Eddie Huang Quotes

I think my mom is manic, but Chinese people don't believe in psychologists. We just drink more tea when things go bad. Sometimes I agree; I think we're all over diagnosed.

People ask me what my greatest strengths are and I say perspective. The best way to get that is to meet people that are polar opposites; you learn the most from them. There are pieces of you that are inherently yours, but everything else is a collection of the things you’ve seen and the people you’ve met.

To this day, I wake up at times, look in the mirror, and just stare, obsessed with the idea that the person I am in my head is something entirely different than what everyone else sees. That the way I look will prevent me from doing the things I want; that there really are sneetches with stars and I’m not one of them. I touch my face, I feel my skin, I check my color every day, and I swear it all feels right. But then someone says something and that sense of security and identity is gone before I know it.

Good food makes me want to hit a punching bag like, Dat's right motherfucker. You done did it there.

My entire life, the single most interesting thing to me is race in America. How something so stupid as skin or eyes or stinky Chinese lunch has such an impact on a person’s identity, their mental state, and the possibility of their happiness. It was race. It was race. It was race.

We play into the definitions and stereotypes others impose on us and accept the model-minority myth, thinking it's positive, but it's a trap just like any stereotype. They put a piece of model-minority cheese between the metal jaws of their mousetrap, but we're lactose intolerant anyway! We can't even eat the cheese.

they’d never see me as one of “them.” If they did try to see me as one of “them” it wasn’t in my true form; it was as a reformed, assimilated, apologetic version of myself that accepted the premise that my people were barbarians

The easiest way for Americans to make sense of Chinese history is to compare everything to Jewish history. There's an analogue for everything. Torah: Analects. Curly sideburns: long ponytails. Mantou: bagels.

From the ground up, I was going to detox my identity of any and everything that someone else put there without my blessing.

Whether it's food or women, the ones on front street are supermodels. Big hair, big tits, big trouble, but the one you come home to is probably something like cavatelli and red sauce. She's not screaming for attention because she knows she's good enough even if your dumb ass hasn't figured it out yet.

If you like our food, great, but don’t come tell me you’re gonna clean it up, refine it, or elevate it because it’s not necessary or possible. We don’t need fucking food missionaries to cleanse our palates.

I think my mom is manic, but Chinese people don't believe in psychologists. We just drink more tea when things go bad.

Not only was I not white, to many people I wasn’t Asian either.

To Americans, this may seem sick, but to first- or second-generation Chinese, Korean, Jamaican, Dominican, Puerto Rican immigrants, whatever, if your parents are FOBs, this is just how it is. You don’t talk about it, you can’t escape it, and in a way it humbles you the rest of your life. There’s something about crawling on the floor with your pops tracking you down by whip that grounds you as a human being.

Once they spent money on a problem, they never thought about it again.

I don’t do coupons or Reeboks. Life is too short to half-step.

By that point, I was ready to convert. I wanted to be white so fucking bad. But then dinner happened.

When foreigners cook our food, they want to infuse their identity into the dish, they have a need to be part of the story and take it over.

People ask me what my greatest strengths are and I say perspective. The best way to get that is to meet people that are polar opposites; you learn the most from them.

Somehow, food has become a social equalizer.

He didn’t understand that I didn’t hate white people. I hated whiteness.

So … I did what every culture does when Americans can’t understand something: I put it on bread.

Good food makes me want to hit a punching bag like, Dat’s right motherfucker. You done did it there.

Momma didn’t raise no fool. Chuck E. Cheese was for mouth breathers and kids with Velcro shoes.

don't pick on people who were already being picked on.

The most infuriating thing is the idea that ethnic food isn't already good enough because it goddamn is. We were fine before you came to visit and we'll be fine after. If you like our food, great, but don't come tell me you're gonna clean it up, refine it, or elevate it because it's not necessary or possible. We don't need fucking food missionaries to cleanse our palates.

I didn’t allow America to sell me in a box with presets and neither should you. Take the things from America that speak to you, that excite you, that inspire you, and be the Americans we all want to know; then cook it up and sell it back to them for $28.99.

