrs. Kung were reserved on this point and expressed their preference to not discuss the fate of Mr. Kung’s father during the Cultural Revolution. At first, my informant followed in his father's footsteps by attending medical college. But the Cultural Revolution interrupted his medical training. He was sent to work in a factory. After the Revolution, he returned to his studies, graduated, and began to practice as a doctor in one of the most prestigious hospitals in China. His outstanding performance qualified him to participate as a member in a select group of visiting researchers to West Germany. Mrs. Kung had studied economics and went on to become an assistant manager in a flourishing export company. She mentioned her professional experience in a newly established environmentally related firm in China. Since Mr. Kung devoted all his energy to his medical research and Mrs. Kung was career-oriented [shiyiaxinghengzhong], Mei, their daughter spent most of her time alone. By her own description, an introverted and independent child, Mei was self-

56 motivated. Mrs. Kung complained that Mei would have had a playmate [wanban] had she not been compelled by the mandatory one-child policy to have an abortion. Not the gregarious type, Mei confides in one or two close friends. She reads widely and excelled in school. Mr. and Mrs. Kung claim that when they were still struggling to come to a decision about emigration, it was Mei who was most excited with the prospect of studying in the U.S., a country she had read much of in books. While the Kungs' emigration held forth good opportunities for Mei's educational development, the outlook for Mr. and Mrs. Kung was not as promising. They had “anticipated obstacles,” they said. But the reality of the life that awaited these immigrants in the U.S. far exceeded their "mental preparation." They cited their ineptitude in English as the chief barrier to secure jobs that were not compatible with their professional experience. Mr. Kung started off working part-time as an assistant in the carpet division of a large department store, while attending English remedial classes five nights a week. A year later he obtained a full-time job as a clerk in a Chinese trading company. It was a social connection that provided him with the job. A relative who knew their plight was troubled at the thought of Mr. Kung working in the carpet division and resolved to tell him about any opportunities he came across. Needless to say, this clerical job was still not quite in keeping with his education and training, but he did feel more comfortable there among colleagues who spoke Chinese. Mrs. Kung first worked a morning shift as a personal attendant for a wealthy Chinese woman who needed special attention due to an injured spinal cord. At the same time she worked as a part-time receptionist in a non-profit Chinese community service agency. She then added a third job as a nighttime assistant comptroller at a bank. Although Mei was 18 years old and had nearly completed high school in China when she left for the U.S., her parents felt that she should attend American high school to improve her proficiency in English and to improve her chances for admission to college. However, she was not eligible to attend the highly selective public school preferred by her parents. They did not live in the right district. But once again the bonds of family prevailed. A close relative who happened to live in that particular district filed paperwork that attested to the fact that Mei lived in that district with her. Mei entered the school as a junior. She participated in community service activities, helping other recently emigrated adolescents adjust to life in the States. Two years

57 later she graduated from high school and won a full scholarship to attend a private institution in Boston. She moved out of her family's apartment and into a dorm. She has decided to major in business administration and information management science, since her parents persistently opposed her first choice, East Asian Studies. Things began to change for Mr. and Mrs. Kung thereafter. With Mei no longer living with them, they enjoyed a substantial decrease in living expenses. Mr. Kung was thus free to consider a change in jobs. He interviewed for lab assistant positions related to medical research, but several "very unsuccessful and discouraging" interviews made him abandon the idea. His lack of competence in English caused him so much anxiety that he ceased to attend interviews for any positions which would require him to speak English. He didn't take the medical board exam because he knew his English skills were too weak to survive the intensity of the medical board re-certification process. Eventually, he secured a position as a medical assistant in a non-profit medical service agency through his social network of ChineseAmericans. The monthly salary was very low but he enjoyed the job. He purchased a computer and began to cultivate a hobby in computer graphics.

The Changs The Chang family, from the Fuzhou Province, consists of four people: Mr. and Mrs. Chang, their daughter Jie (age 16), and son Hua (age 14). The Changs differ from the other three families in several ways, including the pattern of their immigration. The fact that there are two children in the Chang family also differentiates them from the other three families in my study. Mr. and Mrs. Chang made choices about their immigration strategy that was radically different than the other families in this study. Mr. Chang came to the U.S. first as an illegal immigrant. A brief family history In Fuzhou, Mr. Chang worked alternately, depending upon the season, as a mason and a peasant. As a peasant he tended melons and as mason he carved inscriptions on gravestones. In the late 80s, he earned less than the equivalent of thirty American dollars per month. He described his life as ku [tough]. He thought deeply about things he could do that

58 might allow his family to have what he referred to as “xiangyangyidian de sheng hou ”with an emphasis on ‘idian’, meaning a dot. He was pleading for a life that was just a little dot better. When gambling became prevalent in his village, he viewed it as a means of getting money. He "devoted" himself to it and eventually became a compulsive gambler. Although he tried to quit, he was not successful. At about the same time, he began paying more attention to the widespread, but hardly new rumors about men from his village who had gone to America and became instantly wealthy. He began to think about going there, especially after witnessing the newfound wealth of the men when they returned to his village with money to remodel their homes and live more comfortable lifestyles. Mr. Chang understood that going to America would cost a lot of money and that the only way he could get there would be to get smuggled there. Still he was interested. He approached a group of "snakeheads" called the Fuqinbang, a notorious gang that profited from smuggling hopeful Chinese men to America by charging them high fares and then loaning them money (at a 60% interest rate) to pay the fare. So motivated was Mr. Chang by the hope of giving his family a better life, that he decided to take the risk [maosian] and do business with these extortionists. He borrowed some money from a relative in New York and the rest – 30,000 U.S. dollars – from a snakehead. In 1991, Mr. Chang said good-bye to his wife, his ten-year old daughter and his eight-year old son. Then, he and a few other men from his village illegally boarded a cargo ship and traveled from the southern province of China to the shores of New York. Mrs. Chang's life as a single mother Mrs. Chang spent five years as a single mother, raising her two children. She received some support from her own mother who lived nearby. Her mother, a widow and a religious person, organized a family church and became its leader. She and her daughter spent many hours praying together. The children were confused about the absence of their father. His daughter was a very submissive child. The son began to make friends in the village whose youth culture was gradually transformed by external influences. Within a few years’ span since Mr. Chang's departure for the U.S., the village had changed its ethos because of new business developments brought forth by Hong Kong and Taiwan business investors. In the absence of his father, Hua

59 gradually got addicted to playing video games in the video arcade. He prided himself in excelling in electronic games, a pride which he concealed from his mother who worried about his declining schoolwork. Mr. Chang's life in the U.S.A. When he first arrived in New York, Mr. Chang relied on the relative who had loaned him money to pay the interest on his debt. He got a job cleaning the kitchen in a Chinese restaurant in New York's Chinatown. He had no food service experience, so he was not able to perform other jobs in the restaurant. He understood how easily he could be replaced. Eventually, Mr. Chang met people from the Fuzhou Clan, a small social organization promoting alliances and interest of people from Fuzhou. They informed him that living in Boston is less hectic than living in New York City. A few months later, he headed north toward Boston. Life was not so easy for Mr. Chang in New England either. He moved from place to place, in and out of Boston and the New England states. Because of his numerous moves and the physical exhaustion that goes along with that, he made few friends. In 1994, he finally moved back to and stayed in the city of Boston. Even in Boston, he moved from job to job and from living situation to living situation. The only thing that remained constant in Mr. Chang's life during those years was his dedication to church. Wherever he moved, visiting the Christian churches in those locations became part of his routine relocation process. He learned to negotiate each time he took up new job, stating that he would like to have his Sunday mornings reserved for his Christian worship. His bosses usually granted his request. Mr. Chang felt grateful and worked hard in restaurant kitchens to "repay their consideration." Within three years of settling in Boston, Mr. Chang was promoted to assistant chef [er zhu]. In terms of occupation Mr. Chang's life was improving but financially speaking, he was still in dire straits. Every month he made a large loan payment to the snakeheads. But he was beginning to realize that his debt would never be paid. Every day the debt became larger because the interest was accruing faster than he could pay it off. Soon after this realization, Chang met a "hao xing ren" [person with a kind heart] in a community Chinese church. This man had learned of Chang's situation and offered to loan him enough money without interest to pay the entire debt.

60 With the debt finally paid off, and the snakeheads out of his life, Chang experienced "xie xia he zhong de ba fu" [a huge burden lifting from his shoulder]. He continued to work 12-hour days in the restaurant and eventually was able to repay the man. After repaying that debt, he still continued the long workdays in hope of earning enough money to hire a lawyer who could advise him about becoming a "legal" resident of the U.S., as well as advise him about how to bring his family to the United States. In 1995, Mr. Chang took the initiative to ask me for assistance. He needed someone to explain a legal document having to do with his efforts to secure a "green card" or legal residency status in the United States. After our conversation he petitioned for permanent residency through an immigration attorney. In early 1996 his petition was approved. By July 1996, his wife and two children flew to the U.S. and the family was legally reunited after almost seven years of separation. The Chang family's life in the U.S.A. When the family arrived in the U.S., Mr. Chang had been living in a hostel the restaurant owner provided for its employees. The public school in that community's district did not have a very good reputation, so the family moved to Chinatown where they thought the schools would be better. The schools in Chinatown, however, were not much better. Mr. Chang approached Chinese people living in other school districts in the Boston area, asking them to register his children in their district's schools. No one would entertain his request because the consequences of such deception were high. Mrs. Chang took a job as a dishwasher in the same restaurant where her husband worked. Although she struggled with the typical symptoms of culture shock and suffered physical exhaustion on account of her work at the restaurant and her responsibilities as a mother, she complained little. She knew she was fortunate to have a job that did not require extensive proficiency in English. It also provided them with enough money to support their family. In order to attain the best education for their children, the Changs resorted to deception. Although their daughter, Jie was nineteen when she arrived in the States, her parents listed her age on her entrance papers as sixteen. Likewise their son, Hua, actually seventeen when he entered the United States, was registered as fifteen. If they "started lower and younger," Mr. Chang explained, “they would have more time

61 to be high school students and to develop proficiency in English as well as in other subjects important in American culture.” The Changs knew their children would initially struggle in the American school but that they would eventually advance educationally and ultimately soar. Jie and Hua both attended the same high school but were assigned to different classes. They met someone in their community church who agreed to become their tutor. This tutor came to the Chang’s apartment and worked with them developing English language skills. Both Jie and Hua encountered social constraints that they didn’t know how to overcome. They were confined to Chinatown and to activities that provided little exercise in English skills. On weekends, Hua delivered food for the restaurant where his father and mother worked. He shared his money with the family subsidizing his and his sister's daily expenses. He dreamed of becoming an electrical engineer or an automobile mechanic. Jie, meanwhile managed the housework. She showed little interest in academic pursuits but showed great enthusiasm in reading Chinese biographies of legendary missionaries in China. When she was free of housework, she also enjoyed watching “Hong Kong,” a Cantonese mini-series on TV.

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CHAPTER 6

Zheng-zha-qiu-cun

I take the fitting phrase zheng-zha-qiu-cun as the title of this chapter. Zheng-zha means struggling, qiu-cun means to beg for one's livelihood. Mei used this phrase twice, once in connection with the collective experience of Chinese immigrants in this country and once in connection with a more personal observation. While this phrase smacks of the cliched thesis that the Chinese immigrant experience is collective, I found Mei's use of it while relating a particular episode experienced by her mother very refreshing. I had already known this particular story because her mother once told me. It had not held my attention then. However when Mei retold the story, she used the phrase zheng-zha-qiu-cun as an organizational point of reference. Mama threw out her waist while taking care of an old lady, twice my mother’s size, in her charge. She was overstraining herself. The job required her to prop up the lady while she went to the toilet. Ultimately, my mother’s protracted pain prompted her to quit the job. Before that, however, she filed an application and took an exam for enrollment in a government subsidized agency for vocational training. After taking the exam, she quit the job on the assumption that all applicants would be admitted for training. She failed the assessment test. While reading the outcome letter, she cried. I accompanied her when she went to talk to the agency’s personnel about the possibility of having her case reconsidered. She met with indifference. The personnel claimed they could do nothing. Thereafter Mama stayed at home and nursed her wound. She asked my aunt, who was skilled at saying prayers, to pray on her behalf. Then one day she was informed of her acceptance. This incident of zhengzaqiuchun affected Mama and I profoundly.

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64 In listening to Mei and to my other informants, I developed an appreciation for the significance of that phrase and a renewed respect for language. I became aware of how my informants' words had referential aspects that carried deeper meanings. My new sensitivity to the nuances of their words changed the way and the depth in which I listened to their stories. This chapter has three major dimensions. First, I will describe the three immediate obstacles [san-da-nan-guan] named by my informants. Second, I will address how these obstacles have both negatively and positively altered the intrapersonal level of my informants. Third, I will discuss interpersonal connectedness exemplified in the subtleties of the terms: hui-bao [reciprocity] and xi-sheng [sacrifice]. Many subsections of this chapter could be appropriately grouped under what Mei characterized as zheng-zha-qiu-cun. For example, the notion of kun-nan-chong-chong [layers of difficulties], which is sometimes phrased as nan-guan-chong-chong [layers of obstacles], and hen-duo-mafa [myriad troubles] are typical phrases used by my informants when they sought to describe the kind of challenges and hardships they faced. Facing obstacles with little prospect of overcoming them in the short run at least, elicited negative self-attribution among these immigrants. The trouble they encountered had profound psychological ramifications which they referred to as xin-li-fu-dan [psychological burdens], xin-li-ya-li [psychological pressures], or xin-li-zhang-ai [psychological obstacles]. This psychological aspect seemed so subtle and internalized that it was difficult for them to express and for me to elicit. I was most intrigued by the intrapersonal tension that arose from being confronted by these obstacles, and also by the indirect impact the intrapersonal tension had on the quality of interpersonal relationships within familial and spiritual contexts. The most tangible and practical challenges faced by my informants included those related to language, work, and finances; a triad they coined as san-da-nan-guan [three obstacles or three barriers]. Simple as these obstacles were to understand, the positive and negative consequences were quite complicated.

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Three Immediate Obstacles: Language, Work, and Finances Th e sa n- da -na n- gua n [ th ree o bstacles] po sed v ar ying degrees o f ch allenge to each inf or man t in my stud y. A ll th ree o bstacles w er e in tertwin ed in the fo llowing w ay. The immigrants' lack of co mp etence in En glish limited their career op tions. As a result, they accepted jo bs – lo w p ay ing , manual lab or p ositions – that d id no t requ ir e Eng lish pr oficiency. A lth ou gh th e adu lts in th e stu dy tr ied to make u p f or lo w wages w ith lon g h ou rs, sometimes two o r thr ee jo bs on the same day, they b rou gh t home ver y little mon ey at the en d of th e week.

Yuyuen Guan: Language Barrier My English standard is too low [siupingtaidi]. I feel like I am a second-class citizen [erdenggongming]. -Tin Shifu Sometimes I would read over a page a few times, but I still could not understand it. I was very nervous and worried. I blamed myself for being such a slow learner. - Hong Li Unlike my other informants, Mr. Ho claimed, "English is not a problem to me at all." A t th e tim e o f o u r in ter v iew s h e h ad f ig u r e d o u t, at le as t in th e r e a lm o f h is e m p lo y m e n t, a w a y to g e t a r o u n d h is la n g u a g e d ef icie n cy . H e w o r k ed as a sto c k an d in v en t o r y cler k at a g r o cer y s to r e in Ch in ato w n w h er e m o s t o f th e c u s to m e r s w e r e Ch in ese . If a choksheng [in Cantonese, a derogatory term for Chinese people who cannot or do not speak Chinese] asks me a question about something, I just refer him to a worker in the store who speaks English. So language is not an issue for me.

66 However, Mrs. Ho revealed – not in the presence of her husband – that while he may not view his language deficiency as a problem for him, it was a problem for her. My husband had great difficulties commuting to work in Chinatown, since he was very apprehensive about English signs or street names. Traveling with so many strangers also scared him. Some mornings I had to accompany him to Chinatown and then travel back to my job at the laundromat (in a suburb outside of Boston). And when I got out of work, I'd have to go back to Chinatown to bring him back. There were many times, while I was waiting for the T (subway train), that I cried. Eventually this dilemma disappeared with the family’s move to Chinatown. Mr s . H o 's i n iti a l a ttit u d e to w a r d t h e p r o b l e m o f la n g u a g e a n d c r o s s - c u lt u r a l a d a p tat io n w a s s o m e w h a t c a u s tic . S h e c o m p la in e d th a t s h e h a d h a d t o s t a r t f r o m th e v e r y b e g in n in g . L e a r n in g th e a l p h a b e t , p r a c t i c i n g s u c h s ta t e m e n t s a s , “ W h a t is y o u r n a m e ? ” , “ H o w a r e y o u ? ” , a n d “ W h e r e is th e p o s t o f f ic e ? ” w e r e p a in f u l r e m in d e r s o f h o w m u c h s h e s til l h a d to le a r n . H e r f r u s tr a t io n o v e r w h a t s h e t e r m e d , " t h e lo n g jo u r n e y o f le a r n i n g E n g l i s h " c o m b i n e d w i th h e r e a g e r n e s s to m a s t e r t h e l a n g u a g e c r ea te d a k i n d o f te n s io n th a t w a s s o m e t im e s a s u n b e a r a b le t o h e r s e l f a s to th o s e w h o t r i e d to h e l p h e r . I o b s e r v e d h e r in m y c l a s s b e c o m i n g n e e d l e s s l y i m p a t i e n t w i t h c l a s s m a t e s w h o w e r e n o t a s q u i c k in m a s te r in g th e la n g u a g e a s s h e . O f th e f o u r f a m i l i e s i n th i s s t u d y , th e la n g u a g e b a r r i e r s e e m e d t o a f f e c t Mr . a n d Mr s . K u n g th e m o s t . Bo t h h a d h a d p r o f e s s i o n a l c a r e e r s in Ch i n a : h e a s a m e d i ca l d o c t o r a n d s h e a s a c a r e e r o r i e n t e d a s s o c i a t e m a n a g e r in a n e n v i r o n m e n t a l r e s e a r c h f i r m . M r . K u n g w a s p r o f i c i e n t in Ru s s i a n , a la n g u a g e h e a c q u i r e d d u r i n g h i s m e d i c a l tr a in i n g i n Ch i n a . S i n c e h e o n c e c o n d u c t e d m e d i c a l r e s e a r c h i n G e r m a n y , h e w a s a l s o a b l e t o u s e t h e G e r m a n la n g u a g e a t a t e c h n i c a l l e v e l . Bu t h i s E n g l i s h p r o f i c i e n c y w a s " s o s o " [ h a o b u - d a o - n a - li- q u ] . H is g r e a te s t f r u s tr a tio n , h e c o m p la in e d , w a s " n o t b e in g c a p a b le o f c o n d u c tin g s a tis f a c to r y d a ily c o n v e r s a tio n s i n E n g lis h ."

67 His perception of himself as being "too old" also added to the dilemma. Although he was in his early 50’s, he believed that learning to speak, read, and write English well enough to take medical board exams and to become licensed to practice in US would take too much of his energy. It was "too late," he added, "for me to catch up, no matter how much I try". D u r i n g th e f i r s t f e w m o n t h s a f t e r h i s a r r i v a l , h e a c c e p t e d th e f a c t t h a t h e w o u ld n o lo n g e r b e a d o c t o r . H e t o o k p r id e , h o w e v e r , in h is p e r c e p t io n th a t h e w a s b e in g r e a lis tic a n d s tr o n g ly f a c in g th e tr a n s i tio n f r o m p r o f e s s io n a l t o la b o r e r . H e th o u g h t h e h a d p r e p a r e d h im s e lf , a t l e a s t m e n t a l l y , t o a c c ep t th e s it u a ti o n . T h e la n g u a g e c o n s t r a in t, h e la te r r e a l iz e d , c o u ld n o t b e s o lv e d w o r k in g in a l o w s ta tu s jo b . Mr s . K u n g c l a i m e d th a t h e r E n g l i s h p r o f i c i e n c y w a s e v e n w o r s e th a n h e r h u s b a n d ’ s . " I h a d l i t t l e p r e p a r a t i o n , " s h e s a i d , " u n lik e m y h u s b a n d w h o b e g a n t o m e m o r i z e v o c a b u la r y b e f o r e o u r d e p ar t u r e. " When she interviewed for jobs, she became self-conscious about her English and interviewers, too seemed quite aware of her deficiency. Interviewing, she claimed, was most anxiety provoking. She was determined to become a fluent speaker of English. W h ile Mr . K u n g is a n i n tr o v e r t , Mr s . K u n g ' s e x tr o v e r te d n a t u r e p r o v e d to b e m o r e c o n d u c i v e to h e r a c q u is i t i o n o f E n g l i s h . I t w o u l d b e to o li m i t e d a n d in a c c u r a t e a v i e w f o r m e t o a s s u m e th a t h e r e x tr o v e r t e d n a tu r e a l o n e w a s r e s p o n s i b le f o r h e r e v e n tu a l p r o f i c i e n c y o f t h e l a n g u a g e . T h e r e w e r e a n u m b e r o f th i n g s th a t p r o p e l l e d h e r in t o le a r n i n g t h e l a n g u a g e , a m o n g th e m — h e r f r u s tr a tio n a b o u t b e in g a p e r s o n a l a tt e n d a n t i n s te a d o f a b u s in e s s w o m a n . She began choosing jobs that would provide opportunities to practice her language skills with native speakers. She ventured into positions as a receptionist and assistant comptroller. It took her approximately two years to develop enough proficiency in the language to apply for such positions. When they arrived in the U.S., Mr. Tin and Mrs. Tin were also limited in their ability to speak and understand English. Having grown up in the era of communist China, they had very little exposure to the English language.

