I'm a Third Culture Kid

Ever since my revelations in Vietnam and since returning home I've been struggling with a definition of what I was. I've said I understood the Asian American experience but I'm not Asian American. I've been to a Taiwanese church and shared memories of cartoons and box lunches on trains but ultimately I'm not Taiwanese.

I'm not even fully American.

What, exactly, am I, then? According to a friend of mine who spent her teenage years in Hong Kong I'm a Third Culture Kid.

This friend is married to a fellow mountain biking enthusiast. We've known each other for a couple years and I knew she spent part of her childhood in Hong Kong just as she knew I spent part of my childhood in Taiwan. But, last week I decided I had to open up to her a lot more because of my reawakening to my past.

I emailed her husband as I didn't have her direct contact info. She emailed me with a very thoughtful and insightful email. I could tell right away that what I'm going through she'd already faced and was a lot further down the road to recovery or enlightenment or whichever you wish to call it. Mostly, she gave me some very healing terminology, the categorization of Third Culture Kid (TCK).

Before this I was searching the Internet for information about people like me. I Googled "Americans growing up in Asia" or but that only yielded a wealth of information about immigrant kids growing up in America, not the other way around. Now that I know to search on TCKs I'm finally getting results.

I've added a book, simply titled "Third Culture Kids", to my reading list for one thing. On Amazon.com you can read the first few pages where you get the first part of a story about a woman leaving Singapore for "home" in upstate New York. In the passage she's doing her best not to think about how much she'll miss Singapore and how much it feels like home despite her returning to a part of the world where she'll finally look just like everyone else.

The excerpt cuts it short to urge you to buy but I know the rest of the story anyway. She returns to upstate New York and feels like an outsider. She’ll talk all funny, not understand a wealth of cultural references and overall feel very lonely. Only once she accepts who or what she is will she be able to finally use her uniqueness to her advantage and grow. If she gives in and tries to fully assimilate back into American culture she’ll always feel like half a person.

On my Vietnam trip blog I posted a long, cathartic outpouring of what I was going through and remembering how painful and lonely it had been for me to come “back home” to the US as a kid. After the post I took a walk up Nicollet Ave. here in Minneapolis because I knew I’d be going by a variety of Vietnamese-owned businesses.

I spoke a little Vietnamese with some people hanging out by Pho Tau Bay, shopped at a couple Asian grocery stores and finally ended up at a very American café where I had a bottle of water and a hamburger. My emotions were so bound up I was only able to eat less than half of the burger.

While there I got out a piece of paper and started making a list titled “People to tell.” I had already emailed my parents, grandparents and a few friends asking them to please read my latest blog post as it was such a discovery of who I really was and I wanted them to understand. I jotted down a few more names and that was when the waitress walked by, spied what I was writing and smiled to herself.

I know she assumed the list was of people to whom I had yet to come out of the closet. At the time I smiled to myself at how clueless she was but later realized she assumed correctly in all the most meaningful ways.

Everyone needs to come out of the closet if they want to be a complete person and finally grow out of adolescence. The metaphor is used almost exclusively for gay people finally admitting who they are, first to themselves and then to everyone in their lives. But, it can be applied to everyone in the population, not just an exclusive ten percent.

The day I wrote that post I came out of the TCK closet.

The closet was the same structure as the wall my Vietnamese-American friend Ashley has around her according to her friends and family back on the Mekong Delta. As I was in that closet I’d do everything I could to over-compensate so nobody would think I was anything but a good old American boy.

To fit in I learned all kinds of tricks. The big one, of course, was not to talk about myself too much. That’ll light up anyone’s TCKdar like a big, red lantern. In my case, it’s being too Asian: “Hi, my name’s Chris, nice to meet you and now please listen to my life’s story in detail.”

Reese and I have been exploring the Vietnamese restaurants in the area we haven’t tried yet. At each one I’ve made it a point to say “Xin chao!” after “Hello!” and “Cam u’n” instead of “Thank you.” This, of course, opens up the staff at any Vietnamese restaurant. They’ll ask where I learned to speak, we’ll tell them we just got back from Vietnam, they’ll then launch into their life story.

As they’re doing that your food is getting cold, time is being wasted, your private dinner for two is so very rudely interrupted by this braggart who just won’t shut up about her own stupid life. Yeah, that’s the American response to such openness. The common complaint Americans have about immigrants, however, is they won’t assimilate into our culture.

Like hell! They’re assimilating just like they’ve been taught: don’t bother anybody because they’re not interested in hearing about you. Ask them what they want to drink, ask them what they want to eat, stop by after a few minutes to ask if everything’s OK, give them the bill, thank them and that’s all you do. There. That’s American!