When I met white kids' parents, they always asked me bullshit questions about race, where our family was "from," and used words like Oriental. I was like a toy in their house, but Joey's parents were Asian so it felt like family. I never felt like I had to carry the burden of the whole Chinese diaspora, or that everything I did was a statement about my people and where we're from. (84)

Of course, my pops put chili oil in it immediately, but I wanted to taste the broth: intense, deep, and mind-numbing. It was one of those bites that make you think maybe, just maybe, your taste buds carry a cognitive key that can open something in your mind. Like the first time I heard Lauryn Hill’s voice scratch over “Killing Me Softly,” I felt that I just had a mental breakthrough via sound; there has to be something like that with taste. It was then and there that I realized, you can tell a story without words, just soup.

Soup dumplings, sitcoms, one-night stands--good ones leave you wanting more.

What they didn’t understand is that after you have the money and degrees, you can’t buy your identity back. I wasn’t worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots.

I gave up trying to find friends at college and befriended dead people between the margins.

I remember not having money, I remember having money, and neither had a bearing on who I was as a person. It affected how others saw me, but not how I saw myself.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” I

Style isn't an excuse to cook without a standard. Style just determines the set of rules you choose.

Revenge is always expensive, but you get what you pay for.

Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn't mean you shouldn't flip it over, look around, poke at its flaws, and see it for what it is yourself.

Up until my last year in college, I didn't know what semicolons were for so I just didn't use them.

All that time, my fears—about identity and family and love—were misplaced. It isn't acceptance that extinguishes us, instead, it awakens us.

In my multifold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don't intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.

I’m convinced that frats are the beginning of the end for most of the people who end up running the world. It teaches them to give up individuality, independence, and even their paper for acceptance.

I don’t think people realize how fucking weird Christianity is if you’re not raised around it. But, hey, it got me off time-out. And, who knows, maybe a billion white people can’t be wrong and it’s all really true.

If you like our food, great, but don’t come tell me you’re gonna clean it up, refine it, or elevate it because it’s not necessary or possible. We don’t need fucking food missionaries to cleanse our palates. What we need are opportunities outside kitchens and cubicles.

Take the things from America that speak to you, that excite you, that inspire you, and be the Americans we all want to know; then cook it up and sell it back to them for $28.99. Cue Funk Flex to drop bombs on this. All my peoples from the boat, let 'em know: WEOUTCHEA.

If I die right now, I want to know I did the right thing, I made my ancestors proud, and I experienced love. Real love in its most powerful freebased form. It doesn’t have to be forever ’cause I’m not greedy. You could shoot me in the face as soon as I’ve felt it, but I want to know it.

It wasn’t much to most kids. I mean, I was basically getting recognized for being straight dogshit, ignoring that I was straight dogshit, and doing anything in my power just to maintain my dogshittiness. I think on Urban Dictionary that’s the definition for insanity—or a Michael Bay film.

I wanted something they'd taken from me. People say kids always tease and that it's an innocent right of passage, but it's not. Every time an Edgar or Billie called me "chink" or "Chinaman" or "ching chong" it took a piece of me. I didn't want to talk about it, and kept it to myself. I clenched my teeth waiting to get even. Unlike others who let it eat them up and took it to their graves, I refused to be that Chinese kid walking everywhere with his head down. I wanted my dignity, my identity, and my pride back. I wanted them to know there were repercussions to the things they said.

My mom had this habit of speaking Chinese in front of Americans. She didn't give a fuck that they probably thought it was rude. I was caught in the middle. There's a part of me that loves immigrants who throw niceties to the wind and just speak their tongue all day, every day. The older generation never felt integrated in society anyway so they don't care if you see them as "rude." I mean, cot damn, "rude" is probably a compliment compared to the shit people used to say to them. This is our language and it's your problem if you don't speak it, right? But another part of me feels, ".What's Dave got to do with it?" (68)

The answer was not to go into Iraq. It should have been to look at ourselves, look at our own crumbling policies, and economic mishaps. We should have lowered the debt, regulated the banks, prevented the oncoming mortgage crisis, and reevaluated our foreign policy, but we didn’t. We played on the fear of innocent Americans and spent our resources on a nameless, faceless war that tore apart Iraq, emptied our war chest, and left us with an American infrastructure screaming for help. We didn’t look at ourselves until it was too late. We spent our money on an arms race against ourself, fought an unnecessary war, and neglected the problems we had on this side of the water’s edge.

Xiang wei is the character a good dish has when it’s robust, flavorful, and balanced but still maintains a certain light quality. That flavor comes, lingers on your tongue, stays long enough to make you crave it, but just when you think you have it figured out, it’s gone. Timing is everything. Soup dumplings, sitcoms, one-night stands—good ones leave you wanting more.