68 They thought they had "fully prepared" themselves and "envisioned the language shock." They worried most about their daughter's ability to adapt and acquire a new language. Once in New York, Mr. and Mrs. Tin did not have time to attend English classes. After moving to Boston, however, Mr. Tin realized, after a series of failed job interviews, that unless he wanted to remain in menial jobs, he needed to learn to speak English well. There was no other way. He rearranged his work schedule and began taking English classes. Mrs. Tin's minimal language skills did not present comparable dilemmas her husband had encountered. She had little difficulty finding jobs that did not require English proficiency. She easily acquired positions sewing in a garment factory, working on an electronics assembly line, and sweeping the floor in a hair salon that catered to Chinese customers. Although she was not held back from employment by her English deficiency, her employment kept her from acquiring the language. She was hardly ever around people who spoke English. Unlike her husband, she had much less incentive too learn a new language. Mr. Chang first arrived in the U.S. as an illegal immigrant. He had to avoid all contact with government agencies and other formal institutions. When he needed to do banking, he located a bank in Chinatown where the tellers spoke Cantonese and Mandarin. He spent most of his days and nights working in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants where he was not required to speak English. It was not until he applied for legal immigrant status that he realized his language deficiency presented problems. I w o u l d w r ite d o w n m y q u e s tio n s a n d p r a c ti c e t h e n ig h t b e f o r e . Bu t n o m a t t e r h o w h a r d I r e h e a r s e d m y p e r f o r m a n c e , I c o u ld n o t a lw a y s g e t it r ig h t b e c a u s e s o m e ti m e s b e c a u s e th e g o v e r n m e n t e m p lo y e e s w o u ld a s k m e q u e s tio n s t h a t I d i d n o t r e h e a r s e . S o m e tim e s , I w o u ld a s k p e o p l e w h o k n o w E n g l i s h to w r i t e d o w n m y r e q u e s t a n d I w o u l d h a n d i t to th e c le r k s . T h i n g s g e t d o n e e a s ie r a n d f a s te r . T h is w o r k s v e r y w e ll. Mrs. Chang, like Mr. Ho, resisted learning to speak English; she too relied on family members to communicate for her. Since her arrival, she had her husband's assistance. He instructed her in how to go about

69 her life without English skills. She also heavily relied on her children's developing language proficiency, requesting that they translate for her. Unlike Mr. Kung, who was motivated to become a proficient English speaker by the prospect of a life of menial labor if he didn't learn the language, Mrs. Chang acquiesced to the fact that the remaining years of her life would be spent working in Chinese kitchens. She became nervous whenever she was expected to communicate in English, but such incidents were rare. She tried to shun it. In sho rt, to these ad ults, Eng lish presented different kind s o f ch allenges. Mr s. Chan g was q uite similar to Mr. Ho , in terms o f th eir lo w mo tiv ation to learn En glish. Th ey bo th went ou t of th eir w ay to av oid learn ing the lang uag e, b ut en cou raged their family members to lear n the lang uage, w hich decr eased th e need fo r them to learn . Mr . Ku ng , on th e o th er hand , p er ceived Eng lish as a po tent th reat. H e believ ed, and righ tly so, th at his futur e, an d to a gr eat extent, the fu tu re of h is family, w as riding on his ab ility to n ot on ly lear n to sp eak and u nderstand an d r ead and w rite En glish well enou gh to co mmun icate bu t to also master it. Mrs. Ho didn 't view th e Eng lish lang uage so mu ch as a th reat th e way Mr. Ku ng did. I nstead, sh e saw th e En glish lang uage as a so ur ce of po wer. Sh e was h un gry to learn it an d to sp eak it ef ficiently an d p er fectly, un derstan ding no t just how to co mmun icate bu t also th e n uances of lang uage. She came to r ealize th is w ould help her u nd erstand th e way things w ork ed in A merica. With master y o f th e lan guage came educatin g h er self, acqu ir ing a new career, an d ev entually b uy ing a ho use where sh e an d h er family co uld plant ro ots.

Language Barrier to the Youngsters: Mei, Zheng, Hongli, Hua and Jie Learning a language involves a number of factors including selfmotivation and environmental support. Although my younger respondents encountered language obstacles, the ever presence of these factors helped them learn English much more quickly than their parents. U n l i k e t h e i r p a r e n t s , th e s e i m m i g r a n t c h i l d r e n h a d e n v ir o n m e n ta l s u p p o r ts , n a m e ly a s c h o o l s e ttin g w i th E n g li s h s p e a k i n g t e a c h e r s a n d p e e r s , th a t w e r e c o n d u c iv e to th e i r q u ic k a c q u i s i t i o n o f E n g l i s h . T h e y a l s o f e l t p r e s s u r e to d e v e l o p th e i r l a n g u a g e s k i l l s q u i c k l y b e c a u s e th e i r p a r e n t s o f t e n r e l i e d o n th e m to tr a n s la te a n d i n te r p r e t .

70 Jie and Hua Chang were older adolescents when they arrived in the U.S. in 1996. Learning English was one of several obstacles they faced which brought them both great anxiety. When they first arrived they did not know how to associate with their American peers. This problem worried Mr. Chang particularly. He searched for tutorial books and audio tapes that would assist his children's learning. Both children, much to their parents' pleasure, improved gradually, under the persistent tutelage of a computer specialist who served as a volunteer tutor in the Chinese community. During summer vacations from school, both children studied under this tutor in their family's apartment. The children's acquisition of language was slower than predicted, however, and the tutor once conveyed to me that he believed it was due to the fact that Hua and Jie were confining themselves to a narrow social circle. The other three young informants – Hongli, Mei, and Zheng – faced similar problems when they first arrived. However, for a variety of reasons they overcame the obstacle at a more reasonable speed than that of Hua and Jie. Within the first year of their arrival, Hongli, Mei, and Zheng were able to speak English fluently. Even after two years in the U.S., neither Hua nor Jie could conduct conversations in English without great trepidation. H o n g li ar r iv e d i n t h e U . S . w h e n h e w a s t en y e a r s o l d . Th e s u d d en tr a n s i ti o n f ro m a c o m p l e te Ch i n e s e- s p e a k i n g e n v i r o n m e n t t o a E n g l i s h - s p e a k i n g s e t ti n g w a s a t r o u b l e s o m e e x p e r i e n c e . He s t a r t e d h i s f i r s t d a y s o f s c h o o l w i t h l i m i t e d E n g l is h s k il l s . A t t en d in g s c h o o l f el t l i k e a h u g e b u r d en w h i ch c a u s e d h i m m u c h a n x ie t y . T h e s c h o o l h e h a d a t te n d e d i n C h in a d id n o t e m p h a si z e l ea r n i n g E n g l is h . Th e r e f o r e , w h e n h e c a me to A m e r ic a , h e h a d to s t a r t E n g li s h f r o m t h e b e g i n n i n g . O n c e , M r s . H o r e c a ll e d o n e in c id e n t r e v e a l in g t h a t , " W h e n h e f i r s t c a m e h e r e , h e c r i e d e v e r y d a y . H i s E n g l i s h p r o f i c i e n c y w a s to o l o w f o r h i m t o c a t c h u p i n h i s c l a s s e s . So m e t i m e s h e s l e p t u n t i l m i d n i g h t a n d w o u l d s u d d e n l y w a k e u p a n d c r y . He w a s t o o w o r r ie d a b o u t h i s h o m e w o r k . " Mei, the oldest of my younger informants, spoke about her realization that the language was not only essential to everyday communication and survival skills, but also capital for professional appearance. She tried hard to master that skill. Although she was an outstanding student in high school, her English skills had prevented her from performing at her best in the

71 humanities. Bur she worked hard and her English had greatly improved by the time she attended college. She related the following experience at her work study job where she worked as a receptionist in the language laboratory. Although she believed her English skills were quite good, being a receptionist required certain skills she realized she did not yet have. Other workers pointed out her lack of skill in handling telephone inquiries. Mei realized that she had not only to continue improving her English speaking skills, but also to develop more professional skills. Of all th e you ng info rmants, Zh en g received the mo st person al assistance in En glish d uring the first y ear o f her arr ival. Like the others, Eng lish pr esented pr ob lems for h er at f irst. But livin g with her En glish-speaking u ncle, au nt and tw o y ou ng er co usins in Con necticu t help ed Zh en g acq uire En glish -speaking sk ills in a sh or t span of time. Her un cle and au ntie [jiu- fu and jiu- ma , as surr og ate p ar ents] help ed her, especially with reading and co mpr eh en sio n. Living with her En glish-speaking cousin s g reatly en han ced her conv er satio nal skills. In add ition to this con duciv e exter nal env iro nment, Zh en g became very self -motivated and "pin- ming ", tho rou gh ly devo ted to the task o f lear ning En glish to a p oin t as if she were figh tin g [pin] fo r her life [m i n g ]. Ev en so, wh en Zh en g reu nited w ith h er parents a y ear later sh e still feared, like her you ng er peer s in th is study , th e d uty o f tr an slating an d assisting her par en ts in n ego tiating w ith p eop le and bu sinesses. Sh e mention ed th at usin g lan gu age is o ne matter , b ut dealin g w ith adu lts o n the o th er en d o f th e p ho ne line is an in timidatin g exp er ien ce th at invo lv es nego tiation sk ills th at sh e just did no t h av e at ag e 1 4. For both Hua and Jie, being required to translate and negotiate on their parent's behalf was no small demand. They well understood the language limitation of their parents. Understanding the linguistic limitations of their parents, they took it upon themselves to negotiate in English with businesses. This burden gradually transformed into a motivation for learning the language. Jie and Hua were especially mindful of how much their parents were struggling with matters related to money and livelihood.

72

Qian [Money] and Shenghuo [Livelihood] Facing the need of providing a livelihood was a crucial issue for these parents while they were struggling with maintaining their low-paying jobs. Their limited language proficiency prevented them from choosing jobs that would allow them to earn money equal to their previous professional skills. With little or virtually no financial backing, these parents were constantly overwhelmed by not being able to provide the family with basic necessities. Recalling the initial months after arriving on American soil, these parents kept referring to the phrase: zen-mosheng-huo [how to live], including the connotation of meeting the needs of everyday livelihood. Tin Shimu made the most trenchant statement representative of what these parents were worrying about. I was used to the poor life in China thus the burden of having to worry too much about a livelihood seldom threatened me. I was living among mostly poor people in China, though I at times complained, but in general that kind of poor life was bearable. That was no big deal. Whereas in the U.S., the taste of being poor is intimidating. And that threat was what I had not anticipated enough. Comparatively, the wealthiest of all the four families was the Kungs. But even so, their savings were meager. Mrs. Kung disclosed, "We had spent all our lives saving for the three air tickets to the U.S. When we landed here, we were empty handed [liang-shou-kongkong]." For the Tins and the Hos, their tickets were sponsored by relatives in the United States. Mr. Chang, who was illegally smuggled here, "was in deep debt [yi-shen-zhai].” His financial situation was most troublesome, and it took him six years to have his family join him. This quick review of the scenario of their limited resources is crucial for me to relate why these immigrant parents were desperate about finding jobs, soon after their arrival. Given their low wages in China these immigrants had limited savings, but they were accustomed to such in the communist setting. Starting from scratch with little or no backing was a challenge in this capitalist setting for them. In order to realize their American dream of

73 "everything is possible in this land of opportunity," they needed to make great efforts. Even though some relied on the financial support of relatives who had already settled down and became financially stable in the U.S., these immigrant parents valued and emphasized independence. They stressed that they did not want to be the burdens of their relatives. They preferred to zi-li-geng-sheng [relying on one’s energy to live one’s life]. This sense of zi-li-geng-sheng was important to my respondents. This phrase was occasionally interspersed in the parents' narratives. The term zi-li conveys the importance of being self-reliant, whereas geng-sheng expresses the vitality of regeneration. Mrs. Ho stressed, "If my relative could zili gengsheng then so should I.” To some extent the examples of how their relatives, who had settled here before them and eventually led a more financially stable life, provided them certain encouragement. They learned that as bad as their own financial and employment situation appeared to be, the long term prospect might be brighter. In the midst of desperation, their already settled and secure relatives assured them that "as long as one was determined to endure the hardship, the issue of livelihood in America is not a problem [zhi-yao-neng-ai-ku, zai-mei-guo-sheng-huobu-cheng-wen-ti].” But even so, both Mrs. Kung and Tin Shifu specifically emphasized the situations they had anticipated before coming and what they eventually experienced in real circumstances were of qualitative difference [qin-guan-he-sian-shi-heng-bu-yi-yang]. While this was a little bit shocking to them, they were determined to "bite their teeth" in looking for jobs that would help them bring food to the table. Mrs. Ho used the phrase, hu-kou to characterize how she and her husband eked out her family's livelihood. The term hu connotes mixing flour and water into a paste and kou refers to mouth. She used this expression to convey that they ate and lived simply. It was in their urgency in looking for jobs that helped me as a researcher and as Chinese to suddenly glimpse the depth of the commonly used Chinese words, gan-huo [working on a job] and shenghuo [to sustain a viable life]. Situating these phrases gan-huo and sheng-huo in these immigrants' everyday context both the denotative and connotative dimensions became very apparent. Denotatively, ganhuo means working on a job, gang connoting the meaning of laboring, and hou meaning to live.

74 Likewise the phrase, sheng-huo had special significance as it is understood in the context of how these immigrant parents asked the question: "Zhengmuo sheng-hou?" Zen-mo means how, sheng means viability, and hou to live. Taken as a whole, the issue of money [qian], work [gan-huo], and viability [sheng-huo] in the context of resettlement were matters of tremendous concerns to these families. It is also in the context of various concerns that I gleaned the psychological dynamics exemplified at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and family levels.

Intrapersonal Dynamics: The Notion of Zi-wuogan-jue [Self-perception] The combined effects of the language barrier, money, type of work, and the problem of unemployment or dismissal, affected these immigrants' self-perception. Zi-wuo- gang-jue [the feelings of self] conveys the notion of self-perception. They talked about "their feelings of self" quite eloquently and vividly using concrete examples to tell how they went through the ups and downs. Phrases such as xin-xin-dong-yao [wavering confidence], xin-xin-cui-ruo [feeble confidence], xin-xin-wajie [shattering confidence], wu-yong [sense of uselessness], and hu-lihu-tu [disorientation and carelessness] convey their internal state of mind. To those immigrant informants who had set high self-expectations, only to realize that their objectives were defied by the social reality (employment and cultural barriers) and subjective conditions (language deficiency and financial difficulties), disappointment was primary. Others however, were quite resilient, and because of their farsightedness, recovered and sensed optimism sooner. They underwent self-doubt and new self-understanding. Through their disappointment and optimism, I came to glimpse how they described the constitution of their self-confidence [xin-xin]. From their disclosures I also detected that, for both the parents and their children, after their self-confidence had hit the lowest point at different occasions, they worked hard to free themselves of their disappointment and transformed their distorted self-perceptions into energy for further self-improvement. It seemed, though such stages did not exist distinctly, that there was a subtle process of enduring the "personal journey of self-confidence" as Mei so poetically put it.

75 How each individual’s self-confidence was compromised differed from person to person. I will select specific and brief events that reflect the idiosyncratic intrapersonal nature of this dynamic. Since there are external factors that affected their intrapersonal dynamics, especially relative to that of interpersonal relationships, my selection of these events is based on how these events shed light on the subsequent notions of hu-xiang-ti-lian [mutual understanding] and hui-bao [reciprocity].

Self-perception [Zi-Wuo-Gan-Jue] In this section, I attempt to expose a facet of the intrapersonal tension and dynamic that each of these informants experienced, and how this revealed part of the self-perception [zi-wuo-gan-jue]. This description is prerequisite to understanding how each individual dynamically shaped the realm of interpersonal and family interaction.

The Withdrawing Spirit of Mr. Ho Immediately following his arrival in the U.S., Mr. Ho had experienced severe maladaptation. During those months, his wife took on the greater part of the responsibilities of sustaining the everyday operation of a household. While he struggled for several months to find a job, she found a job three days after they arrived in the country. As I have mentioned earlier, his inability to commute to work without his wife's assistance was quite an emotional burden for him. The more he tried to evade the language barrier, the more negative he rated. He often used phrases such as “chun dun” [stupid] to characterize himself. He also perceived his conversational ability to be less than that of a three-year old child's. He was utterly bored by his work in the grocery store. At one point he even chose to withdraw from this study. His wife, later revealed to me that he had been struggling with low self-esteem and self-doubt, wondering whether he should quit the job and instead, work with friends who were engaged in door renovations, a job he perceived as more interesting and financially promising. However, he surrendered the thought because he was not confident enough to make such a move. He also decided not to pursue that because he had to care for his child while his wife was at work.

76 He praised his wife "for being very capable." With selfdeprecation, he laughed and acknowledged, "Her presence compensates for my inadequacy." Once trying to discuss his negative self-perception, Mr. Ho disclosed: …may be it is because I was a mechanic [in China] and now I am a simple storekeeper. People like me do not think much about this issue. At this time, I think that I am not going to consider much about the value and foundation of my self-worth. My relatives told me that I have to think first for the living and the job... Anyway, I have to live so I am not going to think about self-worth and selfesteem. I said to myself that it is no big deal... In China I did not even have to worry about my job. It is so stable. In here, a job is not guaranteed.

The Assertive Outlook of Mrs. Ho My prior and frequent encounters with Mrs. Ho led me to think of her as extroverted and assertive, even at times aggressive. But one of her disclosures helped me to realize that the cross-cultural process had in large part shaped her to be a more tenacious woman. Her husband's retreat from social participation motivated her to be more outgoing and decisive. Yet she admitted that when she lost her temper at home she would use words, such as moyong [useless] insulting her husband's incompetence. Later she would feel intensely remorseful. She explained that she tried to subdue her anger, whenever she felt her inner voice telling her that she was doing much more than her husband to sustain the family. Because of what she perceived as her husband's "fate" and "poor luck," she believed that she would be better at shouldering most of the family's financial responsibility. What is the use of complaining ku [bitter or tough]. Either you like it or not. You have to survive, and complaining about ku will not make life any better. You just have to be strong and firm on every step. We could have stayed in China, but since we wanted to come here, we should make the best out of this experience. In many ways, her perception that her family needed a tough leader to provide a stable and secure livelihood had nurtured her fighter spirit as well as her increasing sense of self-confidence. She took upon herself, the duty to stabilize the course that the family was navigating.

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Hongli: The Urge of Self-improvement Over the years of his cross-cultural adaptation, Hongli appeared to have adjusted well to his new environment. However, hypertension and anxiety were two major obstacles for Hongli during his first year in the United States. He attributed his difficulties to not knowing how to surmount the language barrier. Anxious about excelling in school, he felt held back by his lack of confidence in English. Inadvertently he disclosed also that his mother's insistence that he perform well in school exerted no little pressure on him. He admitted that he was looking for his mother's approval and was eager to please her. Mr. Ho's self-deprecating remarks about his poor English and reminders to his son to do better than he himself could do, made Hongli still less at ease. Hongli was respectful of his parents. He revealed to me once how he felt both glad and sad when he received an electronic Chinese-English dictionary from his father, a popular item among Chinese immigrants. I knew that the dictionary would be helpful to increase my word power. It is quite an expensive item. My mother wanted to wait until the price dropped. But my father argued that the sooner I have the item the faster I could improve on my English. I am sad because they always argue over simple things... I knew that my father's had limited monthly income. He got easily upset when he was reminded by Mama of his income. Hearing his parents’ discussions about the instability of their jobs made Hongli sensitive to his parents' employment situations. He explained that he felt anxiety over his father losing his job, as well as the possibility that his mother might overly exert herself by working two jobs.

