I am a first generation Chinese immigrant living in the bay area. The difference of me from other immigrants that i had my childhood in china, teenager life in Mexico and become an adult in U.S. Through the three experience i learn the importance of language.
I born in China, Canton, I learned my town dialect that called taisanes, also I learned Cantonese from TV shows, Mandarin from 4 years of elementary school in china. With these dialects I could communicate with everyone in china, but I did not took these dialects as a big deal until when I went to Mexico with the age 11. I began my first year very difficult, because I did not know any word in spanish, therefore I did not have friends in school, I seem as an unwelcome girl in the class that no one wanted to work in group with me and a stupid girl that did not know the word homework that the teacher let me went to the class without home works. Apart of the school, my family had gave me a lot of pressures, my dad scold me in front of the people by did not understand the conversation of his employer and a Mexican man about the restaurant stuffs, and his employer and the employers' family were laughing and satirizing at me, that moment i could not hold my tears. Also my dad will compare other children with me, how others are good with their Spanish and helping their family, and instead i am not helping the family at all. So I realized the language Spanish had affected and cause my life difficult. So I began study very hard by translating the textbook with a dictionary, at that time I did not have a smartphone to help me to pronounce the word or translate the word, so I carried the dictionary with me to school and during the weekend I would go to ask help for my home works with a catholic Chinese woman, even she lived far from me. When I had free time I would stay in my house read and write Spanish, because I wanted no more satirize, no more unwelcome, no more compare.