My parents always insulted each other. Mom was a good student and thought school was important. Dad agreed even though he had a chip on his shoulder because he never got good grades. He learned most things from running around on the street, but in a funny way, my dad was smarter. My mom never remembered what she learned in school because she just memorized stuff for tests; it was my dad, who had bad grades, that actually remembered everything he learned.

People has jokes, but at this point I was meaner, so I didn't even think twice. You said some shit, I threw you into a wall. Teachers, counselors, psychiatrists, family, and friends couldn't understand. I was a nice kid, smiled a lot, had a genuine interest in books, culture, and anything that I could get my hands on to read. But there was this switch that would go off. Between getting hit at home and all the things people said about me, I just couldn't take it. I couldn't walk away. I was determined to get even, I wanted to hurt people like they hurt me.

When we talked about "A Modest Proposal" I felt like I was running circles around everybody. I understood that shit better than the professor 'cause he was just a fan. I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at the Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn't them it was someone impressing Christianity onto me and when it wasn't Christianity it was whiteness.

You can't convince yourself! You either believe or you don't believe." (28) "She say you ask weird questions, but I say you're student, you supposed to ask! Her job to answer! I say you're lazy, if student ask, you answer!" "Yeah! She told me my real great-grandparents are these white people named Adan and Eve!" "Bullshit! But hey, Ciao Wen, be smart. Why you argue with her about that? You know they believe this stuff, just let them believe." "But she told me I was going to Hell if I didn't believe and told me to ask God into my heart!" ""Ha, ha, yeah, she told me, too, think she do something soo good to help you. Whatever. You know it's lies, let those idiots believe. Just focus on real school. Don't be stupid and fight them, you'll lose." (30)

HERE ARE MY TEN BEEF NOODLE SOUP COMMANDMENTS: 1. Throw out the first: always flash-boil your bones and beef to get the “musk” out. I’ve gone back and forth on this a lot. I would sometimes brown the meat as opposed to boil, but decided in the end that for this soup, you gotta boil. If you brown, it’s overpowering. The lesson that beef noodle soup teaches you is restraint. Sometimes less is more if you want all the flavors in the dish to speak to you. 2. Make sure the oil is medium-high when the aromatics go down and get a slight caramelization. It’s a fine line. Too much caramelization and it becomes too heavy, but no caramelization and your stock is weak. 3. Rice wine can be tricky. Most people like to vaporize it so that all the alcohol is cooked off. I like to leave a little of the alcohol flavor ’cause it tends to cut through the grease a bit. 4. Absolutely no butter, lard, or duck fat. I’ve seen people in America try to “kick it up a notch” with animal fats and it ruins the soup. Peanut oil or die. 5. Don’t burn the chilis and peppercorns, not even a little bit. You want the spice and the numbness, but not the smokiness. 6. After sautéing the chilis/peppercorns, turn off the heat and let them sit in the oil to steep. This is another reason you want to turn the heat off early. 7. Strain your chilis/peppercorns out of the oil, put them in a muslin bag, and set them aside. Then add ginger/garlic/scallions to the oil in that order. Stage them. 8. I use tomatoes in my beef noodle soup, but I add them after the soup is finished and everything is strained. I let them hang out in the soup as it sits on the stove over the course of the day. I cut the tomatoes thin so they give off flavor without having to cook too long and so you can serve them still intact. 9. Always use either shank or chuck flap. Brisket is too tough. If you want to make it interesting, add pig’s foot or oxtail. 10. Do you. I don’t give you measurements with this because I gave you all the ingredients and the technique. The best part about beef noodle soup is that there are no rules. It just has to have beef, noodle, and soup. There are people that do clear broth beef noodle soup. Beef noodle soup with dairy. Beef noodle soup with pig’s blood. It would suck if you looked at my recipe and never made your own, ’cause everyone has a beef noodle soup in them. Show it to me.

