Preface:

I am a second-generation Chinese American who’s relatively assimilated into American culture while still relatively Confucian at heart. I’m fortunate enough to be more or less fluent in Mandarin Chinese (enough to hold a limited conversation, not enough to get into debates) with decent reading/writing skills when it comes to Simplified Chinese, less so with Traditional. I grew up in the Midwest, where most of the Chinese families knew each other, and go to school in California, where there are Asian Americans all over the place.

I’m writing this post for the third Asian Women Blog Carnival.

I’ve meant to submit posts to the first and second Asian Women Blog Carnivals only I was unable to do so at the last minute. This has been for a variety of reasons. A large part is that I’m lazy and I procrastinate. I blink, and the deadline’s passed and I’m too late. A decent part is because I have many things I want to talk about, many events in my life and personal details I want to lay out before you and say, “This is what I have been through; am I the only one?” It is hard for me to choose just one.

And then there’s when I look at what I’ve planned and realized that I’ve revealed too much and I’m not comfortable with opening up quite so much.

This is not what I meant to write about when I started out, but it is something I have meant to write about for a while, so it will have to do.

( The Perfect Chinese Daughter Syndrome. )

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Endnote: I should probably explain that I spent this past weekend with my dad's old classmates and their children and it was perhaps the first time in my life I'd been so out-performed by so many Perfect Chinese Daughters. And that kind of inspired this.