From BBC to ABC

It’s been 3 months since I first moved to Philadelphia and 4 months since I moved from London to the US. Having anticipated great challenges in starting a new life, new job and new environment, I never could have anticipated some of the changes I have had to deal with, or for that matter, the new changes I now embrace.

Aside from adjusting to the obvious shift in the attitudes of the people - from the land of the Brits where people are cool, reserved and characteristically rigid to the land of the Yanks being loud, proud but remarkably warm, there are also the subtle, unspoken differences within American culture that I have learnt to respect.

For me personally, the first thing I notice about a culture is always the food. Anyone who knows me, knows I AM all about food. As a Chinese Brit (often referred to as a "BBC", though not completely true), growing up in England, I used to struggle with understanding the British obsession with Indian curry, or Indian food in general. For me, my Mum’s Chinese cooking was by default the best. That was before I left home, made friends and realised how much Indian, and indeed many other immigrant communities had become so quintessentially British. Most Chinese communities in Britain have settled into British society for a few generations, but they are not as settled relatively to, say, the Indian communities, or the Pakistani, or the Sri Lankan communities (a result of Victorian era British colonialism). While these Asian communities already have huge representations in all areas of British life, including Local government and some in Parliament, there are just not that many Chinese Brits who are so integrated in Britain, in the same sense (of course, I'm not discounting the great celebrities, such as Gok Wan, Ching He Huang, Vanessa-Mae etc. - all hail to them!)

In America as you know, size matters. Chinese immigrants from all of China make up a majority of the Asian demographic. They are represented in every sector of the US economy, from academia to banking, from laborers to the Senate and special interests lobbies. This is the country that brought us Bruce Lee, invented chop suey and boasts the biggest Chinatowns in the West, afterall. Even in Obama’s new cabinet there are Chinese Americans (Secretary of energy Steven Chu), not to mention Obama’s family (brother in law, Konrad Ng).

No wonder, then, my first and best meal when I arrived in the US was a Chinese meal cooked by a mainland China chef in a Shanghainese restaurant. Suddenly, Chinese food from all regions of China are available to me – in contrast to just the same oily food I remember growing up in England. When Americans talk about ethnic food, a lot of them display a preference for Chinese food. This makes sense. The more integration of the ethnic group, the better they can market and sell their trademark foods.

Ironically, when I sit down with people in America and ask what they think about Indian curry, a lot of people recoil and complain about the greasiness (a view I saw a lot of Brits express when asked about Chinese food). It’s not that there are no good Indian restaurants in the US. It’s more about the mindset of the general American population, who prefer Chinese food because there is more of it to go round – both good and bad quality.

Now as I start my life in the US as a Chinese American (trying and probably failing to become an American born Chinese, "ABC"), I can draw from my new experiences a sense of pride I did not have as a kid. Not only proud of the fact that the food I love is also liked by millions of other people in a Western country, but also proud that I have experienced several very different cultures in my short life.