Porridge is our soup, our grits, our sustenance, so it's pretty much the go-to for breakfast. For the first time, I ate with a bunch of other Taiwanese-Chinese kids my age who knew what the hell they were doing. Even at Chinese school, there were always kids that brought hamburgers, shunned chopsticks, or didn't get down with the funky shit. They were like faux-bootleg-Canal Street Chinamen. That was one of the things that really annoyed me about growing up Chinese in the States. Even if you wanted to roll with Chinese/Taiwanese kids, there were barely any around and the ones that were around had lost their culture and identity. They barely spoke Chinese, resented Chinese food, and if we got picked on by white people on the basketball court, everyone just looked out for themselves. It wasn't that I wanted people to carry around little red books to affirm their "Chinese-ness," but I just wanted to know there were other people that wanted this community to live on in America. There was on kid who wouldn't eat the thousand-year-old eggs at breakfast and all the other kids started roasting him. "If you don't get down with the nasty shit, you're not Chinese!" I was down with the mob, but something left me unsettled. One thing ABCs love to do is compete on "Chinese-ness," i.e., who will eat the most chicken feet, pig intestines, and have the highest SAT scores. I scored high in chick feet, sneaker game, and pirated good, but relatively low on the SAT. I had made National Guild Honorable Mention for piano when I was around twelve and promptly quit. My parents had me play tennis and take karate, but ironically, I quit tennis two tournaments short of being ranked in the state of Florida and left karate after getting my brown belt. The family never understood it, but I knew what I was doing. I didn't want to play their stupid Asian Olympics, but I wanted to prove to myself that if I did want to be the stereotypical Chinaman they wanted, I could. (189) I had become so obsessed with not being a stereotype that half of who I was had gone dormant. But it was also a positive. Instead of following the path most Asian kids do, I struck out on my own. There's nature, there's nurture, and as Harry Potter teaches us, there's who YOU want to be. (198) Everyone was in-between. The relief of the airport and the opportunity to reflect on my trip helped me realize that I didn't want to blame anyone anymore, Not my parents, not white people, not America. Did I still think there was a lot wrong with the aforementioned? Hell, yeah, but unless I was going to do something about it, I couldn't say shit. So I drank my Apple Sidra and shut the fuck up. (199)

When 9/11 happened, I was an observer. I mourned for the victims and felt for the people as individuals, but this wasn’t my fight. It wasn’t the victims’ fight, either, though. They were caught in the middle as always. The little people suffer for the crimes of few. This fight wasn’t between the people that flew the planes and the people in the towers. We all got played by politics we had nothing to do with. In the aftermath of 9/11, if you tuned in to television stations and watched the debates over the war in Iraq, no one had the backbone to point out the obvious. America, Inc. was running out of gas. We’d squeezed everything we could out of the rest of the world with our foreign policy. The answer was not to go into Iraq. It should have been to look at ourselves, look at our own crumbling policies, and economic mishaps. We should have lowered the debt, regulated the banks, prevented the oncoming mortgage crisis, and reevaluated our foreign policy, but we didn’t. We played on the fear of innocent Americans and spent our resources on a nameless, faceless war that tore apart Iraq, emptied our war chest, and left us with an American infrastructure screaming for help. We didn’t look at ourselves until it was too late. We spent our money on an arms race against ourself, fought an unnecessary war, and neglected the problems we had on this side of the water’s edge.

That's not how you eat hot pot! That's some new-age Taiwanese thing. In Beijing, you don't mis the sauces." "Son, I'll say this the nicest way I can. I'm Chinese and you're an idiot."(247) My entire life, the single most interesting thing to me is race in America. how something so stupid as skin or eyes or stinky Chinese lunch as such an impact on a person's identity, their mental state, and the possibility of their happiness. It was race. It was race. Apologies to Frank Sinatra, but I've been called a "ch!gg@r," a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a pawn, think the idea of America is cool, but at the end of the day wish the world had no lines. (249) You have tattoos and others have piercings, but for me, there's nothing that says more about me than the food I choose to carry every single day. As a kid trying to maintain my identity in America, my Chinese was passable, my history was shaky, but I could taste something one time and make it myself at home. When everything else fell apart and I didn't know who I was, food brought me back and here I was again. (250) ... Ironically enough, the one place that America allows Chinese people to do their thing is the kitchen. Just like Jewish people became bankers because that was the only thing Christians let them do, a lot of Chinese people ended up in laundries, delis, and kitchens because that's what was available...get in where you fit in, fool. (250)

