When I think of the Chinese cul­ture, a very spe­cif­ic image comes into my head, of a father dom­i­nat­ed fam­i­ly, par­ents who don’t know their chil­dren, and closed-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als.

I think my upbring­ing has exposed me to such a one-sided aspect of Chinese life. Almost every Chinese fam­i­ly I’ve met is like this. It would­n’t be so bad if I saw the kids as grow­ing up and sur­pass­ing such lim­it­ed indi­vid­u­al­ism. And yet most of the Chinese peo­ple my age just seem to be falling into the same child­ish mind­set, a prod­uct of parental (mis)guidance, in my hum­ble opin­ion.

It almost makes me sick.

When I read about Chinese his­to­ry, I’m fas­ci­nat­ed about how wis­dom is held in such rev­er­ence, and how schol­ars are so respect­ed. The same virtues seem to hold for Chinese peo­ple today, except that they don’t tru­ly under­stand why aca­d­e­mics are impor­tant, or why one should learn an instru­ment.

I wish I did­n’t have such a lim­it­ed view of a cul­ture with such great his­to­ry. I wish I could be exposed to an amaz­ing Chinese fam­i­ly. I wish some­thing could change my view.

All of this has cre­at­ed such a dis­taste of Asian look­ing girls in me. It’s as if my mind makes an unfair asso­ci­a­tion.

I’m stuck.