“Mei Fu.” Mei as in beauty and Fu as in rich or prosperous, that was mother wanted for a daughter. Sadly, I have never been, or will I ever be what she wanted. At the age of 10, my family and I entered America, the so called “Land of the Free,” and yet all we learn in school is how many slaves lost their lives in the progress of making America what it is now. My fragile appearance made people believe that I was an obedient person, but I’m not; I am an independent, aggressive individual.
When I was young, my mother always sewed me girlish dresses, the kind baby-dolls would wear. Every morning, she tied my hair into two little ponytails with red ribbons. She made me look like a typical Chinese girl, like the ones you saw in New York on Channel
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I was no longer that quiet immigrant girl who was afraid to lift her head in the class. I was no longer being called "broken-tongue-duck from China," who did not speak a word of English.
Despite of my progress, I still hated the fact that I was born a girl because of the traditional Chinese culture restrictions, they had made it even more difficult for me to be my true self. I felt I was being tortured when my mother told me it was inappropriate for a girl to wear jeans. Once, me and a group of friends went shopping, I brought a nice pair of jeans and planned to wear it the very next day…
The next morning, I barely reached the door and mother yelled. “What are those? Are you trying to be like Charlie Chaplin in public? So inappropriate! Go back and change!”
My mother always had the tendency to believe that a girl should know how to play musical instruments and checkers as well as being able to draw and write. She called this the four treasures of the study component, but no one in America wanted to hear this. Maybe that's why I never explained to her why I forgot how to play the jin (a traditional Chinese musical instrument ); I hardly attended the