People reacted with hate and fear and then community by wearing American flag shirts, bandannas, crying, huddling, lost, and senseless. They packed the gymnasium to talk about how they felt. A lot of students were from New York so I understood their pain. For them, it was personal. But for me, it was surreal. I didn't take it personally: I'd never subscribed to America. I never felt included in this country. To this day, someone tells me to go back to China at least three times a year and I live in downtown New York. (222-233) Americans. Americans. AMERICANS. They've called me chink. They've treated me like the Other. They laughed at my food, they laughed at my family, they laughed at my culture, they wouldn't give me a proper interview because of my face. Americans. They did that. When 9/11 happened, I was an observer. I mourned for the victims and felt for the people as individuals, but this wasn't my fight. It wasn't the victims' fight, either, though. They were caught in the middle as always. The little people suffer for the crimes of few. This fight wasn't between the people that flew the planes and the people in the towers. We all got played by politics we had nothing to do with. (223) If you want your voice to be heard, you have to fight. There's no other way around it. You can't expect people to seek you out; if you know you're right and you have the answers, then it's your duty to tell the world.(224)

Every few months or so at home, Pops had to have Taiwanese ’Mian. Not the Dan-Dan Mian you get at Szechuan restaurants or in Fuchsia Dunlop’s book, but Taiwanese Dan-Dan. The trademark of ours is the use of clear pork bone stock, sesame paste, and crushed peanuts on top. You can add chili oil if you want, but I take it clean because when done right, you taste the essence of pork and the bitterness of sesame paste; the texture is somewhere between soup and ragout. Creamy, smooth, and still soupy. A little za cai (pickled radish) on top, chopped scallions, and you’re done. I realized that day, it’s the simple things in life. It’s not about a twelve-course tasting of unfamiliar ingredients or mass-produced water-added rib-chicken genetically modified monstrosity of meat that makes me feel alive. It’s getting a bowl of food that doesn’t have an agenda. The ingredients are the ingredients because they work and nothing more. These noodles were transcendent not because he used the best produce or protein or because it was locally sourced, but because he worked his dish. You can’t buy a championship. Did this old man invent Dan-Dan Mian? No. But did he perfect it with techniques and standards never before seen? Absolutely. He took a dish people were making in homes, made it better than anyone else, put it on front street, and established a standard. That’s professional cooking. To take something that already speaks to us, do it at the highest level, and force everyone else to step up, too. Food at its best uplifts the whole community, makes everyone rise to its standard. That’s what that Dan-Dan Mian did. If I had the honor of cooking my father’s last meal, I wouldn’t think twice. Dan-Dan Mian with a bullet, no question.

We weren’t Americans like everyone else. We’d always be the other in this bullshit country.

We’d all been through enough cultural cleansing situations that we knew something like Debate Club was going to try to remodel us, but I’ll never forget what happened when we left.

Suburban or not, something most definitely went wrong and we’re still trying to figure it out. But if you ask me, Pac and that dickhead at Debate Club had a lot to do with it. We never tried to join a club, after-school activity, or anything productive, for that matter, ever again. The Honor Roll wasn’t something we wanted to be part of. We gave up on doing it their way, we wanted to get free.

If you grow up in an immigrant culture, there are going to be foods you eat that other people just don’t get.

We had to have white people front like the chef and owners. It was not OK for my dad to sell steak, but white people cooking Asian get more attention than the people in Chinatown who actually know what the fuck they’re doing.

I don’t believe you need to shout out the farm, the name of the chicken, or all that other bullshit on the menu because it should simply be the standard that we serve all-natural meat.

The reason we use all natural, hormone-free, antibiotic-free Berkshire pork belly, beef, and chicken is that it’s the right thing to do.

When they beat that dream out of me, I said I’d be a sportscaster on ESPN and I’ll never forget what my father said: “They’ll never let someone with a face like you on television.” To this day, I wake up at times, look in the mirror, and just stare, obsessed with the idea that the person I am in my head is something entirely different than what everyone else sees.

Rice in Taiwan, unlike America, doesn’t always come out soggy and limp.

In America, we’re allowed to play ONE role, the eunuch who can count.

To this day, I wake up at times, look in the mirror, and just stare, obsessed with the idea that the person I am in my head is something entirely different than what everyone else sees.

Carpetbaggers with no culture or moral compass, enabled and empowered with new money.

Money had them under a spell. Once they spent the money on a problem, they never thought about it again.

These white people like really mushy food.

That’s the confidence that New York gave me. There was finally a city that appreciated what I had to say and the honesty with which I said it.

Figure it out!” We always had to figure it out, so you can, too! We didn’t have the luxury of people explaining why I couldn’t use my left hand or why his family had no money. We just figured it out. But love is a funny thing.

I suddenly realized that converting to white wouldn’t be easy, but still, that toilet paper was like silk.

Soup dumplings, sitcoms, one-night stands—good ones leave you wanting more.

