ClownInPathos

Recently I came across an interesting blog that caught my attention. The blog name is ClownInPathos. While the blog is not scholastically or professionally written, the blogger focuses on expressing her thoughts and problems that she encountered in her life as a Chinese-American. Lan Lin is a 24 year old woman raised in United States with Asian parents, and she offers deep insights into the clash of the two cultures and the misery of being brought up in a Chinese household with strict child-rearing styles. Similar to my blogs as I address the issues in Asian households from my perspective as a child who have experienced both cultures, Lan Lin also voices her frustrations and problems of Asian parenting that are so evident in Asian American families, yet often times ignored. She believes that by openly blogging, she is stepping up and making the issue apparent despite how Asians are taught to ignore these problems. Her intended purpose to blog is to have a platform where she can share her lessons as a child who suffered from lack of good parenting to other unhappy Chinese American kids growing up. Lan would like to share her thoughts on the things that should be avoided “to raise a well-adjusted adult.” For this reason, she blogs consistently on an average of 4 times a month through livejournal, which is ranked 118 on alexa. 

Even though Lan Lin started the blog to address the issues of Chinese parenting, many of her posts are merely her frustrations, and thoughts as a child torwards her own parents. She shares her personal experience through her story telling and engages the audience with actual happenings in her life as a child in a Chinese household. Similar to my blogs, I also share my experience and thoughts on Chinese parenting though my personal experience. However, while I am still confused and still figuring out the dilemma of being a Chinese who have encountered American values and explaining the clashes I have witnessed, Lan Lin takes a strong stand in her posts and voices her thoughts extremely as she takes on a side against Chinese parenting and believes that her parents have caused her depression and were unsuccessful in raising her.

For example, one of her posts “ My Mom’s Reaction” talks about the first time she letting her mom know about her depression and how unhappy she was due to her mother’s tough, pessimistic child rearing. This was something that I have never thought about, confronting my mom about the clash in values and culture back at home and at school. The reason why I haven’t is because I was afraid of getting the same answers that Lan Lin’s mom gave her. “You’re scary, don’t think of these things.” I was scared that my mom would look at me differently, and think that I am not grateful for the things she has provided for me and will look at this discussion on the clash of values as more of an argument initiator (which I will want to avoid).  Also, my mom might think that I am being rebellious because in Asia, we are taught to keep our mouth shut and power through. But like Lan says, “[my mom] never actually saw me unhappy,” because when I was around her I was too busy being a role model she wanted me to be. At the end of Lan’s talk, her mom didn’t believe what she was saying, claiming, “Lan seemed fine growing up, I never saw [Lan] unhappy, I remember times when [Lan] were doing pretty good, [Lan] did so well in school.” Once again, we see the emphasis on academic excellence and how doing well in school was equivalent to the overall well-being of a child. However, for Lan, she got what was on her mind off her chests, which was the difficulty of growing up. She didn’t talk to her mom for her mom, but for herself, and that is an action that I wish I have the courage to do one day: to be upfront with my mother.

Similar to my work, she also lists the different values evident in the two cultures as seen in the post “American Ideals vs. AsianTrauma”. While one of my previous blog posts (whoever remembers gets a prize!) focused primarily on the optimism of Americans and pessimisms of Asians, Lan went beyond those values and explored other concepts including “saving faces, ma fan, and nans”. Ma fan, which means troublesome, and nans, which means difficulties, are all concepts that I think many Asians can relate to. “Don’t bother other people too much if you can, and overcome difficulties in your life” was often what Asian kids like me were brought up to believe. However, I want to talk about saving face, a phrase and concept that is very unfamiliar to Westerners. In Asia, parents take great pride in the family, and that pride is called face in Asia. If the kids, or someone in the family, fail in being successful or in accomplishing something, the family loses its pride, and thus, face. For this reason, every Asian parent wants to have lots of face so they continue to push their kids to earn face in the household. This is also the primary reason that Lan says why Asians are so negative because “they are afraid to lose face, so they don’t try anything that’s ma fan and nans.” Also, this explains why Asian parents are so strict with their children and expects them to succeed in school.

While Lan’s insight into Chinese parenting was detailed, she was also very biased in terms of her viewpoints. In her own words, “everything positive about me, I associate with the American culture. Everything negative about me, I associate with the Chinese culture.” Because of this bias thought, sometimes her examples can be extreme, so definitely be wary of that. That’s also why on my blogs you will never see me expressing any favoritism towards different parenting styles, because I want to be fair to both sides and I don’t think Chinese parenting has caused me to be miserable in life. On the contrary, even though I complain on some aspects of Chinese parenting, I think Chinese parenting has done me good (I am a happy Trojan). However, blogs like Lan’s will help me understand each side a little better and help me gain a better understanding of Chinese parenting and be able to compare my experience to hers.