How to American Read online

  Los Angeles seemed like an easy choice for my family. My aunt and my grandparents had already immigrated and they had lived in LA for more than ten years. And my parents wanted my brother and me to go to USC or UCLA, both of which later rejected me. At least my brother is now a proud UCLA graduate, so the immigration wasn’t a total loss for my parents.

  I was scared to leave the only place I’d known, but I couldn’t wait to see all the massive mansions, fancy sports cars and beautiful people that I’d seen in Hollywood movies. I thought I was going to be neighbors with Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. The first day my family got to Los Angeles, we visited my grandparents in Beverly Hills. But it wasn’t anything fancy like I had expected from Beverly Hills. They lived in a quaint little four-unit apartment complex on the edge of town. We walked up some old misshapen stairs to their unit. Coming from the skyscrapers in Hong Kong, I was very amused by this little two-story building. I’d never been to anyone’s home that didn’t require taking an elevator. The apartment had a dull dusty scent; it was some kind of old-people stench. I used to call it “Grandpa smell.” It was a small space and my grandparents had put a familiar Chinese touch to it. From the kitchen to the living room, it was filled with Chinese newspapers, Chinese food and furniture from China you’d never see in other American households, like this small plastic stool you’d squat on in the kitchen; people used it to prep the food on the floor level. You can only find that in China. It was a classic Chinese immigrant’s home where Chinese décor met American architecture.

  That day, Grandpa took my dad and me to his favorite restaurant in Los Angeles. I was ready for my very first American feast and I was excited to explore Tinsel Town. Three generations of Chinese strolling down the beautiful streets of LA. We walked down La Cienega Boulevard, a main artery of LA. Every building we passed by was wide and short. In Hong Kong, every building was slim and at least twenty stories tall. That’s the only way to cram seven million people on an island the size of San Diego. It was nice to leave the concrete jungle and see the wide-open California sky, but at the same time Los Angeles felt a bit empty and lacking in humanity. There were only a few pedestrians on the streets; it was eerily vacant compared to the human sardine can I was used to in Hong Kong. The streets were massive gray pavements with six lanes of traffic and a narrow sidewalk. This was definitely a town built for cars, not humans. We walked by a few strip malls with dreary dry cleaners and generic burger shops. I’d never seen a strip mall before. Every mall in Hong Kong was a monstrous shopping center that stretched vertically for multiple levels. These monotonous strip malls with flat white paint looked like the lonesome Wild West with the proverbial tumbleweed rolling by.

  Finally, we walked by a Pizza Hut, one of my favorite restaurants back in Hong Kong. I asked Grandpa:

  “Can we eat here?”

  “You can’t eat here, there’s nowhere to sit.”

  I didn’t realize this Pizza Hut was just a kitchen for pizza delivery. What a fraud! The Pizza Hut in Hong Kong was a nice sit-down restaurant with a swanky salad bar. You could order pizzas with shrimp, a fancy pie-crust soup and my favorite seafood pasta. This American version of a pizza oven inside of a hole in the wall was quite jarring to me. How is the authentic version so much shittier than the foreign version? I felt betrayed.

  Fifteen minutes into our supposedly ten-minute walk, I asked my grandpa in Shanghainese, “Are we there yet?” It’s a universal saying amongst impatient children around the world, in all languages.

  “We are very close, just a few more minutes.” We ended up walking for forty-five minutes in the sweltering dry heat of a Los Angeles summer.

  We finally arrived at our destination. It was the biggest strip mall yet. On one side, there was a huge two-story building called LA Fitness. I wasn’t quite familiar with the concept of gyms yet. We didn’t have corporate gyms in Hong Kong; everyone was skinny. On the other side of the strip mall, there was a small glass building. Grandpa pointed to it and said, “This is it, my favorite restaurant in LA. It’s authentic Mexican cuisine; they don’t have this in China.” I looked up at the sign:

  EL POLLO LOCO

  I had never heard of El Pollo Loco. I didn’t even know the name was in Spanish; I thought it was three English words I hadn’t learned yet. I was disappointed that a forty-five-minute hike ultimately ended in a fast food joint. But once we walked in, I realized this place was unlike any fast food restaurant I’d ever been to. I saw the biggest grill I’d ever seen in my life behind the registers, packed with rows of whole chickens with a beautiful brownish yellow tint. It smelled absolutely delicious. I looked through the glass panel and I saw a cornucopia of sides: rice, beans, mac and cheese, corn and an interesting green substance, which I later learned was called guacamole.

  My grandpa went up to order in his Shanghai English:“Six pieces, dark meat.”

  Then he turned around and explained to us in Shanghainese:

  “They let you choose which part of the chicken you want here, dark meat and white meat. Dark meat is the good parts. White meat is the breast. It’s dry and rough for American idiots.”

  Grandpa’s words of wisdom. To this day, I still only order dark meat.

  Then the cashier asked Grandpa:

  “Flour or corn?”

  “Flour.”

  And once again, he turned around and explained it to us in Shanghainese: “They give you these bread sheets to wrap your chicken in. Flour is good. The corn ones taste funny.” After a college trip to Tijuana, I realized the corn ones didn’t taste funny, they tasted authentic. I now strictly order corn tortillas. Sorry, Grandpa.