Bankers make money, too, but I’m not running up into Chase and throwing milk shakes at the homie selling subprime mortgages.

MY PARENTS WERE Fresh Off the Boat, I’m a chinkstronaut, and my kids will be on spaceships. I didn’t allow America to sell me in a box with presets and neither should you. Take the things from America that speak to you, that excite you, that inspire you, and be the Americans we all want to know; then cook it up and sell it back to them for $28.99. Cue Funk Flex to drop bombs on this. All my peoples from the boat, let ’em know: WEOUTCHEA.

The easiest way for Americans to make sense of Chinese history is to compare everything to Jewish history. There

...don't borrow money from people, but if other people need it from you lend it to them, as long as it's inconsequential.

If my mom was made, you'd hear wild and crazy Chinese. If it was my dad, he got his white man voice on.

The show is easy when there aren't real feelings behind it.

Patience, attention, and restraint are the keys to good cooking.

Asians don't use the oven for anything but holding Jordans.

The little people suffer for the crimes of few. This fight wasn’t between the people that flew the planes and the people in the towers. We all got played by politics we had nothing to do with.

Like my mans Bernard says, “Shoot when you’re hot, shoot to get hot.

Across the street from Din Tai Fung was another restaurant that served soup dumplings and made a business of catching the spillover when people didn’t want to wait an hour for a table. They were really close to the real deal. Like the first year Reebok had AI and you thought that maybe, just maybe, the Questions with the honeycomb would outsell Jordans. A false alarm.

Macaroni is to Chinamen as water is to gremlins, teeth are to blow jobs, and Asian is to American. It just didn’t fit.

That’s professional cooking. To take something that already speaks to us, do it at the highest level, and force everyone else to step up, too. Food at its best uplifts the whole community, makes everyone rise to its standard.

Until the age of eight or nine, I really saw my brothers as having a single purpose: ordering things I’d like to try but didn’t want to order for my main dish.

I'm convinced that frats are the beginning of the end for most of the people who end up running the world. It teaches them to give up individuality, independence, and even their paper just for acceptance.

I started to realize I might not have been ready to leave home. I liked that there were people in Orlando that knew everything and understood me. I didn't have to explain why I was weird, I just was.

Syllabuses became like playlists for me those days.

My grandpa and grandma were broke and made a living selling mantou on the street, just like Kossar selling bialys or Schimmel selling knishes. The easiest way for Americans to make sense of Chinese history is to compare everything to Jewish history. There’s an analogue for everything. Torah: Analects. Curly sideburns: long ponytails. Mantou: bagels.

There was an individual inside me that wasn't Chinese, that wasn't American, that wasn't Orlando. Just a kid trying to get the fuck out, tell his story, and arrange the world how it made sense to him.

No matter how hard the Man tries to sterilize us, I take solace in the fact that that we can't be erased.

These same ABCs couldn't speak Chinese and didn't care---but you don't have shit without your native tongue. African slaves were forced by threat of physical punishment to abandon their native languages, but a lot of us just gave ours up with a shrug---these Uncle Chans convinced us to assimilate, shut the fuck up, and play the part. What they didn't understand is that after your have the money and degrees, you can't buy your identity back. I wasn't worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots. Even if I hated what it meant to be an Asian in t he American wilderness, i respected the Chinese home I was raised in. Usually I wasn't so vocal about Asian identity, but without my parents around, I felt a sudden duty to say something myself. It's funny how annoying I thought my mom was, but as soon as she wasn't around, i carried the torch for her.

Every culture had dishes that prized the simple and traditional over showy flavors and elaborate presentations. The things that my not seem worthy on first look, but over time become an indispensable part of your life. If you grow up in an immigrant culture, there are going to be foods you eat that other people just don't get. Not the universal crowd-pleasers-the fired chickens and soup dumplings-but the everyday staff. We Southerners, for instance, love grits, boiled peanuts, and fried okra but nobody else understands. For Chinese people, it's things like rice porridge, thousand-year-old eggs, or tomato and eggs. Simple things that don't impress at first look, but instead offer nuance: strange textures and sublime flavors that reveal charm over the years. The things people left off menus, only to find an audience during family meal. (159) Whether it's food or women, the ones on front street are supermodels, Big hair, bit tits, bit trouble, but the one you come home with is probably something like cavatelli and red sauce. She's not screaming for attention because she knows she's good enough even if your dumb ass hasn't figured it out yet. The best dished have depth without doing too much. (160)