Mr. Kung: The Obstacle of Face [Lian and Mian-Zi] The most difficult period of adjustment for Mr. Kung occurred during the months he worked as an assistant in the carpet division of a department store. At one point, his struggle with the transition from being a medical doctor to a store helper was "against" his heart [bushun-xin]. He grew depressed and his "heart became very stuffy and unhappy" [meng-meng-bu-le]. A case of hemorrhoids hampered his

78 ability to work, and invariably interfered with the task of lifting especially large sheets of carpets. While regretting that he immigrated to the U. S., Mr. Kung fantasized about returning to China to resume his medical research. He dared not disclose this fantasy to anyone. He thought that if he told other people about his fantasy, they would accuse him of being a “selfseeking” person. Later on he found out that his wife and daughter had also felt that he should not "bury his life in carpets" and should return to China to pursue a passion to which he had so thoroughly devoted his heart. With the support from both his wife and daughter, he resumed contact with his former medical unit, and they approved of his request to rejoin the research team. Mr. Kung never realized this dream. His guilt about leaving his wife and daughter prevented him from leaving in peace. His heart was deeply burdened [hen-dan-xin]. He, again, was concerned that he would be identified as a self-seeking person [zi-si-de-ren]. He also fretted about how his relatives in the U.S. and his colleagues in China would evaluate him. He could not "make up his mind and heart" [xiading-jie-xin]. His wife blamed him for being such a face-conscious person [aimian-zi]. [People would think] at first, I did not want my country and left for America... But others would also think that I have no expertise [mei-bei-shi] to stand up [li-zhu] in America... Now, while I am empty handed [liao-shou-kong-kong], others would speculate, abandoning my wife and daughter in America, and had nothing to do, and asked to return so as to hide myself in medical research, in order to run away facing the world [taobi-sian-shi]. These multifaceted dilemmas finally prevented him from resolutely making up his mind. With reluctance [wu-ke-nai-he], he stayed in the U.S. and learned to cope more actively with the crosscultural impact.

Mrs. Kung: The Sentiment of Regret [Hou-hui] The sentiment of hou-hui [regret] is a complex one. Several of Mrs. Kung's disclosures aptly brought out the complicated aspect of regret in relation to her cross-cultural experiences. I will use fragments of her

79 narratives to show how this sentiment swallowed up her energy, allowing her to slide into glorifying the past. Such glorification left her stranded in a counterproductive sentimentality. She struggled to overcome it by adopting a more positive and realistic frame of mind. The Chinese notion of lian [face] was even more pronounced in Mrs. Kung’s struggle than it was in her husband's case. This concern for "face" helped to encourage her to fight for the best so as to prove herself not a failure. In her first job in the U.S. as a personal care attendant for an elderly woman, Mrs. Kung became quick-tempered: When I was at the elderly house, I felt I would soon collapse [jing-sheng-beng-hui]. I was easily irritated. When my husband and daughter visited me, they could not stand me because I would vent my anger at them. During those days, my tears dried up. Even though we kept saying before landing in America that we would have to swallow bitterness when we arrived, the actual situation was just so different from what we had imagined. Mrs. Kung felt badly about her lack of self-control, as well as her own cynical and sour mood [suan-liu-liu]. At the same time she noticed that she could not stop glorifying and being nostalgic about the past. We had stable jobs in China, jobs that gave us pride and sense of achievement. But suddenly, our status in this country plunged to the lowest level of the social structure. I prompted my husband to go back to China, and when he said he would not do without my going back with him, I was tempted to do so because even though we had already decided to move to the U.S., the company I served [in China] still welcomed me to rejoin them anytime. My boss was very pleased with my performance. Mrs. Kung's regret also revealed shades of cynicism: In China, many uneducated villagers were rushing to the big cities such as the one I lived. Because they are not culturally refined [wen-hua-shiu-ping-di], they had no skills. They became nannies [bao-mu]. [in America] I felt that I was just

80 like those villagers. I asked myself why did I come all the way to America to be a nanny, attending to this demanding lady?

Mei: Inner Resources [Nei-Zai-Shi-Li] Mei is good abstracting from the conflicting aspects of intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics and synthesizing a perspective that informs her own self-understanding. Critiquing her lack of self-confidence, she thought about the basis of her confidence. And when that confidence was shattered in this cross-cultural process, she tried not to slip into cynicism and self-pity, but instead viewed it as an opportunity for reworking her inner constitution. When I was a student in China, I felt that the teachers were very caring and nurturing. They gave me– and I myself also felt – a lot of self-confidence. But when I look back, that kind of self-assurance was very shallow [fu-qian] because it was a sheltered sort of untested assurance. When I first arrived, all the customary care and nurturance I received were gone. I had nothing. I had no friends. And sometimes I felt myself totally inexpressive. It was difficult to find one's assurance. It was gone [shi-qu]. If the old assurance I had was really real and solid, how could it be gone so easily? That is why I said the old assurance was shaky and shallow. And if the foundation was weak, then I needed to work on it and re-strengthen it… My experience in America had been a good one. Though sometimes I felt very tired [lei] because of the many adjustments I needed to make. But I know that my development [cheng-zhang] was solid. In that positive frame of mind, the word "lei" [exhaustion] appeared in Mei's narratives. It was quite telling of her positive mindset. It conveyed a deeper meaning. Even though she too faced a language barrier, and at times found this obstacle draining and at times it causied her headache, her educational experience was predominantly a very positive and promising one. When she uttered "lei", she conveyed that her youthful energy is easily replenished. Furthermore, she also conveyed her sense of resilience. Her experience in her school's language lab as receptionist served a good case in point.

81 Although she would at times slip into unproductive self-doubt, she would not let herself dwell in it for long. I was upset at my incompetence. I tried hard to pick up and gradually refined my skills. When at times I failed and I would blame myself for being wuyong [uselessness], I tried to learn from my mistakes and show others that I am equally good, if not even better.

Tin Shifu: The Grievance of a Chinese Healer Many conflicts of interest Tin Shifu faced imposed the additional burden of providing his family with the basic necessities of everyday life. His role as a freelance practitioner of Chinese qigong art of healing created an intense conflict and dilemma for him. Had I not been one of his patients, my role as researcher might not have permitted me to understand the extent of his struggle as a qigong 9also known as chi kung) practitioner. To diagnose his mental and physical state, I must first explain qigong and the demands of being a qigong practitioner. Understanding this aspect of Tin Shifu's intrapersonal tension will later explain his relationships with his daughter, his wife, as well as the persistent trouble of balancing his qigong training with various manual jobs. In the term, xia-gong-fu, xia refers to applying, and gong-fu means time and energy. Practicing the art of qigong requires not only a calm mind but also a stable flow of energy. The healing of qigong is based on the curious and esoteric notion of qi, the vital energy. That is also to say that healer has to devote time to purifying the quality of this energy, the qi (or more commonly known as chi) so as to assure that the healer can adequately heal his patients with sufficient supply of good energy. The practice of qigong emphasizes mental conditioning, selfcultivation, and physical endurance. It links body, mind, and chi. For a qigong healer to perform the task efficiently a solid harmonious balance of these three aspects must be in place. The impact of cross-cultural resettlement disrupted the harmonious balance that Tin Shifu had built up. To provide his family with basic necessities, he was forced to work long hours which wore down his body. Furthermore, his worries about not being able to acquire a rudimentary level of English, about maintaining a stable income, as well as his concern over being separated from his daughter broke the calmness of his mind. His body and mind, lacking proper cultivation,

82 were devoid of qi [energy]. He was struggling with the reality that threatened his professional identity as well as a form of self-cultivation that was important to his well being. For a man who so highly valued the synergistic interplay of body, mind, and qi, his own experience of resettlement upset his beliefs and the inner core of his being. He was indeed, as he lamented, "Shi-fen-nan-guo" [very sad].

Zheng: Sources of Motivation for Surpassing Mediocrity Zheng was a mediocre student in China. While taking things easily, including her schoolwork, she was a ma-ma-hu-hu, which is a student that displays a carefree and careless attitude. Her parents rarely urged her to excel academically but her intrinsic motivation changed drastically after landing in the United States. As was seen, Tin Shifu amended his view accordingly. He was pleased to see how the new environment changed her disposition. Zheng's internal change was more complicated. Not long after coming into New York, Zheng, then 12, parted with her parents for the first time in her life. Though Zheng was well attended in her uncle's home, she thought a lot about her parents. She expressed how much she missed her mother and worried about her severe near-sightedness. It was during this period of separation that she learned about independence. Her self-motivation and studiousness transformed her habitual carefree attitude and carelessness. This year of separation laid a solid foundation for her study habits, which in turn, triggered her insatiable curiosity for academic exploration. Not long after reuniting with her parents in Boston, she became receptive to fo-fa [the teaching of Budda], and was thus inspired to a constant discipline of tendering her heart and mind [xiuxin], and action [xiu-xing]. At the same time, she became interested in qigong practice as a form of self-cultivation. She ascribed her increasing physical endurance and mental concentration, which enhanced her academic performance, to fofa and to qigong practice. In short, she developed a strong sense of self-assurance.

Mr. Chang: The Lonely Self in Anticipation Six years of separation from his family and of enduring the loneliness in the U.S. was to Mr. Chang a most severe test of his existence. In addition to this personal trial, he also struggled with paying debts.

83 From time to time, he was dismissed from work and had to start searching for other restaurants to employ him. How he endured this intense sense of loneliness was a testimony to his inner resources and the ongoing re-formation of his self-perception. Three important measures strengthened his determination to persist. First, he wrote letters to his wife and children whenever he felt like doing so. Second, he made arrangements for his wife and children to take his phone calls in the house of a relative who possessed a phone. And third, he became accustomed to pray whenever he felt lonely. He believes that his long-distant "closeness" with his wife, and his prayers to God, helped him to change during those lonely years in America: In this strange land, other than working hard, I could rely only on shangdi [God]. My wife wrote reminding me that God is my helper in time of need. I am embarrassed [zangkwei] that I was not close to Him when I was in China. I drank. I gambled. I smoked. I did all kinds of things that were displeasing to God. Now I want to please Him. My restaurant co-workers say that I am faking to be a good man. When we return to restaurant's quarter after work, they say I am faking to be decent so as to make them look like bad persons... I did not join them drinking and gambling. They isolated me. Chang said that he had tried to rely on God's strength to resist temptations. Whenever he was about to yield to temptation, he found his inner support by thinking about his family in China. He admitted that he cried often, but also found solace in meeting fellow Christians in Chinese churches. Amidst his loneliness, his self-perception, as his disclosures demonstrate, was grounded in spiritual belief and in creative acts of thinking about long-distant familial support.

Mrs. Chang: Xiang-jia [Nostalgic of Home] Jia, the Chinese equivalence of home or family, is of utmost importance in defining Mrs. Chang's self-perception and inner dynamics. Like Tin Shimu and Mrs. Ho, Mrs Chang had an intense desire to spend more time at home instead of at work. She longed for a restful and stable home. Before coming to the U.S. Mrs. Chang jia was so central to her personal identity. It

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helped underscore the role family played in forming a personal psychological infra-structure. The notion of xiang-jia [thinking of home] recurred in Mrs. Chang’s narratives. This had two strong implications. First, and dearest to her most immediate concern, was her desire to spend more time with her children. Time taken up by work prevented her so. Second, she was preoccupied with the jia of her mother, a widow who was also a prayful lady leading a family church in China. While her husband was in the U.S. for 6 years, she was in China raising her 2 children, it was her mother who had given her the most support. She intensely missed her mother in China. When I arrived, I was happy to meet with my husband. I was so happy that I could not stop crying... But soon, I worked together with him in the same restaurant kitchen. While spending so much time with my husband, I left my children unattended at home. I missed them and I cried in the corner of the kitchen. When I got home, tired, I cherished that little time with my children. Sometimes in the presence of my children, I would cry, revealing to them how much I missed their Grandma in China. Mrs. Chang, before marrying Mr. Chang, was already acclimated to the supportive environment of a "family church" [jia-tin-jiao-hui], more accurately known as the "underground church" [di-xia-jiao-hui] when religious practice was still under surveillance in the early 80s. In that connection, when she mentioned her homesickness, she implied the larger home of the "homey" religious community as well as missing her mother's jia in China. While her husband was very sympathetic to her sadness, he could not do much to help. She tried to "cry less" so as not to worry him [buyao-fan-ta], as she knew the physical demands working in the kitchen had already wore her husband’s energy.

Jie: The Surrogate Mother Obedient [ting-hua], submissive [shun-cong], agile [guai-giao] were praises Jie often received frm her parents when he managed house chores. A good child in her parents' eyes, Jie was, nevertheless, wrestling with her negative self-rating, even though she did not necessarily know that her negative self-assessment was preventing her from striving, both for English proficiency and for academic success.

85 She and her brother were constantly reminded by their parents to fully capitalize on the educational opportunity so that they would not "get stuck" [bei-kun] like he in the restaurant kitchen. Being an obedient child, Jie wanted to please her parents by doing well in school and by speaking fluent English, but she did not know how to do so. Her attempts to interact in English with government agencies or utility companies whenever such occasions arose demanded her involvement. She felt nervous. She blamed herself for being "mei-yong" [sense of uselessness or being incapable]. The following excerpt also reveals her fatalism and her low opinion of her "brain power" [nao-li]. My brain [nao-jin] is not as good as that of my peers.... Even my brother, who is younger than I am, picks up things much faster than I could manage. I always admire those who spent little effort and yet who could do far better than I did. Mama often encourages me not to give up too soon [bu-yao-fang-qide-tai-kwai]. I told my Mama that I wanted to quit school and start working so I can at least bring home some money and feel that I am a useful member of the family. In fact, Jie took pride in her capability for running the household on behalf of her mother. Her brother Hua used to tease her with the nickname of surrogate mother ([xia] meaning small and [mama] mother) in the house. She took this role as her full responsibility. Gradually, as her attempts to improve her school performance did not yield concrete results, she became negligent in her schoolwork. Her parents, while reminding her of the consequence of not receiving enough education, did not pressure her as much as they did Hua. They were most adamant about their son getting a good education because he was male.

Hua: Redeeming the Mischievous Past My initial impression of Hua as an apathetic youth was altered during my private meeting with him. He took the initiative to ask me about my apartment. In that encounter, he asked specifically for advice about good study habits. He also asked questions about things larger than studying. He asked for direction about how he could overcome his tendency of being irresponsible [mei-yu-ze-ren-gan]. In China, during his father's absence, he had neglected his schoolwork. He spent time playing

86 electronic games. Not long after he arrived in the U.S., several events – other than the pressing demand of acquiring English – prompted him to overcome what his mother referred to as "ma-hu cao-shuai" [sloppy and careless]. Hua’s desire to improve his general attitude toward everyday living changed my initial impression that he was just an apathetic youth. During my later encounters with him, he further disclosed that not only was he trying to formulate a better habit in school and life, but he was also striving for better communication with his father. He began to disclose his inner tension and desire to improve their relationship. Mr. Chang, worrying about their connection, once pleaded with me to help as well. Hua revealed to me an episode that troubled him: One day, the burning scar on my father’s left forearm struck me. I suddenly remember in China, Mama once told us he received a letter from Baba requesting prayer for the healing of his rheumatism that had been failing him in lifting up heavy woks used in Chinese kitchen. Then I did not pay particular attention to this prayer request. I was just focusing on how to find money for games. Hua had not seen his father in six years. When they re-united, he was 15 years old and very aware of the sense of distance [hen-shengshu]. Months later, he observed his father was working strenuously [heng-xin-ku and fei-jin]. His assisting in food deliveries at the restaurant during weekends and summers helped him realize the level of exhaustion and stiffness his father experienced. He became very thankful to his father, but did not know how to convey his respect. Though he did not specifically make the link between his desire to be a better student and son, I gathered that the sense of his guilt over his rebelliousness during his father's absence in China was somehow connected. The significance of this episode will be articulated at greater length when I introduce the notions of xi-sheng [sacrifice] and hui-bao [reciprocity] in the next section.

The Interpersonal Connectedness As parents, these immigrants shared a willingness to make sacrifices [xi-sheng] for the future benefit of their children. This trend plays a

87 significant part in the parent-child interaction. Likewise the children felt burdened by shame and guilt whenever they perceived the extent of the sacrifices made by their parents. They possessed a guilty feeling that their parents were living for the sake of the children, at the expense of their own present lives. In order to transform this burden, these children often unconsciously cultivated a will to h u i - b a o [to reciprocate] as a gesture that could justify these sacrifices. Thus perceived, the interpersonal connectedness of parent and child cannot be reduced to the uncomplicated type of dyadic relationship that the façade might suggest. Rather, connectedness became for them a transformative act; capable of generating motivated diligence as a means by which to overcome short-term hardships with a view toward a better future. This section will incorporate narrative episodes. The aspects of sacrifice [xi-sheng], shame and guilt, as well as reciprocity [hui-bao], will then be discussed. I will examine the way in which a connectedness nourished by everyday encounters serves as a feedback loop, as a way of enriching their interpersonal relationship. The intrapersonal dynamics discussed in the previous section have hopefully enhanced an appreciation of this interpersonal connectedness. Similarly, the depth of this interpersonal dimension will be reinforced in the chapter following which focuses on the logic of the Confucian worldview. An understanding of Confucian tradition will shed light on the symbolic meanings of interpersonal relationship in that worldview. This knowledge will deepen the potential appreciation for these immigrants' narratives in their everyday concreteness.

Sacrifice [Xi-Sheng] The ideographic characters, xi-sheng [sacrifice], can be interpreted as animals or animal-related offerings. The children, who do not know the semantics of xi-sheng, would not necessarily think of animal sacrifice in connection with their parents’ devotion. Such caring providence, however, never failed to elicit very intense feelings in return, for they had themselves been the witnesses of a drastic demotion of their parents' vocational and social standing. In the case of Mei, for instance, a father who used to do medical research was now moving carpets in a store. How did Zheng feel about his father, a traditional qigong healer who prescribed a calm mind and a nourished body, but lately was so unsettled and depressed? Likewise,

88 Hua was uneasy about his previous recklessness and wastefulness in pursuing video game, not knowing that the money his father earned entailed the risk of burning his forearm. These are only a few instances. But how did the parents view their sacrifices? Would they dwell on what they had been? Would they seek to reconstruct their past selves for their children’s sake in a kind of parallel to animal sacrifices? If so, what could have prompted their unbending decision to do so for their children? To capture the deeper significance of xi-sheng, I will locate it in a larger temporal context.

The Notion of Shang-yi Dai, Xia-Yi-Dai The word dai denotes generation, shang-yi-dai means the previous generation, xia-yi-dai, the next generation. These words are charged with a profound personal current for those who weathered the tumult and the upheaval that is modern Chinese history. Tin Shifu lamented that he had squandered his life unwillingly in the years of “destructive political and cultural movement”: I only want to sacrifice myself - for my daughter, for the next generation [xia-yi-dai]... If it weren’t for her, staying here would be meaningless... I am here only for her future. And I wish I could have left China earlier. The political climate can change anytime [sui-shi-hui-bian-dong]. I wish my daughter does not have to go through what my generation has. Likewise Tin Shifu, in a regretful tone of voice, reflected on his daughter’s passing age and her wasteful activity in the political culture of the mainland in her youth: I feel that I am growing older. I am more than 50 years old. If I die now, there is no great loss, for I have lived more than half the life of one's longevity. My generation [wuo-na-yi-dai] missed out on proper schooling opportunity [zheng-gui-xuede-ji-hui]. Referring to the instability caused by the Cultural Revolution, Mrs. Ho also stated that her family had moved to the U.S. in the hope that her son “could avoid political campaign,” she added, "I know that my

89 generation has a lot of limitation in exploring good opportunities, but I hope my son could have a better future.” Reflecting on how their mindset and education were deeply informed by the communist ideology, Mrs. Kung thought that there was more to the world than was embraced by the communist framework. She regretted that her generation was constrained to look at the world in a single framework [yi-mian-dao]. Further, she wanted her daughter to have another opportunity of seeing the outside world [kan-kan-waimian-de-shijie]. Mr. and Mrs. Tin were convinced that the grueling educational standards of the Chinese system might hamper the long-term opportunities of their daughter Zheng. Mrs. Tin was especially concerned about the limited number of openings in higher education. Under the Chinese system, fierce competition embroils the few means to get a seat for enrollment. Mrs. Tin worried that her daughter might be forced into vocational training if her academics were not strong enough. Hence, having heard from relatives about the wealth of educational opportunities in the U.S., she felt sure that not only her daughter, but her husband too, would benefit in the end from the American system. She then applied for immigration. They stressed that they had decided to come to the U.S. for the sake of the next generation [dou-shi-wei-le-xia-yi-dai]. Mr. and Mrs. Chang had a poor education and freely spoke about their uncultured upbringing [wen-hua-shui-ping-tai-di]. Both pondered how best to give their children the chance for a finer education. Their immigration was also motivated by the educational opportunity of their next generation [xia-yi-dai]. Mr. Chang, making a statement more intimate than that of any other respondent, captured the nuances of the Chinese concept of xi-sheng [sacrifices]: For the better future of my children, I am willing to zuo-niuzuo-ma [be cow or horse] (literally understood, a common Chinese expression conveying a slavish level of existence). I just hope that one day they will be able to achieve something [you-chu-tou-de-yi-tian].

