My name is Rithy Pich, and this is my story about love and family. I was born in Taipei City, the capital of Taiwan, and I am the first child in my family with two younger sisters. With my father working as an executive at a finance company and my mother working as an assistant sales manager, I guess you can say I came from an upper-middle class family where we could sometimes afford the finer things in life, such as traveling to other countries or dining out at a five-star restaurant. Actually, upper-middle class was quite common in Taiwan, especially after World War II, where our economy experienced rapid growth by transforming into an industrialized nation. During the late twentieth-century, Taiwan’s economy was doing so well to the point that we were considered as one of the “Four Asian Tigers” and our economic success story became one of the role models for other developing countries in Asia.
Given our country’s prosperity and peacefulness, it was not surprising that our feeling toward our government was quite pleasant. During the late twentieth-century, the Kuomintang party, who fled from China, monopolized our government and established a democratic system in Taiwan. After the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the defeated party, Kuomintang, and two millions Chinese retreated to Taiwan as a way to re-organize the army and practice democracy. They worked with the local government, implanted systematic justice, and eventually took over Taiwan as they built up their military power. Originally, they wanted to fight the Communist party again and reclaim Mainland China; however, as time passed by, most people became accustomed to their new lifestyle and saw no necessity to disturb the neutrality between China and Taiwan. Interestingly, my paternal grandparents were part of the millions Chinese that came to Taiwan with the Kuomintang party during 1949, so I often heard stories about their childhood in China and their journey to Taiwan when I was little.
My neighborhood was located in the less crowded part of the urban area, where shopping malls and schools were only 10 to 15 minutes away from my house in the opposite direction. Therefore, it was a very convenient lifestyle for us as most recreations and institutions were within walkable distance. I remember my grandparents used to walk me to school everyday during my first years in elementary school and sometimes to the mall after school ended in the afternoon. Then in second grade, my grandparents would bring my younger sister, Sophia, and me to school since we are only one year apart, and it wasn’t until when I was in fourth-grade that I decided I was old enough to walk my younger sister to school without my grandparent’s supervision. Since both of my parents were working during the day and we lived in the same building as my grandparents, my grandparent’s house became a second home to us as they babysat us and supervised our homework after school. Once my parents got back from work, my mother would help out my grandmother in preparing for dinner; and when the dinner was ready, everyone would gather around the table and eat together and share our daily experience. Unlike others who allowed their kids to eat while watching TV or eat off the table, my grandparents insisted on eating together as a family as a way to strengthen family bond, and we have never failed to carry on that tradition. Sometimes during the weekend, my grandparents or parents would take the whole family out to eat so that my grandmother and mother could relax and didn’t have to worry about putting food on the table for us. Nevertheless, our family dinner was one of the most important and sacred memory I had when I was in Taiwan.
When I was in sixth-grade, our family had a new member named Lynn, who became the youngest daughter in our family, and it was during that time that my family got the approval document from the government, stating that we were now eligible to immigrant to the U.S.A. According to my father, it took us almost ten years to get the permanent resident status when our aunt put our name on the wait list as secondary-relatives after she became an U.S. citizen. Unwilling to lose this rare opportunity and after careful deliberation, my father decided to quit his job and take me and my sister Kelly to America first, leaving my mother behind as the financial support of the family and leaving Lynn behind to learn her native language and culture first. In a way, our family now fits the split-household model for most Asian immigrant families, where one part of the family stays in their original country and other part immigrates to another country. One main reason why my father was eager to immigrate to the US was because his two younger sisters had been U.S. citizens for more than twenty years, and they have been living successfully in the U.S. Based on his two sister’s stories and experiences, my father believed that the educational system and job opportunities were better in the U.S. So finally in the year 2004, I set my foot on the American soil for the first time at the age of 14 and began my life as an immigrant to pursue better future and education.
At first, the separation from family and friends was hard to bear not only because of our strong family bond, but also because we had never experienced the pain of leaving the ones we love before. But at the same time, I was extremely curious and excited about this unfamiliar country, and I was eager to learn how to adapt to this new living environment and culture. Knowing very little English, my first year in the U.S. as an eighth -grader in a private junior high school was anything but ordinary. I did not understand anything my teachers or classmates said in school, so all I did was smile and laugh as people tried to talk to me. Eventually, my listening and writing skills got better as I was forced by my father to learn new vocabulary words and read short stories each week, but my communicating skill did not quite improve because I was afraid other people would make fun of my poor English. I remember where was this one incident when I got up the courage to ask my classmate for a piece of paper, but the words came out so incohesive that I became the laughing stock of the day. I think ever since that incident, I became more insecure about my English skill and I hesitated when talking to other people.
After junior high, I attended the Berkeley Public High School, which was way more different than what I had expected. In my private junior high, we had no more than twenty students in each grade and we had more time to interact with the teacher and other classmates. But in public high school, not only was the student and teacher ratio disproportional, immigrants like us could also attend ESL class, which gave me more opportunity to meet people with similar background and culture as mine. Compared to regular classes, I felt that I was happier in ESL class because I did not feel as shameful speaking imperfect English to my fellow classmates who also had trouble with English. In addition, I felt that the teachers were more patient with the students since they knew that English was not our native language. The sad part was that it wasn’t until high school that I started to realize the severity of racial segregation in public high school. As I walked around the courtyard during lunch times or after school, I often saw people with similar racial background hanging out together. The same things happened to me during my four years in high school, where I pretty much stuck with my Asian group and hardly had the chance to develop deeper friendship with people outside of my race. The interesting thing was that even among the Asian groups, there were distinct characteristics that separate us. For example, there was the rich-fobby group, poor-fobby group, the cool second-generation immigrant group, and the gangster group. It just seemed like the American society has this invisible boundary that divides people based on their ethnicity.
While I was in high school, my father had tried to look for better-paying jobs to support the family. However, he could not find any job position that was close to his executive position back in Taiwan, and he was only able to work in restaurants or retail stores and receive minimum wages. I didn’t realize at the time that it took my father a great amount of courage and strength to lower himself and beg for jobs for which he was obviously over-qualified. But since our expenses had doubled and our income was cut in half after we immigrated to the U.S., my father had no choice but to make the best out of the situation. Even though our family started to have financial crisis, my father would still try to save enough money to buy plane tickets for us to go back to Taiwan and visit family members. My father has always told me that money can always be earned again, but family bond can’t, so we should do whatever we can to keep our family bond strong and tight together, especially now that our family is scattered in two countries.
After high school, I got accepted to UC Davis and decided to move there to complete my bachelor degree in biochemistry. I knew that by moving to Davis, I would have to get a job to balance out the financial expense for my family, and luckily, I was able to find a paid internship to not only ease up the financial burden on my parent but also build up my resume for future reference. When my sister Sophia got accepted to UC Santa Cruz, my father thought we were old enough to take care of ourselves and it was time for him to return to Taiwan and start taking care of our mother, our little sister Lynn, and our grandparents. In addition, he also got an offer as an assistant manager at his friend’s company in Taiwan, which paid much higher than the U.S. minimum wage. Ever since then, my sister and I have been working hard toward our degree in hope that we can get a better paying job so that our parent’s sacrifice is not waste. I am forever grateful for the sacrifice my parents made in order for us to have a better opportunity in the future, and I will always remember that family bond is the most valuable thing in this world and I will carry on this tradition to my future generation as well.