When I started writing this I had some brilliant insight into how it’s easy to view American culture as rude, uninviting and cold. So, sorry but I seem to have lost that thought for now. All my life I think I’ve felt some small bit of contempt for this country, but I’m actually beginning to realize it’s not America’s fault.

As I said earlier, the rest of the story about the woman leaving Singapore for her native upstate New York was about how she couldn’t be a complete person until she finally accepted herself for who she really is. If she or I were actually gay and not TCKs that recognition would have been a whole lot easier. Being gay is actually more mainstream than being white and multi-cultural. There are literally tens of millions of gay Americans if you figure the percentage. According to tckworld.com there are only 3 million TCKs in America. In my own circle of friends I know many gay couples but only about two or three TCKs.

Don’t get me wrong, either. I know full well it’s more difficult to decide to come out gay in America. It’s downright dangerous and even deadly to admit that in some remote parts of the country. You don’t ever read of TCK bashing in the news and nobody’s trying to amend the constitution to refuse rights to TCKs.

No, the difficulty in my coming out was identification. How can you come out as a TCK if you don’t know about TCKs? Until then I just knew to keep my mouth shut for fear of being labeled “chatty” at the least and “self-centered” at the worst. On my Vietnam blog post I said “No, I don’t think my childhood was more interesting than yours.” Of course, that’s not true, my childhood was pretty damn interesting. What I now have to get comfortable with is that’s not my fault. It just is and I can’t fault anyone else for what they assume about me as a result.

I daresay I’ve felt more mature this past month, but I wonder how accurate that is. When I look back on my life until now it seems very selfish and almost infantile, that’s for certain. It’s as if I’m looking for atonement of some kind. Forgive me, I have sinned! I’ve been guilty of pride, greed and gluttony for starters and it’s surprisingly shaming for a non-Catholic. Was that all a side-effect of trying and failing to completely fit in as an American? Am I better able to live a moral life just like a gay man who’s finally able to settle down with one guy after a lifetime of one-night stands with women? How the hell should I know?

Everyone assumes they know it all, of course. That’s just natural. I’ve been guilty of assuming and I’ll continue to be guilty of it until I’m dead. Nobody knows the first thing about anybody they just met although they’ll act like they do. That first impression can be a real bitch.

On first glance it's easy to assume that Americans are a lot of gluttonous, amoral and greedy people. But, enough about how Americans view themselves. The “gift” a TCK like me should have is the rare ability to understand more than one culture. It’s not just lazy of me but irresponsible to give in and agree with such "common knowledge": Americans are fat, immature brats with more money than sense.

So, here’s my crack at understanding: you can’t blame the American people for an obesity problem. Americans don’t lack self control. They aren’t any more naturally gluttonous than the rest of the world. They have, however, created a for-profit food industry that makes it very difficult logistically and financially to stay healthy.

I stopped at Target yesterday to pick up a couple things and on the list of items was a bag of rice. I bought some dried, shredded pork this weekend at a local Asian grocery store and I wanted to get short-grain rice so I could make my favorite Taiwanese breakfast: soupy rice and shredded pork.

The store I went to was a “Greatland” Target and they have a small “food” section. They have a couple standard grocery items such as milk and eggs but the rest of it was “snacks.” Greasy, salty, corn syrup-filled foods loaded with preservatives. No rice unless you wanted it likewise full of flavored crap.

If you wanted something “healthy” it wasn’t in the “food” section but the “health and beauty” section. There you’d find a small array of low-carb, low-fat or no sugar added candy bars passed off as food for “active people.” If I’m mountain biking the Maah Daah Hey trail on a hot day, sweating tons of salts and nutrients out of my system the last thing I need is to eat something with only 3 grams of carbohydrates! If my goal were to pass out from exhaustion and malnutrition then I need look no further.

It’s easy to read that and think it’s the rant of an over-zealous health nut. I wouldn’t deny such an accusation, either. But, all I needed was something much of the rest of the world considers bare necessity: a bag of rice. I don’t want some kind of instant rice you pop in a microwave or some packet of rice with artificial chicken flavoring garnished with tiny vegetable crumbs. I just want plain, white, short-grain rice I can prepare any way I please.

No, I’d have to go to a real grocery store for real food, but I don’t have a list and it’s real busy on Sundays and … hell, just stop at McDonalds on the way home. No "good" food could be found at this Target, just the opposite ends of over-processed foods: fattening for when you're feeling weak and emaciating for when you're feeling guilty. Just skip it all and smoke yourself thin. Either way you’ll die early it’s just a question of diabetes vs. emphysema.

Americans are just working with the system they’ve got, so it actually takes more willpower than is possible for the average human being. I can’t blame them any more than I can blame immigrants for “failing” to assimilate.