The Burden of Receiving What are the consequences of sacrificing so much? More specifically, could such sacrifices induce automatic, voluntary obedience, or would that be viewed as a parental ploy? This section will explore the burden

90 that lies on the children who received so much from their immigrant parents. Sometimes these sacrifices caused confusion, as when Zheng asked herself: I did not understand why my parents have to pay such a high price for my future. The more I sense that they are doing this for me at the expense of their own happiness and future, I am deeply troubled. Is this worth it at all? Why am I so special to be treated this way? I know that their intention is good, but this goodness is an overwhelming burden for me to bear! Mei felt the burden as well. She knew how heavy it was to be a recipient of her father’s sacrificial act. Kept from pursuing his research, her father’s menial job as a mover of carpets saddened her. She knew that … both of my parents were so depressed. I begged them to leave me here and I assured them that I would take care of myself. They should go back to China and take up the careers they had built but left behind. A guilty feeling of receiving so much from her parents contradicted her resistance: I am tired of being constantly reminded that I am their only hope. They said they had left China so that I could have a better future in America. Why did they have to do this for me? There is a burden of give and take between my relationship with my parents. I am often burdened by the feeling of wu-kenei-he [a sense of helplessness and uneasiness]. I work hard but still feel that I am not doing good enough. My mother is sympathetic of my situation, but my father is less understanding. I try to avoid him. Knowing that college scholarships could lessen the financial burden as well as comfort their parents, Zheng and Mei alike worked very hard. For Mei particularly, winning a scholarship represented the most concrete way to repay parents. When she eventually received a full scholarship, this truly brought tremendous sense of affirmation to Mr. and Mrs. Kung. Mrs. Kung found it worth the struggles of all the ups and downs coming to the U.S. Her daughter’s exceptional success

91 deeply confirmed her decision to emigrate. She sighed with relief, "We have laid down a huge stone." Even Hua, once concerned about his irresponsible and careless attitude [ma-hu-cao-shuai], was making a conscious effort toward change: I feel if I cannot help out my parents financially, I need to be financially independent from them. I work as a delivery boy during weekends and summer holidays. At times, I feel like quitting school because I am not very good in that kind of schoolwork. My parents told me that with so little education, I am going nowhere. Sometimes my father would say to me in a very serious manner, and some times in a mocking mood, ‘Do you want to be stuck like me in the kitchen all the rest of your life?’ These narratives illustrate the burden felt by these children. Their narratives highlight that giving [xi-sheng] for the sake of the next generation [xia-yi-dai], but particularly the burden of receiving what is given, is an involved interplay of some times, irrational emotions. This subtlety and complexity thus prompt me to re-examine the issue of the present in the context of xia-yi-dai and shang-yi-dai. A fusion of temporal dimension – their past, present, and future – generated a holistic view of how they should strategize and navigate the direction of their life. With the vision of a better future for the next generation, they managed to cling to the belief that as long as their children would finally benefit from what they had fought for them, all their efforts would be well justified. This sense of purpose and internal locus of self-control sustained the persistence of these parents and children. Amidst the flux of everyday challenges and demands, the family dynamics nurtured the nuances of care and responsibility and fostered the parent-child relationships. But the very intensity also reveals how their interaction (at times conflicts and avoidance) might deepen or alter the quality and understanding of responsibility and relationships. The dynamics of their relationships reveal the reciprocity and care, and how the willingness to respond sensitively to each other underscores their interpersonal obligation. Reflecting on the dimension of interpersonal connection and avoidance, I saw the subtle aspect of reciprocity. On the one hand, the

92 children's gratitude to their parents was profound. It was so delicately mixed with their guilt over having been benefited from their parents' self-abnegation. At times when the guilt overrode the gratitude, they avoided their parents. When guilt subsided, they expressed their gratitude in silence. But how could the parents make sense out of their children's act of incomprehensible avoidance? Is it not natural for the parents to feel despondent when they construed their children's deep silence as a sign of ungratefulness? How were they ever to understand such silence? I learned from these immigrant parents that they sincerely desired good schooling and education for their children. The fact that these parents – like many parents in many cultures, ethnicities, and various social economic statuses – emphasized education, hardly surprised me. It has been said that Chinese achievement was motivated by a long tradition of emphasis on education. While this is true, I see in the families a more recent sociopolitical event that heightened the emphasis. Many parents experienced a disruption in their education due to political events occurring in mainland China. It has also been observed that the aforementioned emphasis on education is matched by a similar stress on the importance of self-cultivation. However that may be, more than one immigrant told me that the importance which they attach to education results from more pragmatic concerns. Inter alia, this background intensified the significance of being able to provide a good education for one’s children. They exhorted their children to seize the educational opportunities available to them in the United States. In narratives they expressed their wishes for their children's education. In encouraging their children to be diligent students, these parents would at times insert a brief episode of their impoverished childhood to inspire obedience and ambition. Reciprocally, these children felt guilt-ridden by their parents' sacrifices, being at times frustrated by a drive to excel so as to appease their parents. At certain points during our interviews, some of the children remarked about an urge to realize the expectations of their parents. Having been made very aware of the array of opportunities which the U.S. present, they began to perceive that education was an important way to attain social as well as financial success. They knew, but could not voice, how much they had profited by the efforts of their parents. The formal give-and-take is very subtle for all its intensity. Mei's discussion with her school counselor in this regard furnishes a fine example.

93 Taking such a perspective draws the individual out of the narrow confines of individual experience and incorporates the interests of others into one’s own life. In this case, the reciprocal interaction and mutuality between parents and child reveal, through the cultural notions of xiao, li, jing, lun, another act of commitment. The aim of this cultural design is to introduce the individual – mediated by the interpersonal and reciprocal relationship between parents and child in the context of family socialization – into the larger community. As such, the waters of private and public (the two separate public and private meanings) are not conceived of as two separate entities but mutually enhancing and overlapping spheres. Rather than a discrete and antithetical aspect, it is a concentric relationship. These meanings are deeply rooted in the Chinese concept of renqing [human feelings]. On the other hand, the everyday human concreteness also added a new gist into the shaping of their renqing. The meanings and feelings are most concretely manifested in the context of reciprocity between these parents and their children. However, the concept of reciprocity, taken for granted and relegated as cliche, is not a form of mutual dependence suppressing individuality. I learned quite the contrary from these immigrants. Their individuality and personal identity, even though it may not be noticeable to them, is actually nurtured by the reciprocity of their relationship. In that sense, this inquiry is to explore the multi-layered meanings of achievement. I examine how these meanings are embedded in the core of renqing [human feelings] and reciprocity, whose richness has often been perpetuated in bipolar characterizations as a collectivistic or individualistic pattern of achievement motivation in social science literature. There are other related issues connected to the central theme of meanings of achievement. For example, understanding the notion of family as a support system– for rearing the children and respecting the elders – is crucial to an understanding of how the subtle meanings of achievement are negotiated. A similar spirit of homo reciprocus [someone gives me something, I give them something in return] is vividly present in these families. In this context of reciprocity, it has not been difficult to make sense of the nuances of creating and maintaining relationships with these families. These interpersonal transactions are meaningfully related to psychological motivations. The Chinese notion of reciprocity presents a unique culture-specific conceptualization of relationships.

94 This notion of reciprocity emphasizes mutual interdependence between parents and children, and it is not to be taken as suppressing the development of autonomy and individuality. This core of reciprocity, and meanings of achievement in the context of reciprocity, provided a solid intermediary ground for me to grapple with the theoretically intricate aspects of human agency on the one hand, and the dynamic of cross-cultural resettlement on the other hand.

Summary Migrating to and living in a new social environment, all the thirteen immigrants had tasted a sense of inadequacy, particularly during the initial period of their emigration. Deciding on migrating and settling here, they could not ignore the new demands that the new environment presented to them. They tried hard to cope with the situations: the consequence of language deficiency, and for parents the issue of employment and its ensuing problem relating to financial constraint. In short, these three major problems affected the whole family as a whole, in both negative as well as positive dimensions. Both the negative and positive will be addressed in the section discussing interpersonal and family dynamics. Though at times it was tempting to isolate oneself in an ethnic enclave so as to avoid substantial learning about the new culture, many of these immigrants realized that this attitude defeated their purpose of migrating to America at all cost. They became more self-directiv, by learning new language and by rebuilding new social network. They wanted to function effectively and live more eventfully in a new sociocultural environment. To do so, they had to continue to adjust and adapt. They acquired new problem-solving skills for dealing with the everyday life and contingents. Doing so, not only the new cultural environment began to make sense to them but more importantly, they began to reflect on how their previous upbringing and socialization in China had shaped them to become who they are presently. They gained insight into the old as well as the new cultural dynamics. The cross-cultural resettlement that brought forth various levels of changes-- intrapersonal, interpersonal, familial, as well as cross-cultural – created at first tensions and conflicts that prompted them to raise questions that gradually led to ongoing search for answers. In that sense, their sense of personhood is in a constant state of becoming, a gradual unfolding flux of growth and change. Though they did not use

95 academic language such as crisis of identity, they asked direct questions related to: What am I doing here? How are these ups and downs going to shape me as a person? In constantly thinking or taking to oneself this kind of questions, they are engaging also in question related to: What does it mean to be Chinese in this land? Could it be better had I stayed in China? The process of reestablishing an inner sense of order underscores their constructing one's personhood. In so doing, they also deal with questions relating to who they are and what they hope to become. The individual who experienced such intrapersonal turmoil might complicate the family dynamics. But family, as a complex and synergistic system, sometimes played a positive role in nurturing the "wounded" member. At other times, the particularly troubled member might also undermine the family's evolving self-regulation. I have tried to adopt an interactive perspective with respect to these issues. While the family system suffered from instability as each member felt the strain of stress, it also provided an environment where each individual member could sustain an ongoing adaptation to the new social condition. Their narrative disclosures deal variously with intrapersonal, interpersonal, and familial aspects. They capture how different human acts – a child being moved by his/her parents' sacrifices, a mother touched by the xiao [filial piety] of one's child – combine with a cultural emphasis on reciprocity to foreground human connectedness. This dimension of narrative and meaning making will be discussed in detail in Chapter 9.

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CHAPTER 7

The Logic of the Worldview of Confucius Personhood, Interpersonal Relationship, and Family Socialization

Self-cultivation is the root, whereas harmony attained in the family, like the branch, is a natural outgrowth of our cultivated selves. Family is the root, whereas harmony attained in the community, the state, and the world is a natural outgrowth of well-regulated families. (Tu, 1986, p. 189) My son [age 10] told me that the school requires them to have their class picture taken. He said that the photo would cost $11. He asked me if he might refuse to have his picture taken. He said, "It is too expensive, it costs almost half of your daily wage.” I heard it and I burst into tears. -Mrs. Ho

Locating "Xiao" in a Larger Meaning System Only by acquainting ourselves with the cultural meaning of xiao [filial piety], can we enhance our appreciation for this particular exchange between mother and child above. Because it is impossible to fully appreciate this youngster's gesture of xiao without also understanding how he views and makes sense of culture, it seems important to first understand the cultural meaning system in which he and his family exist. Only by understanding how he views culture and makes sense of 97

98 it, can we understand his empathy regarding his parents' hardships, and how xiao and empathy conspire to make up his drive to achieve. It is my intent, for expositional purposes, to use the Confucian ideal as a stable frame of reference against which the extent and direction of current change in the larger Chinese world can be gauged. Furthermore, the Confucian worldview emphasizes various concentric circles with self at its center of different realms of social relationships. This Confucian frame of reference is useful in understanding to what extent the individual immigrant – within one’s intra-personal or interpersonal dynamic– reacts or conforms to the ideal conception of those cultural givens. The juxtaposition of ideal and everyday realities will illuminate two points. One, focusing merely on an ideal and integrated whole runs the risk of overlooking the concrete day-to-day inner experience disregarding the "local knowledge" of particular Chinese settings. Two, an in-depth and substantial discussion of this local concreteness will invariably be enriched if one critically attends to how the local context might have drawn symbolic resources from the cultural ideal most exemplified in the Confucius tradition. Likewise, whether studying Chinese individuals or Chinese families, there are two cultural ideals that must first be understood. First, that the responsibility and commitment of the self are enlisted in one's public life for the social good. And second, that the public life locates the self in a larger collectivity because it serves as a condition for individual dignity. Understanding this paves the way for researchers to conduct ethnographic observations about how cultural beliefs may shape individual experience (LeVine, 1982). This issue will be addressed in greater detail in the next chapter. The Confucian worldview espouses a traditional Chinese ideal of moral community, family socialization, and the self. In order to understand the ideational basis of Chinese cultural meaning systems, one needs to first have a deep appreciation of the Confucian values. For example, to understand culture specific concepts such as xiao [filial piety] and huibao [reciprocity], an appreciation of the Confucius worldview is essential. Knowing the rationale supporting these values should help one to understand how they might be embedded and operated at every level of Chinese life, and how the Chinese might relate to and make sense of the world. But the issue of how to appreciate the Confucian cultural values without having necessarily to

99 subject Chinese people to the view of cultural determinism is an important matter that I will address in a later chapter. The Confucian ideal conception of the Chinese family is concerned with the emergence of a cultivated self so that the individual member may, with full mind, heart, will, and strength, know and feel "the sources of self" (Taylor, 1989). In this way, the individual comes to understand and deeply know the ground on which the self defines its commitment and identifications in order to determine what is good and noble and to form a ground on which one is capable of taking a stand (p. 27). In this chapter I will delineate the Confucian ideal of family and examine how this ideal family may provide the psychological infrastructure or base from which the child develops high aspirations for learning to be a human being. Then, I will capture how the ideal Chinese family follows cultural mandates to socialize the child according to the concepts of xiao [filial piety], ren [humanity], jing [reverence], li [propriety], and lun [order]. Each of these elements is considered essential to being human. These ancient Chinese concepts serve as windows with which we can understand the human elements between mother and child. Gazing through these ancient windows, metaphorically speaking, the underlying core of reciprocity gains its sustaining cultural meanings – such as face [lian], sacrifice [xi shen], hope [pan wan], striving for air [zhengqi], bitterness [ku], and mutual understanding [huxiantiliang]. I shall start from the collective memory generated since the ancient era.

An Emergence of an Anthropomorphic Worldview The transition from a prehistoric food-gathering culture to an agricultural and feudal society was a gradual process. It involved not only institutional reorganization but also the evolution of a long process of cosmological speculations and the maturation of different social philosophies – among them, Confucian thought and practice. The long history of Chinese civilization defies monolithic characterization. However, scholars generally agree that the ancient Chinese agricultural economy serves as a useful strategic reference for understanding the character of Chinese society (La Barre, 1946; Lang, 1968). The structure of this ancient agricultural economy paved the

100 way for the emergence of an imperial system. This structure bred a highly centralized state that ruled over free peasants, thereby constituting the wealth-producing and the bureaucratic ruling classes (Lang, 1968, p. 4). These historical and socioeconomic precedents, shaped by the forces of an evolving cosmological worldview, resulted in theories of social evolution. The concepts of Yin and Yang serve as an example. Yin/Yang, emerging first as cosmological speculation, gradually became a commonly accepted cosmological principle and was progressively assimilated as a social and moral principle that both explained and guided social and individual motivation and action (Chan, 1963). Yin/Yang was believed to function as the power inherent in all phenomena in nature. The rising and falling of these phenomena were the respective actions of the Yin and Yang forces (Munro, 1969). This concept contributed to shaping the fabric of traditional Chinese society and culture, most notably in the imposition of a hierarchical social pattern in spiritual and human-relational matters. As Yang is high, Yin is low, even though the one implies, and is always transforming into, the other. Within this cosmological framework, heaven is described as Yang, and thus shang [noble]; the earth as Yin, and thus bi [humble]. This parallel crosses over into distinctions drawn between the honorable and the humble classes. Social orders were structured accordingly (Munro, 1969). As the social system became a more intricate public organization, a more elaborated principle to regulate it was required. Thus there emerged the concept of li [literally, ‘principle’, a different word from the li, meaning ‘propriety’ or ‘graciousness’] based on the gradual refinement of the primordial Chinese worldview and its ontological thinking (Chan, 1963). Li as cosmic principle understood to maintain nature's balance, came to serve as a foundation for the Chinese worldview upon which Chinese social philosophy and myriad cultural directives were constituted.

Roots of Confucianism It was during the age of Jiu [Spring and Autumn period, 770-476 B.C. ] and Zhan Guo [Warring States period, 475-221 B.C.], when competing worldviews were being actively postulated by various schools of thought. The Confucian anthropomorphic worldview (modified from

101 the earlier agricultural/economic worldview) gained increasing influence, and Confucianism began to be assimilated as the reigning Chinese socio-political philosophy. After extensive modification and promotion by Confucius and his subsequent disciples, this worldview became the Chinese ideal conception of organismic unity. In the midst of recurring wars and atrocities, the time of Confucius (born 551 B.C.) was a period of largescale domestic instability. During these centuries of unrest and disorder, the populace grew lax about observing traditional principles aimed at preserving social harmony. Confucius set out to remedy this situation. He proposed tightening various aspects of social relationships in the hope of promoting interpersonal and social harmonies, and more importantly, thereby reinstalling the organismic unity. Rather than an innovator, he understood himself to be a restorer of older traditional virtues and values. Confucianism, like the earlier agricultural economic worldview and like Taoism, included an enormous respect for nature and the underlying cosmological order. Because of its ideological congruence with the agricultural economic worldview and the subsequent Chinese socio-political system, Confucianism was espoused by most rulers in the political history of China (Stover 1974; Yang, 1986). The dominant ideological position of Confucianism in traditional Chinese society is deeply entrenched.

An Organismic Unity: Confucius' Anthropomorphic Worldview Confucianism is predicated on the premise of a dynamic order and interrelated whole. Order and wholeness are the basic nature of the universe, but to maintain them one must rely on human effort and individual self-transcendence (Tu, 1993). In order to become a profound person [junzi], one must engage in an ongoing process of selfcultivation – a project which also has solemn moral and cosmological implications. As Tu (1986), a Chinese historian and philosopher asserts: "If we fail to live up to our humanity, we fail cosmologically in our mission as co-creator of heaven and earth and morally in fulfilling our duty as fellow participants in the great cosmic transformation" (p.177).

