The following essay won second place in Documented’s 2025 bilingual essay contest for Chinese high schoolers in NYC. Students were asked to respond to the prompt: “a tradition I hope never goes away.”
阅读本文的中文版本: 处于边缘的记忆
I consider the stack of notebooks laid in front of me, black-and-white marbled covers binding papers of slightly different hues of white. Frugality meant that notebooks half-filled with math, science, history – or frankly whatever notes that I had taken during the school year – were finished with pencil scribbles of informational texts and anecdotes in Chinese. It started with textbooks shipped to us from one of my cousins in China, filled with little notes from him that offered a glimpse into the life of school in China, a life so similar yet so different from my American experience. These, alongside my determined mom, became my teacher in reading and writing Chinese.
Hours and hours spent copying over the texts over the majority of my childhood became the building blocks that lifted my proficiency high above my peers. In the era when people’s approval and admiration of me defined my ego, this was the perfect subtle flex to fulfill that need for respect. The price was the pain of the red crescents in my palm marking where my nails had dug in from me gripping the pencil too hard and the scarlet skin of the side of my pinkie’s knuckle that’s been dragged across the rough surface. The pain faded by the next day, just like some of the characters that I had to memorize for a short test, but sometimes, the pain transformed into a lingering memory of the characters instead.
My earliest memory of learning Chinese characters was matching dialogue I hear on television with the corresponding subtitles. This is perhaps why I have a dependency on subtitles: I am able to keep up with the plot by simply reading the words, allowing my mind to drift elsewhere when the pace gets slow, knowing that the characters are there to anchor me.
NYC is often described as a melting pot of cultures, but I prefer the salad metaphor: a mixture of identities where it’s precisely the uniqueness blending together that creates the perfect experience. It’s consoling to know that within the bustling metropolis, there’s a place for me too, a place for the characters I hold in my mind. I’m able to walk along the streets of Chinatown and appreciate the deeper meaning of the store names behind the caricature that’s left when translated into English. It’s as if I’m being let in on a special secret. It is a way to integrate yourself into a close-knit community, a beacon of comfort within the rushing currents that NYC is characterized by. It tells me that there is relief from the overwhelming stimulation of flashing lights and bustling crowds; it tells me there’s a space ready for me to relax in. When returning on a long bus ride for a school trip, the brightly colored signs sporting familiar characters atop a busy market front tell me more than just the merchandise: they tell me I am home.
Although Mandarin is my first language, it was supplanted by English as the world around me pushed for me to learn that language instead. Home was the stronghold of the language as my parents struggled to adjust to the complexities of the English language, forcing me to maintain use of Mandarin, but I had stopped copying the textbooks. I maintain my proficiency in the language by indulging in the exciting world of web novels.
While many of my Chinese American friends don’t possess the same tastes, we still have a lot of fun speaking Mandarin together on occasion. Something about the juxtaposition of sentences one would expect to be articulated by a small child being spoken by high schoolers capable of writing elegantly composed prose for English class is exceptionally entertaining when we’re playing poker. How odd the scene of a circle of teenagers sitting on the floor laughing over one of them using the wrong word for poker card; how heartening to experience a moment’s reprieve from the stress of school with a language reminding us of home.
It saddens me to know that I can’t share the intricacies of the written form of the language with these friends, who can only recognize the simplest of characters and are utterly confused by the words that captivate my attention for hours on end. The script that once united a vast nation is struggling to survive in the hands of a generation whose attention is demanded elsewhere, a place far from the script’s origin. It’s a distressing thought indeed to consider that what has defined a great part of our history might be reduced to just history here: a seedling struggling to take root in this strange land.
I had looked back on my work in my notebooks the day after, cringing at how my handwriting drove off a cliff as I got increasingly tired of the tedious work, eager to return to more entertaining activities. I now look back at all the notebooks spread before me. I didn’t date any of them because I didn’t see the need for it – and indeed, there is no need for it.
Much like how my handwriting changed in English, I could track similar changes across the years that had accumulated within the white pages. I observe the evolution of characters: from large characters written by a clumsy hand struggling with the unwieldy pencil, then shrinking into wildly slanting characters – as if blown by a hurricane as my mom and teacher had put it – before settling into something presentable, not pretty but legible.
The notebooks are documents of my past, and a symbol of my ancestors before me; the language within shall become the future, a spark I shall carry with me to blaze a bright path forth.