  Grandpa finished the order with three cups of water. He said to us, “They make their money by overcharging you on soda. You can just get a free water cup and fill it with whatever you want.” My mind was fucking blown. You can pour your own soda here? And it’s free? Wow! Jesus could turn water into wine, but in America you could turn water into Dr Pepper. What a beautiful country.

  Then there was the salsa bar. What can I say about the salsa bar that hasn’t been said about Disneyland? It was a magical kingdom of color and flavor. The El Pollo Loco salsa bar exemplified American freedom; land of the free, home of the salsa bar. “Take whatever you want, it’s free,” Grandpa said. I thought he was messing with me. I looked at that salsa bar in front of me like a virgin staring at a naked Gigi Hadid.

  This can’t be. This is too good to be true.

  Grandpa noticed my hesitation and he nudged me forward. “Go ahead. Take as much as you want. Take some home if you want to.” Why would anyone ever buy onions and cilantro if it’s already finely chopped and free for the taking here in El Pollo Loco?! If I had known what the word loco meant, I would have understood. There is so much freedom in this fast food joint, it’s loco! El Pollo Loco was the most American place I’d ever been to.

  After stuffing ourselves full of dark meat and free salsa, we had to walk the same forty-five minutes back to my grandpa’s apartment. This was way before Uber. I was exhausted that night, but I couldn’t sleep. My first day of American school was tomorrow and the only thing I knew about America was El Pollo Loco.

  The first day I walked into John Burroughs Middle School, I felt like Andy Dufresne getting off the bus and walking into Shawshank prison. John Burroughs was a middle school in the LA Unified School District that went from sixth to eighth grade. I was thirteen years old, which placed me in the eighth and last grade of the school. Which meant I started in this school where everyone had already known each other for at least two years. It’s always scary for a new kid to move to a new school; I was a new foreign kid moving to a new school on a new continent. I was scared, confused and anxious. A part of me wanted to keep to myself, but another part of me desperately wanted to make some new friends. I was never shy with strangers, but this was an entirely different world. It was a different culture, a different language and a different educational system. It was like I was transported to an alternate
universe.

  Before classes started, I walked through the exercise yard where all the kids hung out. This would be what they called gen-pop, or general population in prison. In Hong Kong, we only had Chinese kids in school. In John Burroughs, there were kids of every race, every religion and every size. I had never interacted with white people, black people or Hispanic people before. I didn’t even know where to start. Then, I was relieved to see a group of Asian kids who looked like my friends back home. I walked up to them to introduce myself in my native tongue, but when I got close enough I realized they were speaking Korean. I froze and walked away with my tail between my legs. My hopes were crushed. I soon realized that all the Asian kids in this school were Koreans. I wasn’t racist; I just didn’t know how to speak enough English to have a conversation yet. I had learned English in Hong Kong the way American high school kids learn Spanish. I knew some vocabulary words, but I couldn’t carry on a conversation; it felt like everyone was speaking way too fast. I was desperately hoping for some Chinese kids I could cling on to in this new school. In hindsight, this was a blessing in disguise. If I had gone to an American school with a lot of other Chinese kids, I would not have been forced to assimilate, and I would have probably turned out to be the dude selling dim sum in Chinatown.

  I made my way to the basketball courts. I was a pretty good basketball player back home, so I was hoping to show off some of my skills and earn some first-day respect. For a fleeting moment, Yao Ming blocked Shaquille O’Neal and I thought I could be a baller in the NBA. But for the sobering fact that I was two feet too short, I really thought I could have made it. Then I saw Marquees. Marquees was an eighth grader who was six two and looked like he was twenty-five; he was a grown-ass man. As I walked towards the hoop, he ran by me in a blur and took off into the air for a monster slam-dunk. My jaw dropped to the hot cement. I’d only seen NBA players do that on TV. You are telling me regular thirteen-year-old kids can do this in America? My mind could not comprehend this superhuman athleticism. I scurried off of the court without making eye contact with anyone. My hoop dreams were crushed. Marquees’s dunk made me feel inadequate as a man.

  Before first period, I landed in something called the “home room,” a weirdly useless class that briefed its students before they went off to their real classes. Before I even had a chance to settle into my seat, we were all asked to rise up from our chairs. I’m not sure if I understood any of the instructions; I just followed what the other kids were doing. Everyone put their right hand on their chest and looked up to an American flag in the front of the classroom. Then everyone started to chant, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…” I was lost. I looked around at my peers and I saw everyone all uniformly saying the same thing. I thought to myself, Did I just join a cult or something? I had no idea what those words meant. I just pretended to move my lips so I didn’t seem out of place. It was a nerve-wracking two minutes for me. I hadn’t met any of my classmates yet, and I didn’t want someone to notice the foreign kid wasn’t doing something that everyone else was doing. All I wanted to do was fit in, but the Pledge of Allegiance made me feel more foreign than ever. Finally, everyone sat down, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Unknowingly, that was the moment I became an American.