102 This vision requires one to attend to the centrality of a myriad of interactions in human daily life in order to further the harmonious interaction of heaven and earth, state, community, family, and self which together form an organismic unity. This is the ideal proposed in the Confucian text, Great Learning [Daxue]. Great Learning is taken from the Treatises on the Rites, Liji, completed in the 3rd and 4th centuries. Confucius anthropomorphized nature and the cosmos, absorbing them into conscience, consciousness, and sensitivity. He attributed this to the mind and self of man as a basis for self-cultivation (Munro, 1963, p. 47). By seeking nature's ethical qualities and relationships, Confucius also sought principles by which to guide human conduct. To attain the condition of tian ren he yi [the unity of heaven and man], an individual must cultivate the very attributes of heaven: conscience, consciousness, and sensitivity. These attributes form the content of lun [order], xiao [filial piety], jing [reverence], l i [propriety], shu [reciprocity], and other sentiments essential, in Confucius's view, to the cultivation of self. Self-cultivation, Confucius believed, lay at the root of all social and ultimately, cosmological order. This ideal of organismic unity was intended to be far more than an abstract metaphysical system. Confucius constructed a social philosophy that emphasized a person's moral commitment and concrete responsibility to the cosmos, to the community, family, fellow human beings, and to oneself. This organismic unity is brought about through an interrelated set of tasks, dwelling with the individual, as summarized in the famous Confucian dictum: When the personal life [shen] is cultivated, the family [ jia] will be regulated; when the family is regulated, the state [guo] will be in order; and when the state is in order, there will be peace through the world.[tian xia]. Confucianism and personhood in the context of interpersonal relationship The Confucian notion of self and personhood is actually predicated in a large cosmological worldview. From this perspective, a highly complicated notion of the self and worldview emerged. Based on the cosmological order between heaven, earth and man, Confucius elaborated a concentric nature of social relationship. This concentric model involves a system of parts, each one located within a larger

103 system. The smallest part, located at the center, represents the self. The next larger part represents interpersonal relationship; after that, family; next, community; next state/nation; after that, universe; and finally, surrounding the entire system — heaven. Self, at the center of this entire social relationship and located immediately within the system of social relationship, has dynamic implications. The self engages in a bi-directional process with social relationship. It feeds and nurtures the social relationship. The social relationship simultaneously feeds and nurtures the self. This feedback loop enriches the nature and quality of the interpersonal relationship and strengthens the connection between the two. The quality of this connection prepares both self and social relationship for effective functioning within the next larger system — family. Family socialization then, supports the two smaller parts providing a safe, enriching environment to nurture them both. The self and interpersonal relationship also feed and nurture the family. Each part feeds into the others and also receives nourishment from the others. As a whole, they become strong. This strength prepares them to thrive in the system in which the family is couched — the larger community. The larger community then and all of the smaller systems within it are supported by and support the state/nation. The state/nation while supporting the systems within it is supported by the system in which it is couched — the Universe. The universe then, supports and is supported by all of the smaller parts within it. It is also surrounded by and supported by the greatest system — heaven, which supports and is supported by every part of every system. How one develops one's self, according to this logic, has cosmological implications. That is, an individual's actions, if performed in a way that is conforming to cosmological harmony, will also bring harmony to other realms within the system. Family & family socialization The Chinese family system is the cornerstone of social structure. Predicated on the open system of organismic unity, the Chinese family, like many families in other cultures, is expected to fulfill its own part of the cultural mandates supporting a larger worldview. The weight assigned to the Chinese family system is saturated with ethicalreligious significance, as I will attempt to show in the following discussion of the mission of the family in relation to heaven, the state, the community, and the self.

104 I shall explain how the idealized developmental cycle of the Chinese family system – its internal structure and dynamics, its domestic locus and its relation to the outer world – fits into the larger socio-cultural context. In doing so, I shall identify several key dominant values and sentiments and discuss their influence on the conscious response of Chinese parents to their children. These values and sentiments are: ren [humanity], xiao [filial piety], li [propriety], l u n [order], and jing [reverence]. The persistent inculcation of these values through family socialization is essential to ensure the child's eventual success in social transactions. It also fulfills the project of self-cultivation. In Confucius's holistic vision, heaven, state, community, family, and the cultivated-self are closely integrated, each governed by a division of labor. Each constituent, working interactively, supports an organismic vision. In return, the underlying principle and nature of this vision make the moral community, tightly integrated family, and cultivated-self realizable. So perceived, the psychological process of each individual is interwoven with, and inseparable from the well-being of the whole. To extend the logic, what an ordinary citizen does privately, or within the family, has social and political significance outside of the family as well as within it. A collective aspiration – social harmony for example – has direct implications for the community, family, and self. This interwoven relationship further implies that the socio-cultural order, while concerned with macroscopic issues such as the attainment of universal peace, also spells out a micro-psychological direction for selfcultivation. The ideal of organismic unity and its implication to socio-centrism & collectivism In the ideal Confucian conception of the Chinese family setting, several sets of the child's fruitful dyadic relationships – those with parents, elders, and siblings – are expected to nourish the self. These relationships are believed to enlarge the inner resources of the self while deepening one's self-awareness within and of the world. Both aspects are intended to overcome, to use a more psychoanalytic description, the self-centeredness of the private ego. At the family level, these family relationships keep the family members from being pulled apart centrifugally.

105 Self-cultivation and interpersonal relationships promote a vision transcending narrow self-interest and egocentrism as a means of selftransformation and self-cultivation. That being the case, one's actions, commitments, feelings, and beliefs are anchored in social networks related to solidarity and concern for others (Hui, 1988). From early childhood, values and sentiments such as humanity, reciprocity, filial piety, reverence, and propriety [ren, shu, xiao, jing, and li] are assimilated into one's self-identity and reworked throughout one's lifetime. This cycle of human development is nurtured in a larger network of relationships. Thus, an individual's values and commitment, inherent as a way of life, merge and interact with a larger collectivity constituting an organismic unity (Tu, 1985, 1986; Hui, 1988). What appears from this depiction is that the public good and the private self become an inter-permeating whole, and that the family plays a nurturing role in fusing the private/public realm into this whole. The Psycho-cultural implication of ren [humanity]; xiao [filial piety]; li [propriety]; lun [order]; and jing [reverence] Self-awareness and introspection appear to be universal in human experience (LeVine, 1982) just as each culture has its own version of self. The Chinese self, as a central feature of personal and cultural representation, is nurtured first within the family. According to the Confucian ideal, the family should provide a psychological infrastructure or base from which a child develops high aspirations for learning to be a full human being. In this context, the self is infused with its moral mission in relation to heaven, its obligation to the community, and its duties to the family. Accordingly, the cultivation of the ideal self includes the nurturance of, notably, ren, xiao, li, lun, jing. These values and sentiments related to the self will first be fostered and practiced in the family and will then extend to the larger community. The Confucian ideal of a peaceful universe is first realized in this bottom-up perspective. This conception of self, then, has a communal quality, as opposed to the idea of self as an isolated entity (Tu, 1985). Lun [order] Confucius also lays out Wu Lun, commonly known as the five cardinal relationships. Wu Lun concerns interaction of parent-child, husbandwife, sibling-sibling, friend-friend, and ruler-minister (Chan, 1963). Confucius's vision of the way to develop a moral community thus

106 begins with a personal reflection of the human condition, as well as one's relation, duty, and obligation to the family, to the community, to the state, and to the entire universe. Likewise, an individual's reflection on the attributes of – and one's covenant with – heaven also permeates all relationships in all aspects of life. These interpersonal relationships are emphasized in the hope that the moral community can be practically sustained. Three of the five relationships concern the context of family socialization: parent-child, husband-wife, and sibling-sibling. It is reasonable to infer that the establishment of a moral community, state, and peace throughout the world are understood to depend largely on how well the three interpersonal relationships are carried out in the familial environment. These differentiated orders, as intended by Confucius, are accompanied by various culturally prescribed sentiments so as to support the unity and harmony of world understood anthropomorphically. Ren and Shu In Confucius's worldview an individual human being is the public property of the cosmos, as well as the self-conscious manifestation of heaven (Tu, 1985; Chan, 1963; Lang, 1968; Munro, 1969). The sentiment of ren, human-heartedness [humanity], as an expression of the dynamism and adaptability of humanity, enables us to enter into a variety of reciprocal relationships within our environment, and to form an intricate network of communication with heaven, earth, and a myriad of other beings (Tu, p. 178). Shu [reciprocity], seen by Confucius as a human trait par excellence. specifies the consideration entailed in human relations. This sentiment toward others is not merely altruistic. It is also essential to one's self-cultivation. The family serves as a natural setting in which to foster these sentiments. As interpersonal family relationships – sonparent, husband-wife, sibling-sibling – extend into a densely textured human network, lives become more complex and grounded upon mutual consideration. The individual, as well as the community, benefits from being enriched and nourished by others' lives. Thus, as Confucius's idealism demonstrates, the simple act of maintaining even one fruitful dyadic relationship has public significance. Moreover, the ideal of this public good is first germinated in the family, which supports and is supported by two crucial sentiments, xiao [filial piety] and Jing [reverence] (Tu, 1985, 1986; Chan, 1963; Chao, 1983).

107 Xiao [filial piety] and Jing [reverence] Etymologically, xiao [filial piety], is composed of two parts. The top part stands for ‘old’ and the lower part represents zi, [son or child]. Xiao means what children [zi] owe to the lao or aged. Thus the doctrine of piety refers in general to conscientiousness in the performance of duties naturally owed to one's parents in particular and other relatives more generally (Chao, 1983, pp. 72-3). Taken literally, there has often been an association and confusion between the sentiment of filial piety and the fear of authority. The sentiment of filial piety is filled with reverence and gratitude, whereas the sentiment of fear implies that the authority to which one submits is void of ci [kindness], jing [respect and reverence], and ai [love]. In that sense, confusing the notion of authority with that of coercion is missing the gist of the sentiment of filial piety. Hsu (1978), for example, asserts that the emphasis on authority in the Chinese kinship system makes it relatively easy for a father and mother to exercise authority. The chief basis of parental authority, he argues, has been tradition. The dictum to which Hsu appeals in making the argument, "tian xia wu bu shi zhi fu mu" [there are no parents who are wrong], implies, I would suggest, a distorted concept of filial piety. The sentiment of filial piety, in essence, is not a rigid exercise of domination vs. subordination. Chinese family relationships – at least in their idealized form – are based not on coercion but on the acknowledged superiority of the bearer of authority (Lang, 1968). The son who recognizes paternal authority may, indeed, feel some fear of his father, but the fear is typically accompanied by feelings of love, admiration, or respect. The father who inspires his children only with fear has no authentic authority over them, but simply the power of coercion (Lang 1968). The father's authority must be buttressed by the sentiment of ci [kindness]. Therefore, in interacting with the child, the father is engaging in his own act of self-cultivation. That is, by socializing his child, the father is also cultivating his own humanity and kindness in the context of that relationship. Likewise, by interacting properly with one's parents, the child is also engaging in acts of self-cultivation. In this sense, filial piety is saturated with ethical and religious significance. The way a child and parents interact with one other is a concrete expression of how each of them responds to the will of heaven (Chan, 1963).

108 Heaven, as described by Confucius, is believed to possess the qualities of consciousness, conscience, and sensitivity. In the Confucian anthropo-cosmic worldview, the nature of Heaven is ideally interjected into every aspect of community, family, and self. Thus, the sentiments of xiao [filial piety] and jing [respect and reverence] should be understood with reference to their relationship to Tian, [heaven]. Therefore, an individual's attitude – with or without the "heart and mind" – toward parents in the family, or the elders in the larger community, tells much about how the individual lives as a human interacting with nature and communicating with heaven (Tu, 1985). Filial piety, so conceived, is the natural outcome of human sensitivity rather than the result of “an ingenious social imposition of the superego on the unsuspecting child" (pp. 183-4). The sentiment of jing [reverence], which is first evoked toward Tian [heaven] is carefully nurtured and implanted in individual consciousness. One's reverence for one's elders and parents, accordingly, evolves into a social sentiment. This sentiment of reverence and filial piety will be concretely and successfully practiced in the family setting and gradually extended to other human networks, permitting the entrance into a variety of reciprocal relationships with one's fellow human beings.

CHAPTER 8

Cross-Cultural Resettlement and Issues of Meaning-Making

I did not know how to greet people, and even ordering food in fast food outlets caused some problems. I barely knew how to speak, understand, or read English. The attendant was impatient as I struggled with my heavily accented and broken English, aided by clumsy gestures. I wasn't sure what I wanted to order. I felt as if I were an idiot: mute, deaf, and blind. I am truly mo yon [useless]. -Mr. Ho

Hurdles to Cross-Cultural Adaptation Cross-cultural resettlement entails an extensive remaking of meaning, one that extends far beyond simply learning to speak and understand the English language. This snapshot of Mr. Ho at a fast food restaurant highlights the experience of culture shock; being shaken loose from one's cultural embeddedness by a new cultural reality. Because Chinese cultural meaning systems are radically different from American ones, my informants' abilities to adapt to life in the United States entailed extensive readjustment to their behavioral as well as psychological realms. Inability to communicate effectively, feelings of inadequacy and disorientation, and readjusting to the loss of customary Chinese symbolic codes and behavioral modes in everyday interactions are only a few of the many acute experiences that troubled my informants. These experiences forced them to think deeply about their own cultural values, beliefs, and social behaviors. 109

110 In this chapter, I raise specific issues concerning the psychocultural dimensions relevant to my informants. It is important to note that these are context-specific observations and, therefore, are not intended to describe all immigrant groups. In what follows, I shall tap into Mr. Ho's case and gradually depart from it in order to deepen the discussion of two central theoretical issues: culture as a meaningmaking system, and the individual as a meaning maker.

Relating to a New Social World We are symbolic beings. Greeting people, ordering food in a restaurant, commuting on public transportation, and asking for directions are just some of the routine tasks most people ordinarily perform with ease. Typically, we take for granted the skills necessary to conduct activities of daily living. But these simple tasks that we perform effortlessly are mediated and coordinated by complex symbolic meaning systems that often escape our attention. The English language, street signs, nonverbal cues, and cultural artifacts, to name a few, are cultural tools individuals use to maintain and regulate their lives. Without these tools or with blunted ones like Mr. Ho's broken English or clumsy body language and gestures, the ability to effectively communicate one's intention and meaning becomes problematic. Certainly, I am not stating that because of their language deficiency, these immigrants' lives became meaningless. Rather, I am using Mr. Ho's case to highlight how problems relating to a new social world incapacitate many immigrants. His self-deprecation – feeling as if he were an idiot (mute, deaf, and blind) – attests to his impaired confidence. This predicament enlightens us about possible ways to re-examine issues of meaning-making and cultural adaptation.

Meaning-Making and Cross-Cultural Adaptation Physical reality seems to recede in proportion, as man's symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves, man is, in a sense, constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, and mythical symbols or religious rights, that

111 he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium. He lives in the midst of imaginary emotions, in hopes and fears, in illusions and disillusions, in his fantasies and dreams (Cassirer, 1944, p. 25). Cultural adaptation has major emotional and cognitive repercussions. Rapid transition from one culture to another often causes culture shock. For instance, the immigrant can become disoriented and challenged struggling to re-institute order. The new external environment and symbolic world opens up a confusing array of new perceptual stimuli and signifiers. This drastic change of cultural meaning systems acutely deregulates one’s meaning-making ability at the individual level. This is not to say that meaning making is unproblematic in intra-cultural or familiar settings. Existential tension and the search for meaning typically exist in varying intensities throughout the life cycle regardless of the familiarity with the culture. With the bombardment of new and unfamiliar cues, customs, norms, signs, and symbols, Mr. Ho struggled to reorient himself in response to another set of symbolically mediated order of understanding. In other words, in order to navigate functionally in a new milieu, he needed to acquire certain knowledge regarding how meaning is signified through this new set of symbolic representations. His inadequate English skills highlight the mediating structure and the cognitive aspect of meaning-making processes. Due to his lack of language skills and semiotic tools, his deficiency in processing and constructing meaningful order also prompted his psychological anxiety and physical exhaustion. Consequently, he rated himself negatively. Prompted by Mr. Ho's case, I highlight the extent to which human psychological processes are influenced by the way we classify the external world. I do so carefully so as not to fall into the fallacy of cultural determinism. To ensure a balance, I consider the dynamic interplay between cultural realms and the active role of individual human agency. Thus perceived, the following review on the properties of culture and its constituent parts, the role of family as a socialization agent of cultural values, and the construction of selfhood are all conceptual and heuristic preambles to address a larger issue. That is; How do culture and self implicate one another in the process of meaning making?

112

Cultural Meaning Systems Jerome Bruner once wrote that culture, though man-made, both forms and makes possible the workings of a distinctively human mind. Learning and thinking are always situated in a cultural setting and are always dependent upon the utilization of cultural resources (1996). Max Weber (1949) posited that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. And Clifford Geertz, expanding on this metaphor of the human being suspended on the web, sees cultural analysis not as an experimental science in search of law but as an interpretive act, one in search of meaning (1973). In order to reconstruct, rather than deconstruct, the cross-cultural experiences and meaning-making processes of the immigrant informants in my study, I view culture as a web of belief and meaning systems. It has directive force in prescribing and proscribing culturally valued or sanctioned teachings, especially if we take a view that considers how members of a society interact with this directive force. The informants in my study appeared to be suspended from cultural webs, struggling to balance themselves as they navigated their way through the many tangles. I sought to understand the meanings they made as they considered each new tangle. Viewing culture this way, balanced by a dialectical consideration at the individual level, prevents me from believing human beings are preprogrammed to act rigidly according to cultural rules. This version of culture, in short, validates the individual as an active meaningmaking agent. It also addresses the issue of human agency. Such a view has provided an organizing scheme in which I conceptualized and interpreted my fieldwork narratives and observations. It served as a framework sensitive to "local knowledge" (Geertz, 1983), one that juxtaposed and incorporated analysis of empirical data. The following discussions from a top-down perspective about elements of culture, such as worldview and family socialization, shall eventually converge with a bottom-up perspective on the construction of selfhood, which will in turn shed light on the psychocultural dimension of cultural resettlement.

The contour of a worldview Most cultures have a dominant worldview, often in the midst of competing subcultures. A worldview, as I will demonstrate, is of

113 paramount importance to the configuration of social and cultural arrangements. It includes a set of ideologies relating to spiritual, material, and human-relational matters such as interpersonal mannerisms and the concept of self (Redfield, 1952; Spiro, 1951; Hsu 1985; Shweder, 1990). From the components of a given worldview one can infer various aspects of human need to explain existence as well as the many experiences pertaining to self, other human beings, and the cosmos (Spiro 1954). Contents and components of a worldview also suggest why a particular culture invests effort doing certain things as well as refraining from others in order to achieve desired social goals (Whiting & Child 1953; Whiting & Whiting, 1975; LeVine, 1994). Thus perceived an overarching worldview, with its symbolic contents and cognitive orientation, has affective and existential consequences. Within form and content, a worldview sketches the structural relation of symbolic order (Geertz, 1973; Shweder, 1992). My discussion of worldview and culture, and my subsequent treatment of culture and family socialization are both grounded in the principle of normative order.

Normative and cognitive socio-cultural orders Culture is a dynamic system constantly accommodating and revising itself (Giddens, 1990; Marcus & Fischer, 1986). In this section I shall briefly describe two important dimensions of socio-cultural orders: the normative dimension and the cognitive dimension (Spiro, 1984; LeVine, 1982). Normative order is concerned with the functional maintenance of the socio-cultural system as well as with the means envisioned to ensure a satisfactory way of life. This extends to how a community or family is organized, as well as how group dynamics or interpersonal relationship are played out. The cognitive socio-cultural order views culture as a meaning system with an inner order of networks and configurations monitoring the limits and parameters required for the optimal operation within the defined system. This can elucidate how social norms and rules are organized. Normative dimension In the normative dimension the gradual evolution and formation of a worldview, once gaining dominant force, serves as social philosophy or normative order. This emerging order – in view of its ecological settings – guides institutional design and the principles of social interaction. Within this normative order, cognitive anthropologists

114 study the organization and schematic representation of normative goals to arrive at a cognitive order or interlocking system of cultural meaning (D'Andrade, 1995; Holland & Quinn,1987; Quinn, 1990; Strauss, 1992). An appreciation for this normal order is crucial to understand the nuances of, for example, ren [humanity], li [propriety], lun [order], and jing [reverence]. The normative environment, in exerting the force of its rules and regulations, elicits those traits and behaviors that are considered socially favorable. Human actions and social meanings, guided by cultural scripts, interplay with larger sets of cultural mandates that conform to the ideals and purposes of a broader worldview which serves as an overall cultural directive (Hallowell, 1955; Spiro, 1951; Whiting & Child, 1953; Whiting & Whiting, 1975). An understanding of normative order provides insights into why a society, based on its particular ecological situation, selects one form of institutional design over another. Variations derive from two objectives: the optimization of individual growth and the fulfillment of socio-culturally prescribed goals. While both objectives must fit with the given worldview, the normative order is conceived of as functional and in the service of the culture rather than constraining the sociocultural organization. The cognitive socio-cultural order The relation between culture and cognition is an important and complicated one and often contains various meanings. Here I will discuss cognitive order, specifically considering ways in which culturally distinctive goals, norms, and rules relate to the normative order as regulative social entities are schematically organized (D'Andrade, 1995; Holland & Quinn, 1987). Without pretending to be absolute, the concept of culture as a cognitive order or meaning system has a distinct advantage in an age in which the definitions of culture are varied and elusive. This can imply that culture is to a certain extent designed and shared, albeit incompletely shared (Quinn & Strauss, 1993; Swartz, 1991). In this organizing scheme their participation is then possible (Maxwell, 1986; Pelto, 1978, 1979; Wallace, 1961). Extending the cognitive view of culture, D'Andrade (1984, 1992, 1995) as well as Holland & Quinn (1987) propose the idea of culture as a meaning-making system. This type of meaning system, organized schematically, provides cultural knowledge essential both for coping

115 with the environment and for performing specialized roles. A cultural meaning system does more than represent facts and create entities. It denotes why people feel bound or compelled to obey cultural values and social commands from their cultural meaning system (D'Andrade, 1992; Shweder, 1992). This notion of obedience, however, does not necessarily forfeit human agency and intention. It makes possible the interaction of culture and self within the perceived cultural constraint. In summary, normative and cognitive orders serve to fulfill the functional requirements and organization of a socio-cultural system. Thus far, I have not addressed how the larger socio-cultural system relates to the psychological infrastructure of individual development. This issue shall become clear as we come to deal with the social agency, mainly the family. The socializing agent, mediating between the normative order and the individual, gives clues about how sociocultural processes and individual psychological processes complement one another (LeVine, 1981; Kardiner, 1939; Spiro, 1993; D'Andrade, 1992, 1995; Strauss, 1992; Shweder, 1992). Their interaction and the mechanisms and modes of operation behind mutually regulating activities are intricately complex. For example, the immigrant families must re-regulate the dynamics of family socialization within the context of resettlement and cross-cultural adjustment. Their cases highlight why the dynamics of their interaction resists a more deterministic, static characterization.

