Global City

A few weeks ago, we were playing at a popular neighborhood park next to the library, and suddenly it hit me how many languages I was hearing. There was, of course, Mandarin, which I seem to hear everywhere. Some Cantonese, a South Asian language—Hindustani? Bengali? I heard French and some type of Eastern European language—Russian or Czech? And of course Spanish.

This place is truly international, probably because of the tech industry and Stanford drawing global talent, and that still feels strange to me. How many places in the country are like this? Someone who looks black is as likely to be African as African-American; someone who looks white could be from Israel or Italy, as two of Eric’s classmates are. Someone who looks Asian—well, the possibilities there are endless. Back in Virginia, people either assumed we were foreigners (“can she speak English?”) or just like them (“what is an Asian grocery store and why would you go there?”). Most people didn’t know the difference between Filipino (which Dave often got pegged as), Korean (which I got pegged as), Chinese, or Taiwanese.

Here, of course, there are not only different types of Asians, but different generations; you are as likely to meet a first-generation as a fourth-generation immigrant, and the values, languages, customs and stereotypes of each are widely different. Sometimes when I’m not driving my best I wonder if someone pegs me for some bad first-generation Asian driver (is that terrible to admit? I really can drive in this country; it’s only that I just moved here and am getting lost again because the GPS-route constantly changes to accommodate time-of-day traffic!). As a second-generation immigrant raised in the American south by parents who were themselves Chinese second-generation immigrants to Taiwan before becoming first-generation immigrants to the U.S., I can feel more affinity with a Caucasian than an Asian, or with a first-generation person from Taipei than from Beijing.

I feel more dissonance between how I look and who I am inside here than I did in Virginia, where people assumed I was mostly culturally white like them—oddly enough, having a more homogenous majority made conformity easier. Especially when I grew up in that homogeneity. My gut reaction is to find the diversity here jarring. It’s a bit disturbing to be around so many Asians, to sift through all the geographical and generational distinctions. I feel unnerved by my own ignorance of various countries, customs and languages. I miss being around more white people. I feel pressured into speaking Mandarin to my kids, not that that’s a bad thing.

But I think it’s good to be stretched in a place of global diversity. It forces me out of cultural ignorance. It makes me care more about what’s going on outside of our country. It allows me a new measure of ethnic freedom. It helps me see what assumed mindsets or values are actually ethnic or cultural mores. It brings those things to my kids. It prepares me for heaven, where the diversity emphasized isn’t political or socioeconomic as much as ethnic. Ultimately, it reveals more of God, because each of us, from wherever we or our parents came from in the world, reflect his image and something different of his glory.