My Americans
Over 150 years ago, a few of my ancestors arrived in America. They had journeyed from today’s Taishan City, Guangdong Province in Southern China, to what they once called, the Gold Mountain. During the last years of the failing Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), my ancestors left all they knew in order to find a way to provide for their families, and the best way to survive was to leave China for a foreign land where they didn’t speak the language and would be faced with prejudice and many unforeseen unknowns.
Flash forward to current day, my extended family has been in America for over four generations, and my immediate family, just two. Being the child of immigrants I grew up experiencing one culture at home while having to live another culture when out with friends and at school. This leads to an understanding of myself as a bicultural individual. At home, I was the Chinese son, having the responsibility of reading all the English mails for my parents, filling out government forms, and learning that my existence is an extension of my past and what I do with my life is a reflection on all those that came before me. At school, I was the Chinese kid who was bullied by the white students, because I ate noodles, had different shaped eyes, and could speak Chinese. Today, I have learned to accept who I am, accept my face, and realize what my place is in this Chinese American story.
Brooklyn, New York: In America, often the Chinese culture and the American culture blend together. Here we have traditional Chinese New Year decorations with a portrait of a young President Barack Obama.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: A newborn girl is held by her relatives. With each generation born in America, Chinese Americans see new hope in a better future, a better life, and familial happiness.
Brooklyn, New York: A member from the Chinese Freemasons, the local Chinatown lion dance group. They were going to various Chinatowns dancing to local businesses.
A big part of the American dream is the ability to own land. Owning land is a symbol of status for many Chinese Americans, and a sign that they have settled on their roots and want to build further in America. Often a lot of Chinese Americans or more recent immigrants tend to have gardens growing vegetables from bok choy and cabbage to winter melons.
These photographs I create are the stories I share of my experience looking for what it means to be American and Chinese simultaneously. I began traveling to different states within America at the age of 19, in pursuit of finding myself, hoping that by meeting other Chinese Americans I could find solidarity in a shared experience growing up in U.S. that we call home. What I ended up finding was a diverse and confusing social landscape of individuals and places that were unsure of their identi-ties, lost in the complexities of American life, while also finding thriving and lively communities that have found their part of the Gold Mountain. Through these photographs, I explore the ideas of family, relationships, social constructs, and idea of finding home. Each photograph is an experience of a place I have been and is a representation of the America that we overseas Chinese have built for ourselves.
An Rong Xu, author of this article, is a photographer and director from New York City’s Chinatown.Courtesy of Tencent’s Column “To Live”