Family as a Socializing Agent of Cultural Meaning Systems Family socialization reflects both a universal and a unique set of cultural concerns that a particular society confronts. It is universal in the sense that family, as a pan-cultural phenomenon, exists on earth. It is culture-specific in the sense that its way of socializing differing sets of values and goals is inspired by its respective worldview. As a socializing agent, the institution of family aims to initiate its members into socially desirable roles as well as lead its members to perform deeds that will result in socially beneficial outcomes. External and internal sanctions provide the direction one may need to perform a socially acceptable role. Though established in the socialization process at any stage of life, these sanctions are cultivated particularly through family socialization and most extensively, during

116 the child-rearing period (Coleman, 1991). The childhood task of observing prescribed sets of socio-cultural roles and activities can ideally both fulfill individual psychological needs as well as maintain social order (Whiting & Child, 1953; Spiro, 1951, 1961; LeVine, 1982). This selective process of conforming to social goals and allocating one's energies in certain socially prescribed ways has individual psychological significance. Social conformity impresses upon the child, either encouraging or frustrating his or her later experiences (Gerth & Mills, 1953; Freud, 1923).

Individual as Meaning Maker and Cultural Construction of Selfhood The outlook of any individual may be said to consist of several overlapping, partly conflicting belief systems; religious, class, socioeconomic, political, regional, racial, ethnic, gender, vocational, or generational (Marx, 1988; p. ) Marx's remark underscores the dialectical aspect of culture-self interplay. It reminds us of two problematic formulations overlooking how culture and self implicate one another. The two extreme positions are cultural determinism and individualistic relativism. The first assigns all causality to cultural influence. The second suggests that individuals are free agents who act on the basis of choice, somehow independent of culture. To reject both of these views an interactionistic framework would be crucial to raise relevant issues concerning how culture as a meaning-making system interplays with the "self-driven" aspects of the individual as a meaning maker (Becker, 1956; Bruner, 1990; Cohen, 1994; Gadamer, 1975; Goffman, 1959; Ricoeur, 1970, 1992). In other words, an interactionistic framework bridges the gap between descriptions of socio-cultural processes on the one hand, and individual psychological and motivational constructs on the other. While culture prescribes a cognitive order and meaning-making system, this same cultural frame of ordering the world does not completely determine the perspective held by individual social actors (Spiro, 1984; D'Andrade, 1984, 1992, 1995). That is to say, while culture creates categories of meaning it allows its members to reinterpret those meanings in unique ways, however idiosyncratic they

117 may be. Cultural directives, mediated by various thought processes, may engender certain actions and behavior. But these directives may also have simplified representational features that might not evoke a person's actions or behavior. For example, a Chinese person might fully "understand" the underlying logic of the Chinese cultural value of filial piety, but he may decide to ignore the value and relegate it as unimportant or misconstrue it as a deterrence of self-advancement. His understanding of this cultural concept does not necessarily elicit actions and behavior conforming to this cultural representation. The proscriptive and prescriptive aspects of culture become relevant to the discussion here. They suggest that in the process of socialization, the members of a society are expected to conform to the norms and standards set by socially prescribed rules that are governed by the principles and ideologies that reflect the society's dominant worldview (Burton & Reis, 1981). Through external contingencies, in the form of rewards and punishment, the social member’s behavior may be modified and maintained in the desired manner (pp. 675-6), although different societies tolerate different degrees of challenge to their norms before they impose these contingencies. Similarly, the transmission of cultural teachings, either proscriptive or prescriptive, may be deeply internalized in an individual's personal meaning-making system as personal beliefs become potential motivational forces (Shweder, 1991). Proscriptive or prescriptive behaviors here refer to behavior initiated by cultural directives such as: "thou shalt not" or "do unto others.” Any deviance from these directives might elicit shameful or guilty feelings. Conversely, certain sophisticated cultural values and teachings may remain at the "cliché" level, neither generating motivation, initiating action, or eliciting remorse. To put it another way, it is not enough to apply linear logic when trying to understand how the mechanisms of social control are exerted. One must balance such a discussion by looking at how members, through their own agency, either accept or reject a society's rules and values. In the socialization process, demands are made on members that may satisfy or frustrate their individual needs. In turn, the members' socialization experiences may be perceived as satisfying, frustrating, or a paradoxical combination of both, depending on how they cope with the social demands made upon them. This movement between overt,

118 external control, and inner, cognitive self-control (including the choice to rebel) is therefore a complicated one. Social actions are not merely the reflexive responses to superordinate, determining forces. Individuals are capable of selfevaluation and of constantly appraising what to adopt or discard in relation to their subjective conditions. This reflexive inquiry, necessary to an evolving construction of self-identity, is routinely sustained by a constant interplay between culture and self. Culture and self are in an "ongoing dialogue" through which the social actors continually integrate external events and sort them into a "story" about the self in ways that contribute to their ongoing and unfolding personal biography (Giddens, 1976, 1990, 1991). This existential search, as in "Who am I?” is part of the self's ongoing struggle to balance the inner and outer world (Hallowell, 1955; Kohut, 1977; Taylor, 1989). The reciprocity of this inner-outer interplay reveals that the construction of self is influenced by many factors. The sum total of any given culture is not internalized within any single self. The self, with its "wisdom of the ego" (Vaillant, 1993), is capable of varying its reactions to normative socio-cultural conventions to which it may visibly appear to conform and publicly endorse, while privately deviating from these same conventions (LeVine 1981; Obeyesekere, 1981, 1990). For example, a child who is submissive to his parents, and thereby appears as if he is fulfilling the teaching of xiao [filial piety], might be manipulative in his intent. While publicly or outwardly conforming to the cultural teaching, the child inwardly violates the very essence of this teaching. In that sense, the right attitude beneath the act of xiao, while less apparent, is more important as far as the cultural essence of reverence is concerned. It has to be cautioned, therefore, that knowledge about the cultural content, while essential, does not necessarily point to the cultural basis of an individual's action. A person can know the "rules of the cultural game" so well that he eventually exploits them and emerges as "master of the game" in the negative sense. To know a person, we need to go beyond conjecture based on cultural knowledge. We need to know a good deal about a person's goals, biographical data, preferences, beliefs, and ethical orientation. This fact illuminates why prediction, based purely on cultural level projection – cultural X rays – barely illustrates the inner world of the individual self (LeVine, 1982; Shweder, 1980).

119 Thus perceived, to conclude that a cultural ideal of selfrepresentation is isomorphic to real self-representation is tantamount to reducing the complexities of individuals to generalized collectivities (Spiro, 1993; Cohen 1994). It is problematic to draw conclusions directly from scanning dominant traditional values or to extrapolate from that facile impression, individual motivation. It is not that such sources are not helpful but rather that our inquiry must always go farther. It is important to capture not only the harmony but also the inherent tension between culture and self which is characteristic of any form of human development.

The Psycho-Cultural Dimension of CrossCultural Adaptation The preceding sections in this chapter set a stage for understanding the psycho-cultural dimensions of cross-cultural adaptation. Perceiving culture as a way of life and as a shared meaning system can be helpful in contextualizing the dilemma in which immigrants are often caught. This conception of a shared meaning system, though problematic in the view of popular postmodernism, highlights the dilemma of uprooting from one meaning system into that of another. This uprooting process, together with the experience of replanting, involves a massive reorganization of meaning on the level of personal meaning making. However, the relation between cultural meaning systems and individual motivation involves complex social and cognitive mappings whose connections are difficult to determine empirically (D'Andrade, 1995). But difficult and taxing as it appears, it is important to acknowledge that the dynamic interplay between culture and self is crucial to unravel immigrants' experiences with cross-cultural resettlement. The cross-cultural arena has the potential to illustrate the dynamics of human development within cross-cultural settings. It might also deepen our appreciation of human development in general. It offers a perspective, in view of the phenomenon of culture shock, to realize how deeply acculturated a person may have been in a previous cultural environment. Just as a fish does not truly appreciate water, until it is out of the water, a culture-shocked immigrant may not truly appreciate his/her previous web of semiotic configurations until he or she is removed from it.

120 As in the case of my informants, experiencing culture shock enriched not only their understanding of the cultural dynamics and processes of the host culture. The culture shock also enabled them to gain insights regarding their understanding of previous cultural frames in which they had been socialized. Trying to make sense of a strange world in order to make it familiar, immigrants are, in some ways, like anthropologists doing fieldwork in a foreign land. They embark on the making and remaking of meaning, and by doing so, draw insights afforded by the reflections of cross-cultural dynamics. Additionally, these immigrant scenarios shed light on the complexity of the self-development process. Their cross-cultural resettlement raises questions about the construction of personal identity and cross-cultural human development. In short, the acute change of cultural environment experienced by immigrants brings to the forefront many aspects of the tension between culture and individual goal. Their experiences prompt researchers to explore even more closely the dialectical relation between culture and self. Their sudden disorientation and intense psychological state of mind point to their encounters with different worldviews, with new social orders, new interpersonal relationships, new sets of values, and new cultural, linguistic, logistic, and financial demands. It triggers more rigorous making and remaking of meaning. In that sense, the cross-cultural aspect enlightens and reveals the very fabric of "intra-cultural" complexity. Though at times it was tempting to isolate oneself in an ethnic enclave to avoid substantial learning about the new culture, many of these immigrants realized this attitude deflected from their purpose of migrating to America at all costs. They became more self-directive by learning a new language and by rebuilding new social networks. They wanted to function effectively and live more eventfully in a new sociocultural environment. To do so, they had to continue to adjust and adapt. They acquired new problem solving skills for dealing with the everyday life contingencies. Not only did they begin to make deeper sense of the new culture environment, but they also reduced negative attitudes toward themselves and toward new situations. More importantly, they began to reflect on how their previous upbringing and socialization in China had shaped them to become who they are presently. They gained insight into the old as well as the new cultural dynamics.

121 By constantly re-examining the narratives, I began to understand how these immigrants – both parents and children – constantly worked on a more positive sense of identity, not only on the interpersonal level but also in a more collective way that had them identifying with their larger Chinese culture. I too examined how their sense of self-identity, beginning from a negative self-rating of mo yon [useless, scum], propelled them to improve themselves and to eradicate such selfdeprecation. In that respect, there is a vibrant determination to achieve. Seen in this light, the initial ordeal of cultural dissonance or role confusion experienced in the earlier stage of their entrance into the U.S., was a catalyst for not only understanding who they were in the previous culture but also who they wanted to be in this new land. This in turn propelled them, consciously or unconsciously, to focus on their strong sense of identity at various levels—intra-personal, interpersonal, familial, cultural, and spiritual.

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CHAPTER 9

Narrative and Meaning Making

Meanings are always twice born. They are instituted in culture – the communal or canonical meaning of some thing or act or utterance – and the idiosyncratic meaning for some individual on some occasion. The challenge for the sciences of man, whether anthropology or psychology... is to understand how these two aspects of meaning construction interact to ensure both a shared communal life and, at the same time, to permit the idiosyncratic play of individual imagination (Bruner, 1996b, p. xv). The search for meaning is fraught with complexity. We are so immersed in meaning that it is difficult to keep enough distance to reflect on it (Bruner, 1996). But meaning and meaning making, “the elusive and ill-defined pseudo-entity that we were once more than content to leave philosophers and literary critics to fumble with," Geertz contends, "has now come back into the heart of our discipline" (1973, p. 29). In this chapter, I will explain how my inquiry on meanings of achievement has moved toward an organismic framework as an alternative to culture/self and individualistic/collectivistic dualism. By reporting how immigrants made sense of their lives in a new social world, I attempt to address the persistent split between cultural and personal meaning. I affirm how the narrative mode of inquiry offers me ways to overcome the cultural and personal dichotomy. While affirming the insight of a top-down cultural view, I support it with phenomenological materials from a bottom-up biographical perspective, aiming to incorporate cultural, religious/spiritual, interpersonal, and intra-personal dimensions. In what follows, I will 123

124 invoke three concrete narrative acts – that of Mr. Chang, Mrs. Ho, and Tin Shifu – to illustrate how they used narrative as a means of meaning making. I will also discuss the two modes of inquiry, paradigmatic and narrative modes of inquiry, that Bruner (1986, 1996a) differentiates.

Three Narrative Acts Mr. Chang's Narrative: Narrative and Historical Situatedness Our ancestors were sold and came here as cheap laborers, or you can also say that they were slaves. They dreamed of saving enough money or gold to redeem themselves. They waited to pack and, with money, return home for good! For me, it is quite a different story. I was voluntarily smuggled here. -Mr. Chang On one level, Mr. Chang's personal narrative invites us to think more deeply about the larger historical context of the Chinese immigrant experience. On another level, his disclosure raises issues related to how historical events become internalized, consciously or unconsciously, as part one’s personal story. More importantly, his narrative underscores how he consciously made a choice different from that of his forebears who came to this country. Mr. Chang knitted a personal dream and suspended it on a web of Chinese immigration history. He was determined to invent a fate different from those of his ancestors who saw themselves as sojourners rather than "free citizens" in America. Chang's understanding of immigration history, whether or not this understanding would be seen as accurate in the eyes of historians, is a non-issue here. What matters is how he managed, in retrospect and in an extemporaneous fashion, to use scraps of historical memory mixed with personal desire to shape meaning. In particular his story, filled with personal significance, has a dimension of historical situatedness.

125 Mrs. Ho's Disclosure: Narrative and Interpersonal Dimension My son (11 years old) told me that the school requires them to take a color picture for a certain publication. He said that the photo would cost $11. He asked me if he might refuse to have his picture taken. He said, 'It is too expensive, it costs almost half of your daily wage." I heard it and I burst into tears. -Mrs. Ho This mutual disclosure, between mother and son, devoid of pretense, unveils traces of their aspirations and genuine anxieties. It makes, transparent, the language of everyday life unmasking the intra-personal and interpersonal nature of the human mind. It hints at how the mind of this boy understood his compassion and filial piety. It vivifies, as well, how the mind of a tearful mother responded to her child's understanding of her hard-earned wages. It also reinforces the notion that language, mind, and culture implicate each other and give meaning to human interaction, making possible the human mode of participation in everyday reality. This narrative act or "narrative construal of reality" is motivated by beliefs, desires, theories, values, or other “intentional states” (Bruner, 1996; p.). How, for example, did the mind of this boy conceive his compassion and filial piety? How, again, did the mind of this tearful mother respond to her child's understanding of her hard-earned wages? From this narrative episode and many others, I learned that the self-disclosures by my informants are never a matter of sheer immediacy. One narrative is related to another; and my understanding of one narrative episode is always deepened (and at times confused) by their other disclosures. Human understanding or inter-subjectivity operates in a world mediated by layers and layers of meaning. Mr. Tin's Narrative: Father-Daughter Socialization My daughter cried and did not want to come with us to America. At that time, I told her that we had been oppressed and looked down upon (during the Cultural Revolution). We did not want her to go through the same turmoil... I told her to zhengqi [fight for good air], meaning you should show that you are not weak but strong and jingli [use all the strength], meaning try your very best in America. I told her that she may

126 return to China in the future as she wishes, only if she has learned beishi [special expertise]. So no matter how ku [bitter], meaning how tough it would be, she should yaojinya [bite your teeth], meaning tolerate it. -Mr. Tin Reenacted by Mr. Tin, the excerpted narrative was mainly a conversation he had with Zheng, his daughter prior to their departure to the United States. Hitherto, Zheng, as characterized by Tin, was a young, chauvinistic Chinese girl who had never experienced the Cultural Revolution. Patriotic, she was reluctant to leave China. Thus, Tin sought to justify to Zheng why he and Zheng's mother were determined to leave. His exhortation for Zheng to persevere in the U.S. signaled a firm departure. Negotiation ceased. Zheng, as exhorted, would have to excel in America despite all odds — financial, cultural, or linguistic. Evoking metaphors and life experiences – "being looked down upon, "fight for good air," "jing li," "eat bitter," "bite your teeth" – Tin wove a story that was smooth in its temporal flow and in its fluid transitions between spaces from the mainland China to the United States. With slices of the past (the tumultuous revolution, etc.) fused with the present (the immigration visa being approved, etc.) and linked to the anticipation of the future (when you arrive in America, you should ...), one might as well include a hardly foreseeable future, as in Tin's proposal to Zheng. That is: "she may return to China whenever she wishes” if, and only if "she has acquired benlin/beishi [special expertise]” so that "nobody will look down on her." Of course, Tin, and not the least, Zheng knew that this "return to China" under the set conditions, would take a long time to come. But at least for Tin, the explanation and the promise served to justify why he wanted Zheng to have "high aspirations" and "good accomplishments in the future." Zheng, the young "patriot" so exhorted even before flying over Chinese soil or landing on U.S. ground, should know what was in store for her: to "eat bitter," to exert all her strength, and "to have high aspirations and accomplishments." Not to be disillusioned, Zheng had Tin's promise to return to China in the "future." Even so, she had to soar – still without knowing "Why should we Chinese move to America" – and carry with her this heavy, intangible load. It was heavy because she had to "eat" hard and "bite" hard. It was intangible because the fruits of such labor and the

127 likelihood of future returns were too far in the future to be envisioned. This narrative exemplifies how Tin had used words to author both Zheng and himself into being. Lives were virtually breathed and constructed into texts. And each self – Tin and Zheng – was also being fashioned into a textual construct in one narrative setting. This narrative epitomizes how social discourse can overcome the constraints of time and space by mediating different strands of timespace interplay. Related in less than three minutes, this dialogue encompassed a time span of thirty years, from the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s to America in the 1990s. In terms of space, it also spanned east and west, from a developing “socialist” China in rapid transformation to a post-industrial United States. As the meaning makers chose to present the self (Goffman, 1959) – with decisions on what to include or omit in their stories – they also revealed the conditions of the socio-cultural order that nurtured their personal life experiences. Macro-social dimensions and individual micro-psychological aspects could hardly be brought closer than in Mr. Tin's brief narrative. Cultural meaning systems spun into individual meaning-making processes from various levels: national, collective, and individual. Historical contingencies, long erupted back home, and the timing of immigration laws that opened and closed the doors of those coming to the U.S. were connected to the struggle of individual choice and solidarity in the midst of cultural resettlement. Personal memories were forged with a collective ethnic identity. Individual biographies were interlaced within a larger socio-political fabric. This narrative, as many of Mr. Tin's other stories and those of my other informants, was recounted within the interpersonal context as well as the larger macro-social and historical contexts. Equally often, many stories – expressed in a sentence or even in a few phrases – also exposed the threads of one's deepest yearnings. For instance, according to Mr. Tin's own account: “She (our daughter) is our only hope and comfort [pan-wan, ang-wei]… If not for her, then staying here would be meaningless.” Thus he disclosed what fueled his and his wife's existential drive and their justification for a meaningful existence in this foreign land. Personal and collective, past-present-future, and the transition between homeland and host land, all so masterfully knitted in this narrative,

128 become a fusion of horizons. Beneath his densely textured story were layers of hidden meaning to be excavated and revealed. This search for meanings of the past and the present, in urgency and necessity, is of great existential importance to Mr. Tin. As he did in the narrative, Mr. Tin may convince himself and his daughter the basis for their existence and the vision of a brighter future. Academically speaking, this search for meaning is also important because the focus of this study is to understand how meaning is constructed in a cross-cultural setting. With this issue of meaning construction at hand, I shall turn to the following discussion of narrative and meaning making.

