The following essay won third 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: 24K金: 有改变，但没丢失
The Chinese standard for pure, authentic gold is 24-karats—a sharp contrast compared to the American standard of 14-karats. 24-karat gold is malleable: easy to mold, easy to leave behind marks, and all so in a seemingly compliant manner. 14-karat gold is an alloy: it is melted with other metals, marks are not as easily yielded, and characterizes a stubborn durability. Now, I have worn both standards of gold, but neither outshines the other.
24k’s malleability is a comforting reminder of what has changed but has not been lost. All of my firsts—my first word, my first bite of solid food, my first birthday—were nurtured in my mother tongue. Memories were being created in Chinese but reminiscenced through English. 14k’s durability makes it more resistant but just as reactive. It won’t bend, but it’s still vulnerable to tarnishing. Slowly, I found my mother tongue to be a double-edged sword: discipline escalated into poignant arguments. Getting scolded in one’s mother tongue is not for the weak. Translations don’t carry over the same stinging aftertaste nor my parent’s supposed intention. Words were effortlessly being molded and hammered into our own understandings—they changed my meaning, and I lost their intention. I caricatured based on my fragmented understanding of Chinese, and they mirrored theirs of English. My stubbornness clashed with their strongly upheld beliefs, making it harder for us to communicate.
Filial piety was taught to me way before that one history lesson on the Confucian 5 key relationships. My parents wanted me to demonstrate Chinese character but have American circumstances. It was not a simple-as-that equation. I listened but talked back; I obeyed but complained. What they didn’t see was that I wasn’t talking back but questioning, not challenging their reasoning and logic; I wasn’t complaining but expressing my emotions in that moment. And what I had failed to realize was that they weren’t being controlling. They were trying to inculcate their cultural values onto me as a way of testifying that their identity is still lingering—despite the new environment. And lingering it still was, for I saw how it peeked through our daily conversations and clusters, how our identities unconsciously melted together. Bottles of cooking wine, rice vinegar, and soy sauce clinked against bottles of ketchup, mayo, and ranch—all equally appreciated. The awkward but belonging placement of Chinese in an English conversation which held my sentences together—never deliberate, always breezy and fleeting.
My parents would often reveal childhood tidbits from their collection of stories sparingly, never more than a few sentences, for there was a possibility that it would surreptitiously slip away into the air. So it slipped, and slipped itself into my thoughts, leaving traces of what was once there. Their youth, their nostalgic snacks, their summer, their pond, their afternoons. I listened to their recollections and the way Chinese danced and rested on their tongues, only to watch it tiptoe on mine. Filler words shuffled around, unapologetic with every stumble. Language is beautiful, but words, sentences, and people make language alive and breathing. Words could be thrown like stones amidst a silent room or embraced and embracing. Sentences could come out staccato or flowing. People. People had a way with words, sentences, language. There was always a way to sculpt what one wanted onto their words—value, warmth, regret, hope. To me, my mom’s Chinese meant motherhood: “ni chi fan le ma?” “Have you eaten yet?”
“wan an bao bei,” “Good night baby,” “xiao xin,” “Be careful.” These words belonged to her and made its existence carry a personal meaning through her. To me, my Chinese was a means of communication: communicating responses and questions. Chinese didn’t envelop my thoughts the way English did; English could take my emotions and put it into words—deliberate, confident ones. Instead, maybe as a compensation, Chinese connected me to my culture the way English couldn’t. English couldn’t leave the same marks on me that Chinese could: cultural dishes, holiday greetings, the nuance of calling someone ‘a yi’ and ‘auntie’—from the tangible to the intangible.
I don’t remember when the dents and scratches were made, but I know that 24K is still 24K. Hammering and molding changes shape, not identity; only through change, can I see growth. When I was around 10, I took an impulsive bite of my mom’s gold ring. She had told me that back then, people would bite gold ingots to test its authenticity. I don’t know what I had expected, but the ring came out with teeth marks; reasonably enough, my mom was not thrilled with the new design. But this hammering and molding gives me the chance to make mistakes, reflect, and discover parts of myself. My culture won’t be lost simply because of my resistance to it; it’ll only linger until I see it peek through how I cook, how I argue, how I love.
