CAIS

Where I Come From

And How CAIS Helped Me Get Here

By Jessica Yen, Class of 1997

“Where do you come from?”

A potentially loaded question, given that America is a nation of immigrants and that this meeting of peoples has been, at times, rather tumultuous. When placed in a Chinese context, and directed towards a Chinese American, doubly so. It speaks to nationality, to ancestral villages and hometowns, to identity, to perceptions of self and culture. It is a question that I have answered a hundred times over in the past couple of months since I moved to Beijing, perhaps with slight variations in form, but a steadfast constancy in substance. After all, my sense of identity is tied to my Chinese roots and my American nationality, and deeply rooted in my understanding of Chinese and American culture.

I started at Chinese American International School several weeks before my third birthday, and until high school, formal education meant a vibrant immersion in the Chinese language and culture. From day one, it was an all encompassing affair, with songs that our class sang in a circle and clapped our hands to, nursery rhymes I can still chant to this day—and when I do, my friends comment how lucky I am, that my parents or grandparents were able to teach me such nuggets of culture. In fact, I had learned those songs from CAIS. My parents and grandparents would come and watch me sing, dance and act and perform in CAIS shows, sometimes singing along from memory of the songs they recognized from their years in China and sometimes learning along with me.

Immersed in such an environment from my earliest memory, Chinese language and culture has always been at the forefront of my consciousness and my awareness of self. I have never questioned how to define the “Chinese” part of my identity in grappling with my notion of self; it has always been a reality of my identity. It is the beacon that guides my priorities, my passions, my life direction.

And so I find myself in China.

Even in my early days in college I could feel that I had yun, fate, with China, that at some point in my life I would be in China, for this nation and its culture are an inextricable part of my future, just as they are intimately woven into the fabric my past.

This is my first time living in China for an extended period of time. Previously, I spent a summer in Taiwan in a language program. In Beijing, I find myself an outsider and yet an insider. The ability to move in and out of the expatriate and native spheres of Beijing has increased my scope of perception, as well as deepened my layers of understanding of Chinese and other cultures. To carry multiple sets of cultural insight is like holding a prism; it illuminates a rainbow of meanings and complexities and contextualizes every interaction, every experience.

Recently I took a solo weeklong trip through Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou. Along the way I stayed in hostels, bunking with women from provinces all over China. It was only until that very question, “Where are you from?”, that my roommates realized that I am Chinese American. Yet once they knew, there was no shift in our relationship, no barriers, no reticence. They found they could talk to me as easily as before: as one of “us,” not one of “them,” despite differences in nationality, education, and life experiences. “You know,” they would tell me, “you just seem like one of us. Your parents must have really raised you to be Chinese.”

My parents are a large part of the equation, but I owe much to CAIS in its influence from the earliest years of my education. I learned that teachers and elders are to be respected, and yet through informal conversations outside of the classroom, my teachers showed me how to respectfully bridge that gap in an appropriate way. This ability to bridge gaps has helped me negotiate both worlds, to bring them together. For, as my teachers taught me about Chinese expectations and notions of propriety, I am able to meet my Chinese counterparts on their terms, and in a way that puts them at ease.

From my time in China so far, one memory in particular stands out.

It is night. The shores of the West Lake in Hangzhou are aglow with city lights. I have just shared a meal with my roommate from Hunan, and we are sitting on a wooden bench, listening to the music from across the way. Two strangers whose life paths have momentarily crossed, slipping in and out of conversation about the mundane and the profound. This, I think to myself, as a soft breeze steals around the two of us, this is why I came to China.

Jessica Yen, ’97, is a 2005-2006 Fulbright Fellow based in Beijing. She recently graduated from U.C. Berkeley.