Narrative Strategies and Meaning Making The three narratives cited above cast light on how seemingly simple speech acts are actually undergirded by an extremely dense and purposeful construction. Once unearthed, these hidden threads reveal how tightly they have been spun. Further patterns and meanings await excavation. Expanding this analogy into a textual exploration, one could posit that different sentences and phrases from Mr. Tin's narrative indeed reflect a rich inter-textuality and underscore logical connections between them. This interpersonal episode testifies that human beings as living organisms have always opted for interactive, hybrid, and pragmatic solutions in living their lives in social conditions. For example, briefly commenting on Mr. Tin's narrative, I highlight the issue of interpretation in this intellectual exercise in search of meaning. As I have demonstrated, the more I interpret Mr. Tin's narrative (transcribed and fashioned into a text), the more it reveals multiple layers of meaning. Not only that new pieces of information added new dimensions and depth to these meanings, but that the interpreter also enriches and co-creates the meaning-making process. This interpersonal aspect of inter-subjectivity between Mr. Tin and Zheng, between the interpreter and the text, or one might stretch it further, between the readers and the interpretive account characterizes interpretation as a constantly shifting process of signification. Throughout this study, rich narrative materials provided by these immigrants highlighted the inter-subjectively contested and dialogically directed creation of psychological meanings that revealed the inner lives of these immigrant parents and children. When taken together with cultural-level and interpersonal-level analyses, their narrative

129 episodes allowed me to glimpse how a particular individual kept the connection between inner and outer worlds alive, and how these worlds were related to their achievement motivation. We may also pursue how these motivational dynamics, created and re-created anew by introspection on the part of both parents and children, are crucial for they may well thereby be incorporated into the child's meaning-making process. We must therefore carefully examine how and why these invented and reinvented meanings are related to achievement motivation; how they may have framed the child's experience, been absorbed into memories and psychological processes, and reworked in everyday life as part of the child's developmental process (Kitayama & Markus, 1994; LeVine, 1981; Minoura, 1992; Obeyesekere, 1981, 1990; Vaillant, 1993). It becomes crucial to investigate why certain culture-specific meanings such as xiao [filial piety] and jing [reverence and respect], or the native concept, zhengqi [fight for good air] are appropriated. Further investigation into the kinds of cultural and personal goals to which the child has been exposed will lead to a better understanding of why his or her goal schemas (D'Andrade 1992) differ from someone else's, particularly those of his or her American peers. To verify the reality of these personal goal schemas, one may compare the notes gathered from personal narratives and check how consistent they are with the behaviors and actions related to these narratives, both public and private. This examination is important because an individual is capable of endorsing certain declared values while privately or publicly deviating from them (LeVine, 1981). Public or private meanings (Obeyesekere, 1981, 1990) or intra-personal and extra-personal meanings (Strauss & Quinn, 1993), so conceived are a dynamically and deeply inter-textual reinvention (Chamberlain, 1990; Fischer, 1986; Gadamer, 1975; Ong, 1977; Ricoeur, 1970, 1992). This kind of intra-personal analysis should explore and enrich the notion that the personal developmental process is permeated with idiosyncratic and highly personalized fantasies, fears, and unfulfilled expectations rather than being determined only by culture. This attention to the subtle culture/self interplay, therefore, raises an urgent concern: the need to shift from a general top-down Chinese cultural description resembling an aerial view to an updated local Chinese-American historical and political geography. Now we can

130 understand what it is like to actually live in a particular setting. We make a place for the lived experiences that have been peripheral to topdown studies. This repositioning should sensitize researchers to the collective macro-social and individual micro-psychological experiences for studying achievement motivation. Seen in this core of interpersonal transaction and reciprocity – buttressed by an appreciation of the Confucian ideal of organismic unity – the richness and the coconstructing aspect of the meaning of achievement become apparent and significant, not only in the interpersonal realm but also at the level of self, family, community, and culture. By deconstructing and reconstructing the received notion of collectivism, I give more detailed attention to the psycho-cultural dimension of reciprocity, and it, as exemplified in the cited narratives, enriches the interpersonal meanings of achievement.

Paradigmatic and Narrative Modes of Thought According to Bruner (1986, 1987, 1996a), there are two basic modes of human cognition: the paradigmatic and narrative modes. The paradigmatic mode is constructed of distinct cause and effect relationships. This mode of thought proposes an unambiguous objective truth and thus, discourages differences in opinions. Under this model, human events are not viewed as ambiguous. The narrative mode of thought places emphasis on spatial and temporal contexts in order to accommodate the discussion of human desires, needs, and goals. This is the mode of stories that attend to the vicissitudes of human conditions and intentions. Because paradigmatic explanations are abstracted from spatial and temporal contexts, they are not attentive to particularities or contextual goals in specific social settings. Therefore, the ambiguities of human events are resistant to paradigmatic explanations. In this study, I have given greater attention to the narrative mode of thought in order to seek greater understanding about how these immigrants were striving to adapt to a new cultural situation in the context of resettlement. My inquiry embraces a more conflicted aspect of their achievement motivation and highlights the culture-self interplay. While causality plays an important role in these two modes of thought, each of them defines it differently. The paradigmatic mode attends to universal truth conditions. The narrative mode stresses connections between the events in concrete human contexts. It is descriptive of contextual embeddedness.

131 The narrative mode of thought allows me to include the human voice to reflect several components of personal identity. As such, the notion of personhood embraces multidimensional aspects of self. These immigrants are people with myriad aspects of past experiences, their struggle in the present, and their anticipation of the future. Even in the spiritual and religious sense, they sometimes incorporate different resources to explain their daily lives. They have adopted various memberships and live their lives in a new social environment. These multifaceted aspects of self and personhood have immediate ontological, methodological, and epistemological implications. Ontologically, these immigrants reveal that they could creatively relate themselves in various ways to the world. They provided various descriptions, such as the variety of ways they described gens in relation to their individual and collective identities, that form various aspects of their personhood. Methodologically, they apply plural means, and likewise, I adopt various interpretive perspectives in describing themselves. Epistemologically, these multiple aspects highlight the fact that the paradigmatic mode of confining their achievement motivation to either individualistic or collectivistic categories captures one aspect but contradicts many others, namely their multifaceted motivation and personhood. To more fully appreciate their "being" in the cross-cultural situation and in the dynamic aspect of their personhood, we need to move beyond the paradigmatic mode. Particularly, with this study’s stress on meaning making in a local and personal context, I underscore the experiences and achievement motivation of these immigrants in relation to the specific situations in which they occur.

Beyond Dualistic Frames of Reference In Chapters 1 and 2, I have highlighted the tendency to conflate cultural ideals and individual achievement motivation without specifying how broader cultural directives, mediated by multi-layered processes, constitute the underlying individual motivational dynamics. The dynamics of human agency, implying that culture is a determinant rather than the determinant in providing social actors with learned motivations, are instrumental in satisfying the psychological drive and maintaining the social order of oneself.

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Methodological Considerations In order to capture the richer meaning of achievement, I have adopted a more organismic interpretive framework. For explanatory purposes, the cultural level takes into consideration traditional cultural roles as well as the current contextual meanings employed by these Chinese immigrants. For that purpose I have reviewed the cultural ideal mainly identified with Confucius. The interpersonal level examines the experiences, behaviors, and emotions embedded in interpersonal communication, such as parent-child communication. The intrapersonal level deals with the subjective conditions and individual motivation. I should emphasize, however, that each of these dimensions, cultural, interpersonal, and intra-personal are not selfcontained, discrete components though the expository framework of these three levels might seem to suggest this. Rather, they are synergistic. The cultural level The first of these three levels involved taking into account traditional Chinese cultural values. The Confucian ideal was used as a stable frame of reference against which the extent and direction of current change in the larger Chinese world can be gauged. Strategically, this Confucian frame of reference is useful in understanding to what extent the individual immigrant reacted or conformed to the ideal conception of those cultural givens. The juxtaposition of ideal and real social realities served as checks and balances on each other. On the one hand, focusing merely on the cultural level analysis runs the risk of overlooking the day-to-day social reality of these immigrant families, as well as the local knowledge of particular settings. On the other hand, the cultural dimension can serve as a reminder of the importance of folk categories, norms and practices, as prescribed by cultural roles, such as filial piety, self-cultivation, diligence, along with the psychological meanings related to the cultivation of achievement motivation, and how they are related to an ideal personhood. With this awareness, I attended to factors influencing how and why these immigrants, having encountered the surrounding cultures in the United States, decided to capitalize on or dispense with certain cultural traditions. This consideration made it possible for me to observe how the informants, in meeting day-to-day contingencies and challenges,

133 reinvented traditional cultural traits and creatively devised new strategies for dealing with new demands. I wanted to know what cultural values they retained in the process and what new cultural traits they assimilated. How would they explain their choices? To acknowledge the tension between cultural continuity and discontinuity as exemplified in the portraits of Chinese-Americans’ multiple identities, is to recognize the breadth and depth of their crosscultural experiences and the challenge between mandated values such as collectivism versus various versions of individualism. The tensions inherent in the process of enculturation affected not only how these immigrant parents and children defined their social reality, but also how they negotiated interpersonally with each other. The interpersonal level My informants' narratives provided some ways for me to consider how the internalization of cultural standards were affected in the family setting, especially in the presence of the cross-cultural resettlement dynamic. Observing at this interpersonal level, I examined how "cultural drive and structure" was or was not reflected in interpersonal encounters (LeVine, 1982). For example, I observed how both proscribed and prescribed rules were transmitted, assimilated, and manifested in the context of interpersonal behaviors. Attending to the narratives’ relationship to the immigrants' family socialization process was important because this created a space to consider how interpersonal dynamics might have affected the intra-personal dimension, how the individual child or parent internalizes and reinterprets these prescriptive and proscriptive meanings. I attended to how complicated sentiments such as shame and guilt within the parentchild interpersonal dynamic affected both the parents and child. I examined how personal motives and roles underwent changes and how these changes influenced the interpersonal relationship and nurtured the family dynamics. Quite often, investigations of achievement motivation emphasize only the meanings that parents assign to it. I suggest, instead, a bidirectional perspective that emphasizes the reciprocal nature of human interaction. Not only is a child a changing individual, s/he is also negotiating his or her developmental path and responding at different times in different ways to what may appear to be similar parental interventions. Likewise parents, too, change in regard to how and when they interact with their child.

134 Attending to this bi-directional interpersonal communication, researchers can better grapple with the complexities of social, emotional, and motivational development of immigrants like these Chinese families. Surrounding the theme of reciprocity, their powerful and poignant narratives best underscored this point. It is at this interpersonal level that we are most likely to gather what Schaffer calls "action language" (1976, 1992), from which we can explain not only the content but also the form of the interpersonal narratives. Attending to family socialization and interpersonal relations may allow us to understand some of the ways in which the individual immigrant child internalizes cultural directives or individually stipulated goals at various points in his or her life. Further attention provides insights into what events become important markings of his or her personal experiences, particularly those saturated with motivational significance. Giving our attention and increased sensitivity to family variables and interpersonal relations allows us to recognize more clearly how such factors are related both to interactive and reflective meaning. The intra-personal level Attending to the intra-personal dynamic allowed me to ponder how socio-cultural messages, the family constellation, and significant events are internalized by younger respondents as well as their parents, given the parameters of their character structure. Observation of interpersonal relations and communication provided clues as to how an individual immigrant experiences his or her life and how cultural beliefs may have shaped his or her experiences. Through the narrative materials, I tried to grasp the biographical details to construct the respondent's story, and how a particular story related to other stories. In some cases, such as gathering Mr. Tin Shifu’s and Mr. Chang's narratives, I managed to glimpse a larger picture of their life trajectory. How each individual respondent narrated personal stories and experiences has important implications with respect to the meaning assigned to achievement motivation. For example, an individual immigrant respondent, through anecdotes, revealed his or her recollections of past memories, present anxieties, struggles or accomplishments, dreams, and concerns for the future. The narrator’s “experience-near” accounts (Kohut, 1971, 1977) and “thick descriptions” (Geertz, 1973), anchored in a past, present, and future

135 time frame, are conducive to understanding the continuity and discontinuity of his or her personal biography. From the narrative disclosures, I learned about how each of the respondent’s dream of achievement, and how that desire was prompted by the beliefs informed by humanistic or religious resources of what one wants to be and ought to become.

Summary Throughout this study, I have highlighted the multi-dimensional nature of achievement motivation. Taken together, these different vantage points – the intra-personal, interpersonal, and cultural – let us ask important questions. For example: 1) To what extent are culturally given motives actually integrated by an individual and how "real" are they? 2) How are these motives recreated and reworked in everyday life and transformed in these immigrants' developmental processes? 3) To what extent does an individual's conflicting interests and personal fantasies, when they come into collision with socially sanctioned values and goals, also become potential influences for motivational strivings? Through the narrative testimonies of these immigrants, I have also stated the importance of understanding achievement motivation not so much as a single, unitary force, but rather as a set of multi-layered social, cultural, interpersonal, and psychological processes mediated by a cluster of interacting factors.

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CHAPTER 10

Conclusion

While the making and remaking of meaning is ongoing, this work has now reached a point of closure. This study has captured that the process of cultural resettlement and adaptation is central to the experience of immigrants. It also makes it explicit that culture, as a web of symbolic meaning systems, is constantly engaging those who suspend on this web, while the individual as meaning maker also exercises one's agency in search of meaning. Resettlement in a new cultural context could rightly be perceived as a rigorous process of meaning making and remaking. This process highlights the malleable aspect of cross-cultural human development. It also yields an opportunity to revisit important issues related to the process of constantly restructuring one's personhood. That the readjustments and reorientations of these immigrants underwent various processes of change themselves highlighted how different realms of experience inform each other in a complicated interplay between culture and individual motivation. My interview with thirteen Chinese immigrant informants affirmed this. In addition to disclosing their resettlement experiences, they also revealed other stories: their past and their anticipated future experiences. Their narratives formed the basis and shaped the writing of this study. This narrative mode of inquiry also extended an opportunity for me to address some fundamental methodological and theoretical matters related to interpretation as well as modes of inquiry, paradigmatic and narrative inquiry in particular. By relating to the cross-cultural experiences of these immigrants, this interpretive study also tackled some fundamental issues of meaning and meaning making in their broadest senses. This inquiry, thus, has briefly touched on each of the following questions: What were the social and political contingencies that might 137

138 have motivated their uprooting? How did they replant themselves once they arrived on American soil? How did they adapt to cultural differences and meet those challenges? What were the dreams they hoped to fulfill? Along with these questions, the immigrants’ disclosures revealed other germane issues. How did they make sense of their old and new symbolic worlds? What was it like to detach their roots from the collective memory and identity of their previous mainland-based community? In what aspects did they adhere to the "old ways"? Did they feel pressured to "go native" and accommodate the host culture? Though I did not fully address all of the above dimensions that emerged from this inquiry, I captured three distinct issues, namely: cross-cultural adaptation, the dynamics of interpersonal reciprocity, and spiritual and religious pursuits.

Cross-cultural adaptation These immigrants, through their narrative disclosures, revealed how they went through various transformational processes. Their crosscultural resettlement provided us important insights into understanding the cultural construction of self and how culture as a meaning system interplayed with human agency in the construction of personhood. Marginalized as they were at their initial entrance to this new land, these immigrants manifested a personal commitment deeply anchored in interpersonal, cultural, and religious and spiritual orders. The individual self finds its ground and identity in these orders. Their pluralistic, and at times “fuzzy” meaning of achievement, do not posit them as de-centered human agents or land them in pernicious relativism. These immigrants embody – as Charles Taylor (1989) argues philosophically – some notion of the "good" serving as a guideline for goals worth achieving.

The dynamics of interpersonal reciprocity The theme of reciprocity surfaces at various levels of intensity throughout. It also extends to other realms of relationships, especially and most provocatively, in the relationship between parents and child. But it is not limited to external relationships. I have tried to explore, with a sympathetic yet self-critical mind, how this theme of reciprocity

139 also applies to the intra-personal realm of self-engagement; i.e., to the endless discourse conducted with oneself. The notion of shame, if not guilt, clearly stood out in this intrapersonal dimension. Both parents and children subtlety expressed that they did not do enough for their "significant others." These intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions of reciprocity, considered to be esteemed values (notably the notion of xiao [filial piety]) of human relationship inspired by Confucian worldview captured the essence of qinqing [the closest of all human feelings, renqing]. Furthermore, these immigrants’ newly acquired spiritual resources (especially the reverential dimension) also further enriched the theme of reciprocity and the dynamics of human connectedness.

Spiritual and religious pursuits The theme of spiritual and religious resources was also quite pronounced in the process of these immigrants' search for stability and meaning. In facing many uncertainties, these immigrants began to be more open in talking about issues related to the meaning of life from the spiritual and religious points of view. Having migrated from the atheist and communist backgrounds, those immigrants who previously did not associate with religions began to be interested in how they might draw support outside their human resources. Several of these immigrants converted to evangelical Christianity, grass-root Buddhism, or explored qigong and martial arts as a mean of physical and spiritual self-cultivation. This religious dimension brought forth the complex interplay between human motivations and need on one side and religious experience and spiritual motivation on the other. In short, each of these three categories – cross-cultural adaptation, dynamics of interpersonal reciprocity, and spiritual and religious pursuits – remind us that culture as a meaning system should not be treated as a collection of isolated elements. Attending to these three dimensions in a holistic manner allowed me to attend to human subjects in their wholeness and to see how these subjects reflected the dynamic nuances of actual life.

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Lessons From These Immigrants It is appropriate, at this point in my work ask: What are the lessons we may learn from these immigrants' experiences? The numerous narrative episodes, however fragmented, have taught us how individual biographies fuse with various cultural, historical, and political realms thereby contributing to the forging of a collective existence with a past, present, and anticipated future. In considering these immigrants' psycho-social adaptation, or lack thereof, in the context of the Chinese ethnic enclave into mainstream American society and in the context of the social factors which constrain or expand their range of options, I remained attentive to the question of how these immigrants viewed themselves and what moves them to act as they do. Such a dynamic, social context reminds us that we cannot attach their achievement motivation to a rigid either/or framework; assigning their motivational orientation as either collectivistic or individualistic. The community in which these immigrants reside is not an unadulterated, traditional enclave but a vibrant one interacting with and influenced by mainstream society. Furthermore, they are living human agents capable of constructing meaning that surpass the collectivistic/individual framework. Like any other ethnic minority, these immigrants must struggle not only with the active appropriation of their own cultural heritage, they also must deal with or assimilate influences from the surrounding cultures that constitute the cultural plurality of the American scene. They do not exist in isolation either from contact with their homelands or from American cultural influences. Moreover, both settings are undergoing rapid social change. Thus the theoretical presuppositions often found at the cultural level of analysis emphasizing a well-ordered worldview can not adequately explain the phenomenon of ChineseAmerican motivation. While not losing sight of the Chinese ideal conception of an integrated whole, we should also attend to other factors introduced in the immediate cultural context of the Chinese-American community. To do so will allow us to understand more deeply the ways in which the process of meaning making coincides with, runs parallel to, or differs from the dominant values and practices of the ideal conception of Chinese culture and the individual within it.

141 Their east-west intercultural encounters also suggest a reconceptualization of the self and personhood. Accordingly, the encounters also inspire individual reworking of the meaning of parental authority, filial piety, and family socialization, as well as the virtues of collectivism, obedience, and achievement motivation, to name a few. I am suggesting that we need to enlarge the discourse on Chinese achievement motivation beyond the individualistic/collectivistic contradiction. If McClelland's and his associates' (1953, 1961) earlier efforts to develop a universal and individualistic model of achievement motivation have not proved as successful as they once hoped, it is likely that models which explain Chinese or Chinese-American achievement motivation as essentially collectivistic and socio-centric will, in the long run, prove equally inadequate. As may be apparent, my contention is that ambiguous, conflicting, conscious, and even unconscious misinterpretations of cultural messages all play a part in one's motivations and actions. By attempting to paint a more dynamic picture of a variety of motivational constructs, I am trying to arrive at an understanding from both cultural influences and the nature of individual influences that are appropriated over time within the pressures and options of a new cultural setting. To accept an ambiguous and sometimes conflicting definition of motivation, I am again highlighting the need for a multifaceted model. There is little doubt that any underlying motivational construct, whether conscious or unconscious, comes through a complex process – indeed, more complex than my proposed bottom-up perspective, even combined with top-down view can expect to fully account for. Nevertheless, my study, though tentative, hopefully opens the way for further reformulation, and is an effort to go beyond a purely intuitive sense about the relation between culture and individual motivation—to look at the problem in light of the complexity of human development. To capture the complexity, I preferred a narrative mode of inquiry to a paradigmatic mode of inquiry to grapple with the making and remaking of meanings in cross-cultural resettlement experiences. By emphasizing the making and remaking of meaning, I underscore the searching process of meaning making as an ongoing act of interpretation and revision. By attending to their meanings in this crosscultural process, we acknowledge that there is a big, variegated, and often conflicting world out there.

142 It is in this space that the individual is suspended. Many profound and conflicting meanings about what they want to achieve – their vision of life, who they are, what they want to become – occurs. It is in this area of suspension that many conflicting and profound issues related to life surface: who they are and what they envision themselves to become. This messiness exemplifies the multi-faceted aspect of human motivation. Their past, the present, and the anticipated future, in relation to their vision of life, were connected to meanings of achievement–—however elusive or unstable these meanings might be, especially in one's adaptation to a new and unfamiliar land of enormous opportunity. Each of the narratives, relative to the uprooting and replanting metaphor, underscores what Deutsch (1992) aptly characterizes as: A person is a creative articulation, in varying degrees of rightness, of his or her individuality within the matrix of social community and within the enduring reality of the self (p. 3). As these reciprocal views on culture and self reveal, the construction of self is influenced by many factors. The sum total of any given culture is not internalized within any single self. The self, with its "wisdom of the ego" (Vaillant, 1993), is capable of varying its reactions to normative socio-cultural conventions to which it may visibly appear to conform and publicly endorse while privately deviating from these same conventions (LeVine 1981; Obeyesekere, 1981, 1990). Given the composite of selfhood with its many private and public manifestations, to conclude that a cultural ideal of self-representation is isomorphic to real self-representation is, therefore, tantamount to reducing the complexities of individuals into generalized collectivities. Similarly problematic are conclusions derived from scanning dominant traditional values about cultural motivation. It is not that such sources are not helpful, but our inquiry must always go further. We need, instead, a conceptual framework that can capture not only the cultural ideal of harmony, but also the inherent tension between culture and self which is characteristic of any form of human development. Such sensitivity to the culture/self interplay should help us guard against cultural determinism because there is considerable flexibility and variation in how culture is realized in individual practice.

143 This study also addressed four problematic isomorphisms with regard to 1) culture and motivation, 2) the multi-dimensional nature of motivational construction, 3) the ideal conception of Chinese family socialization with respect to the real and situational Chinese-American family socialization, and 4) the ideal Chinese self and Chinese-American selfrepresentation. First, this study highlighted the tendency to conflate cultural ideals and motivation without specifying how broader cultural directives, mediated by multi-layered processes, constitute the underlying individual motivational dynamics. It avoided approaches that imply that culture is the determinant rather than a determinant in providing social actors with learned motivations instrumental to the satisfaction of psychological drives. Second, these immigrants concretized the fact that their achievement motivation was not so much a single, unitary force, but rather a set of multi-layered social, cultural, and psychological processes mediated by a cluster of interacting factors. Third, I have raised the issue of the intricate relationship between the ideal conception of normative family socialization and the real situation of these immigrants' family socialization. Attention to this matter allowed us to address the complex mechanism of the transmission of cultural values and to recognize the issue of cultural discontinuity in cross-cultural reality. For example, studies often cite desirable cultural traits to explain the achievement motivation of Chinese-Americans such as collectivism, filial piety, submission to authority, and diligence without specifying how or why these traits are being appropriated. This study tried to capture how the execution of these values from the standpoint of the parents or from the perspectives of children was not always carried out without contestation. And fourth, the study again raised the issue of not confusing cultural representations of an ideal Chinese-self with real selfrepresentation. We cannot assume that real self-representation is equivalent to the ideal, cultural conception of the self. We must look, instead, at the processes by which the individual internalizes

144 proscriptive (thou shalt not) or prescriptive (to be done unto others) cultural messages concerning the ideal self, and how these ideal and real self-representations relate to motivational stride. It is my hope that I have presented an approach to the study of human motivation that is infused with both socio-cultural and individual psychological significance in ways that will also contribute to a deeper understanding of the multiple meanings of ChineseAmerican achievement motivation in light of the overall Chinese experience in the United States. In some ways, the lives of these immigrants also participated in the larger conversation of what does it mean to be Chinese today. This study emulates that sort of human science which Bahktin (1981) and Buber (1937) characterized as fundamentally conversational. If the narratives of my informants are assumed to be performed, the evidence which emerges is a dialogical performance which displays their feelings and habitual modes of thought through the dialogical performance of their words. That they were prompted by a conversational partner who is also a researcher argues for an understanding of their narratives as a conversation of meanings, of the fusion of I and thou; a reciprocity that has been constructed by the researcher and the researched. In the epilogue that follows, I shall address how my interactions with these immigrants have shaped me, not just as a researcher, but also as a person.

EPILOGUE

Researcher's Reflection

My subjectivity is the basis for the story that I am able to tell. It is a strength on which I build. It makes me who I am as a person and as a researcher, equipping me with the perspectives and insights that shape all that I do as a researcher, from the selection of topics clear through to the emphases I make in my writing (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992; p. 104). Conducting this study, now in hindsight, is for me an act of redemption. In a time of pervasive rhetoric critiquing higher education in America as "a closing of the mind", I am fortunate that my academic inquiry in an American Chinatown is an opening of heart and mind. Working with this group of Chinese immigrants, I also understand and acknowledge that my analysis of their experience is intrinsically and fundamentally incomplete. The deeper I explore, the less complete my analysis seems to become. While questioning my competence as a cultural and social commentator, and not overly paralyzed by that self-doubt, I am modest about the claims I make in this small study. It is a humbling experience. The time I spent interacting and “living” with my informants has invariably shaped my outlook about qualitative research in general and my role as a researcher in particular. I have endured a substantial amount of uncertainty while conducting this research in the field, and I ascribe my perseverance to the contagious spirit of buyaofanqi [never give up] manifested by my informants. Often I was not sure how this field inquiry was going to "end", let alone mention how I would write about it in a scholarly paper. I felt stuck like my respondents who often felt stuck in the worlds between China and America. These immigrants, young or old, have been my teachers. They taught me about cross-cultural human development, about how living 145

146 one's life, intra-culturally or cross-culturally involves a series of struggles. They enlightened me about how one’s personhood evolves – which it is truly an act of achievement, not a given. In that sense, who I am as a researcher today or my researcher identity per se, with its ups and downs, is also an act of achievement. Here is the point where I need to address the issue of my researcher subjectivity in relation to this research. This cross-cultural analysis, as conveyed through writing involves, among other things, an authoritative voice and perspective that is inextricably bound to my researcher subjectivity. I am mindful that no researcher could wash away the presence of such a voice of authority (Mannen, 1988), and the researcher as author, cannot be obscured behind the explication of research methods (Geertz, 1988). On one level, my study focused on how these immigrants made sense of the new social reality. On another level, it entailed that I interpret their frames of meaning. Consequently, the interpretive matter became more demanding and challenging to relate with mere words. I understand that a commitment to objectivity is expected in any form of scholarly pursuit. The research orientation that this study pursues is not a choice between the objective and subjective. The emphasis on objectivity is based on authentic subjectivity on the part of the researcher. I strove for a critical awareness in which I neither shut out, if it were at all possible, my subjectivity nor let myself be overwhelmed by it. Rather, I raised it to a heightened consciousness and absorbed it as part of my inquiry process. Given its focus on capturing meaning making, critical subjectivity has been extremely crucial to my study. The study depended largely on the intersubjectivity between the researcher and the researched. As I explored how these immigrants construct social reality by mediating their thoughts and feelings, I also underwent successive processes of self-appropriation in order to grapple with how I understood their story. Through various self-appropriating acts, I gradually came to grips with my own participatory process as implicated in my listening to and interpreting of their narratives. In order to grapple with the underlying cognitive and affective processes that were embedded in their narrative disclosures, I needed to wrestle with my own operative processes – cognitive and empathic – that supported my understanding of their stories and sentiments. These self-appropriating processes required an intense cognitive commitment on my part while listening to these immigrants’ stories. I

147 polished and re-polished my lenses regularly as I reconceptualized my research methodology. This continuous and arduous effort yielded distinct gains. On the emotional level, I have grown to be a more empathic field investigator. On the cognitive level, I have developed a more comprehensive outlook regarding the nature, scope, and constitutive function of narratives in the human mind. I believe that by emphasizing the self-appropriating role in the research process, I have been able to understand the fragmented ontology-epistemology-methodology triad. Research entails a process of grasping and refining an understanding of the issue at hand that is classified in the domain of ontology. Such a process involves intelligent judgment and a critical application of methods that bear on the issues. This is the true concern of methodology, and how one comes to know and affirm the knowledge that one acquires is, roughly speaking, the terrain of epistemology. It is in this context of affirming my own self-knowledge in the whole inquiring process that I experientially reaffirmed that research methods are dynamic, not static. A static view of methods encourages a technique-driven zest. No matter how sophisticated the tools or techniques, this zest, if applied without considerable judgment, belies a "technician" or "technocrat" who follows a manual and knows in advance what he wants to find from the results of his applications. But a dynamic view of research nurtures a mindset that is willing to entertain new possibilities, to endure what will not be known until a "method" or a combination of "methods" is mindfully and responsibly exercised. Four years ago, upon hearing Eliot Eisner, who contrasted the language of empirical "science" and the language of art, I recalled that Suzanne Langer had stated something even more eloquently four decades earlier. Langer (1942) said that the language of formal logic, of propositions, of tests, and of proofs cannot take the press or imprint of inner life. Listening to my immigrant informants' stories, I was constantly moved by a vast variety of human feelings, renqing. Amidst their stories – parents talking about their children and children talking about their parents – I was reminded that, as a social inquirer, I am also a sentient being, a being with many roles. My informants reminded me who I am as a Chinese son, as well as who I am as a Chinese father raising an American-born daughter.

148 Their narrative disclosures enlightened me about the depth and vibrancy of qinqing [the closest of all human feelings, renqing]. As a social inquirer, I am thankful that my encounters with these informants have helped me acknowledge and embrace my own capacity to respond to the feelings of other people with empathy. In doing so, I am moving closer to my own simple affections, or better still, closer to the "the essential passions of the heart". Borrowing from Cora Diamond, who warns, “If one has not learned to respond with the heart one has not learned to think” (p. 37). This is, for me, not a small gift of freedom. It is a gift of opening my mind and heart.

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Index Chao, 19, 74 Chen, 18, 27, 33 Chen, & McDevitt, 33 Chinatown, 6, 22, 27, 28, 35, 37, 41, 49, 53, 59, 60, 61, 111 Chinese Exclusion Act, 27 Chinese-American Chinese-Americans, 2, 3, 25, 26, 29, 31, 32, 96, 106, 108, 109 Chinese-Americans, 2 Christianity, 105 Coleman, 83 collectivism, 3, 5, 10, 18, 20, 21, 22, 72, 96, 99, 106, 109 collectivistic collectivist, 2, 3, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 33, 91, 97, 105, 106 communism communist, 28, 30, 50, 55, 105 community, 6, 9, 11, 21, 25, 29, 31, 32, 35, 36, 37, 50, 53, 56, 59, 60, 61, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 81, 96, 104, 106, 107 Confucian worldview, 3, 66, 104 Confucius Confucian, 3, 11, 12, 18, 47, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 96, 98, 104 Connecticut. See . See . See cosmos cosmology, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 cross-cultural, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 17, 21, 22, 23, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 80, 83, 87, 88, 95, 98, 99, 103, 104, 105, 107, 109, 111 cultural. See culture. cultural determinism, 4 Cultural Revolution

A achievement, 6, 9, 32 achievements. See motivation. adaptation, 6, 22, 39, 42, 78, 79, 87, 103, 104, 105, 107 agency, 4, 5, 6, 12, 15, 21, 56, 57, 79, 80, 83, 85, 98, 103, 104 agricultural economy, 67 American dream, 10 authority, 75

B Bakhtin, 40 Becker, 84 behavior behavioral, 5, 77 belief system, 18, 47, 80, 84 bottom-up, 16, 21, 23, 73, 80, 91, 107 Bourdieu, 23 Brand, 32 Bruner, 12, 80, 84, 91, 93, 97 Buber, 40, 109 Buddhism Buddhist. See . See Burton & Reis, 85

C California, 26, 27 Cantonese, 13, 35, 53, 61 Cassirer, 79 Caudill, 17 Chamberlain, 96 Chan, 68, 73, 74, 75

163

164 cultural revolution, 30, 50, 51, 53, 55, 93, 94 culture, 3, 4, 6 culture shock, 9, 60, 77, 79, 87

D Daedalus, 2 D'Andrade, 4, 82, 83, 84, 87, 96 Deutsch, 9, 107 Devereux, 2 DeVos, 17 dialectical dialectic; dialogical, 24, 46, 80, 84, 88 dignity, 66 Domino & Hannah, 33 downtown Chinese, 31, 32 dreams, 21, 79, 100, 103 dynamic, 4, 8, 31, 41, 66, 69, 70, 79, 81, 87, 98, 99, 100, 105, 106, 113 dynamics, 16 dynamics, 3, 8, 9, 11, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 36, 37, 38, 42, 47, 52, 71, 81, 83, 87, 88, 96, 98, 99, 104, 105, 108

E education, 8, 22, 28, 32, 36, 47, 51, 56, 60, 111 educational, 61 Eisner, 113 embeddedness cultural embeddedness, 77 employment, 36, 37, 47, 49, 53 English proficiency, 35 ethnic. See identity ethnicity, 17 ethnography ethnographic, 11, 21, 37, 38, 66 Exclusion Act Repeal, 27, 28

F failure fail, 6, 7 family familial, 7, 9, 10, 11, 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 30, 32, 37, 38, 42, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 81, 83, 96, 99, 100, 106, 108, 109 fear, 30, 74, 75 Fei, 20 filial piety, 11, 12, 18, 22, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 85, 86, 92, 93, 96, 99, 104, 106, 109 finances fiancially, 59 Firth, 15 Fischer, 96 Freud, 84 Fuzhou, 57, 59

G Gadamer, 43, 84, 96 gambling, 58 Geertz, 42, 45, 80, 81, 91, 100, 112 Germany, 55 Gerth & Mills, 84 Giddens, 45, 81, 86 Glesne & Peshkin, 44, 111 Goffman, 84, 94 Graubard, 2 guilt, 21, 99, 104

H Hallowell, 82, 86 Hamel, 46

165 hardships, 66 harmony harmonies, 69 Hayes, 26 hermeneutics hermeneutical, 11, 42 Hess, 33 historical history, 25, 50, 55, 57, 67, 69, 92 history historical, 8, 10, 11, 22, 25, 26, 28, 31, 32, 42, 68, 92, 94, 96, 105 Ho, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 52, 53, 54, 65, 77, 78, 79, 91, 92 Holland & Quinn, 82 Hong Kong, 7, 29, 30, 31, 32, 55, 58, 61 housing. See . See Hsu, 18, 19, 20, 21, 75, 81 Hui, 19, 72

I identity ethnic. researcher, 1 identify, 3, 27, 71 immigrant immigrants; immigration, 1, 5, 10, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 37, 48, 55, 57, 60, 92, 93, 94 immigrants; immigration; immigrated;, 6, 9, 10, 15, 27, 52 immigrants, 3, 6, 11, 12, 21, 22, 27, 30, 31, 37, 38, 47, 48, 54, 57, 66, 78, 79, 80, 83, 87, 88, 92, 95, 98, 99, 100, 103, 113 immigrants immigrant, 1, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 15, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 35, 36, 41, 46,

48, 56, 78, 87, 88, 91, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112 Indian, 27 individual, 4 individualized. See self; individualistic, 3, 4, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 84, 91, 97, 105, 106 individualism, 5, 17, 20, 21, 99 Indonesia, 29 intercultural, 22, 106

J Japanese Japan, 17, 27, 28

K Kardiner, 83 Kasindorf, 32 kinship. See . See Kitayama & Markus, 96 Kohut, 86, 100 Korean, 27, 28 Kung, 1, 29, 54, 55, 56, 57 Kwong, 32

L La Barre, 67 labor, 26, 27, 29, 72, 94 Lang, 67, 74, 75 Langer, 113 language barrier, 47 Lau, 18, 19, 20, 23 laundromats, 27 legal, 36, 48, 60 Leung & Bond, 19, 23 LeVine, 17, 66, 73, 81, 83, 84, 86, 96, 99, 108

166 Lopez, 19

M Magnuson Act, 28 Malaysia, 29 Mandarin, 35 Marcus & Fischer, 81 Marsella, 20 martial arts, 50, 105 Maxwell, 35, 37, 82 McClelland, 16, 17, 18, 106 meaning-making meaning-maker. meaningmaker, 5, 7, 12, 38, 43, 44, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 94, 95, 96 menial jobs. See Miles & Huberman, 44 Minoura, 96 monolithic, 11, 20, 25, 67 moral, 3, 11, 66, 68, 69, 70, 72, 73 motivation, 1 motivations, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 32, 33, 40, 42, 43, 44, 53, 68, 85, 87, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109. Munro, 68, 70, 74 mutual understanding, 11, 52, 67

ontological, 68, 97 order, 3, 5, 11, 12, 13, 23, 27, 29, 39, 41, 48, 51, 60, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88, 94, 97, 98, 112 organismic, 11, 18, 69, 70, 71, 72, 91, 96, 98

P

N

paradigmatic model, 17 parental authority, 18, 22, 75, 106 Pelto, 82 personhood. See identity; self. personal, 3, 5, 8, 11, 12, 20, 22, 24, 38, 41, 42, 43, 45, 51, 52, 56, 66, 70, 73, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 104 phenomenology phenomenological, 11, 16, 23, 40, 42, 91 Philippines, 29 Polkinghorne, 42 Portes, 26, 27 Post Nationality Act Amendments, 27, 29, 47 postmodernism, 87 psychological, 23, 43 psychology psychological, 1, 4, 5, 12, 16, 17, 19, 20, 67, 72, 73, 77, 79, 83, 84, 88, 91, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101, 108, 109

network, 48, 49, 52, 54, 57, 72, 74 New York, 27, 28, 48, 49, 58, 59

Q

O

qigong. See . See . See . See . See . See Quinn, 23, 82

Obeyesekere, 86, 96, 108 ontology

167

R reciprocal reciprocity, 10, 16, 46, 66, 67, 70, 72, 74, 86, 96, 100, 104, 105, 109 Red China, 30 Redfield, 81 Refugee Relief Act, 28 rehabilitation camp, 50 relationship relationship, 7, 10, 11, 19, 36, 37, 40, 44, 47, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 88, 97, 104 religion religious, 8, 17 religious, 9, 17, 47, 58, 71, 75, 79, 84, 91, 97, 100, 104, 105 resettlement cultural. resources symbolic, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 31, 32, 33, 41, 66, 72, 80, 97, 100, 104, 105 restaurant. See . See . See . See . See . See . See . See . See . See . See . See reverence reverent, 51, 67, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 82, 86, 96 Ricoeur, 84, 96

S Schaffer, 100 Schleiermacher, 42 school schools, 9, 10, 32, 60, 68 Schutz, 42 self personhood, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 43, 47, 49, 53, 56, 66, 67,

69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 99, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113 Shweder, 81, 83, 85, 86 Singapore, 1, 6, 7, 29, 30, 35, 40, 52 Siu, 18, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31 social-political, 7 socio-centric socio-centrism, 2, 3, 19, 22, 33, 106 socio-centrism, 3, 19, 22, 23, 72 socioeconomic, 28, 29, 68, 84 socio-historical, 10 socio-political, 8, 10, 25, 31, 47, 68, 69, 94 Southeast Asia, 29 spiritual. See religion; religious. Spiro, 4, 15, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86 stereotype, 31, 32 Stevenson & Lee, 17 Stover, 69 Strauss, 82, 83, 96 Suarez-Orozco, 21, 38 suburbs. See . See . See . See Sung, 18, 22, 28, 29, 32, 48 Switzerland, 55

T Taiwan, 29, 30, 32, 51, 58 Takaki, 26, 27, 31 Taoism, 69 Taylor, 67, 86, 104 Thailand, 29 Tong, 20 top-down, 16, 19, 22, 23, 80, 91, 96, 107 trans-generational tranws-generation, 20 Tsai, 28 Tu, 2, 47, 65, 69, 72, 73, 74, 75 Turner, 5

168

U U.S. Census, 29 uptown Chinese, 31, 32

V Vaillant, 86, 96, 108 validity, 17, 44 values, 6, 7, 11, 18, 20, 22, 32, 43, 66, 69, 71, 72, 73, 77, 79, 83, 85, 87, 88, 93, 96, 98, 99, 101, 104, 106, 108, 109 values, 12 Vietnamese, 35

W Wallace, 82 Wang, 26 War Brides Act, 28 wealth, 35, 58, 67 Weber, 42, 80 Whiting & Child, 81, 82, 84 Whiting & Whiting, 81, 82 Wikan, 22, 23, 24 Winch, 45 World War II, 28 worldview, 68 Wu, 15, 73

Y Yang, 18, 19, 20, 23, 68, 69 yellow peril, 26, 31, 32 Yin/Yang, 68

Z Zedong, Mao, 28 Zhou, 27, 30