  Next, the teacher did a roll call. Oh good, I thought, this is something I can handle. We did roll calls in Hong Kong too. How different can this be? The older white lady teacher started to call out the names: “Marcus Johnson.” “Here!” “Suzy Kim.” “Here!” “Man Sh—Shing, Ouuuy—ann—?” The rest of the class looked around for this unfamiliar newcomer. I raised my hand before she could butcher my name any further. “Here. You can call me Jimmy.” I nervously looked around the room and I saw everyone whispering to each other, discussing this new little Chinese boy. The teacher said, “Welcome, Jimmy.” I certainly didn’t feel very welcome.

  Physical education class was the first period after home room. PE had always been my favorite class in Hong Kong. Even though I looked like a tiny nerd, I’d always gravitated towards sports. I might never be able to dunk like Marquees but I was confident that I could drain some three-pointers and score me some new friends. After all, how different could PE class be in America? Before hitting the field in PE class, we had to go to the locker room to change into our gym clothes. I’d never changed in front of other people before, so I waited until everyone else took off their pants before I did. I made myself as invisible as possible and tried to change faster than a new fish taking a prison shower. Then a kid next to me laughed out loud and said, “Are you wearing tighty whities? Dude, that’s fucking gay.”

  Everyone looked over and started laughing at me. I couldn’t have been more embarrassed by my tighty whities fresh out of Hong Kong. I hopped into my gym shorts as quickly as possible. Then, the same kid screamed out, “Pull down your shorts!” I was so confused. I just put them on. I stared at him blankly and said, “What?”

  He blurted out again, much more insistent this time, “Pull down your shorts, man!” I looked around and everyone was seemingly agreeing with his comment. I went into full panic mode. Am I about to get booty raped like they show in the American prison movies? Is this how they initiate new kids in Los Angeles public schools?

  I didn’t know what to do, so I slowly pulled down my gym shorts. As they got past my knees, the kid said, “Yo, what the fuck are you doing? Don’t pull it down all the way, just sag it.” I looked at him, befuddled, with my shorts halfway down my legs. Then he pointed to his own shorts. “Sag your pants a little so you don’t look like a nerd. Nobody pulls their pants all the way up.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I just blindly followed his instructions to pull my shorts halfway down my butt to showcase a little bit of my tighty whities.

  I later learned that sagging was an American trend from the hip-hop community. Rappers would wear loose pants hanging halfway down their ass, so they could look like a cool gangster who just got out of prison. Every kid in America was doing it. Pulling your shorts all the way up was called the John Stockton, a super white NBA basketball player from the Utah Jazz in the nineties. Lame. So I waddled around the rest of the class with my waistband around my anus. I thought I looked like I had just crapped my pants, but apparently that was super cool. What did I know? I was a foreign kid who was trying to fit in any way I could. I was just relieved that wasn’t the day I lost my virginity.

  Now that my shorts were halfway sagged and my dignity was still somewhat intact, I was ready for some sporting. Much to my dismay, we had to play American football that day. I’d never touched a football in my life, and I didn’t even know what the Super Bowl was. I had tried to watch an American football game once. It had so many rules that it was impossible to understand. What is a first down? What the hell is a pass interference? It sounded like a made-up sport some bros came up with when they were wasted. Like one guy said, “Bro, you can’t push me when I’m catching the ball. That’s like, pass interference, bro.” That’s how most foreigners see American football.

  I was lost on the field. Marquees was throwing the ball, or as I later learned, playing the so-called quarterback. I stood wide open in the middle of the field because nobody bothered to cover the little foreign kid in tighty whities, but Marquees took a chance on my tiny geisha hands. He flung the ball in a hard spiral right at my chest with his cannon of an arm. With the quick reaction time I had developed from Ping-Pong, I miraculously caught the ball by pinning it against my body. It was thrown so hard, the momentum took me to the ground. I lay flat on my back clutching the football, not sure what had just happened. Then Marquees stood over me and said, “Good catch! First down!” And that was when I fell in love with American football. Now I am in three fantasy football leagues and I watch seven hours of the NFL every Sunday with a six-pack of Bud Light like a red-blooded American, screaming, “First down!”

  There were these two scoundrels in my PE class, David and Diego. Some might call them bullies; I just thought thes
e dudes were douchebags who talked a lot of shit. Nothing I couldn’t handle. Every day in PE class, David and Diego would fire off some trash talk to me, usually along the lines of my mama being fat. I was never bothered by the words, knowing that my mother was a skinny woman.

  One day, we were all waiting in line to hit some baseballs. David and Diego just wouldn’t stop. They kept making stupid comments to me and then laughing amongst themselves at my expense. Then, Diego got really close to me and started whispering the trash talk into my ear. “Your mom is a fatass,” he whispered. The words didn’t bother me but his hot breath in my ear got on my nerves and it triggered something primal inside of me. I did something I’d never done in my life. I kicked his ass. I’d never taken any martial arts classes, but there must have been something embedded in my Chinese DNA. Out of instinct, I turned around and round-house kicked Diego square in the gut. He gasped and folded over. Then I jumped up as high as I could, and I came down with a massive karate chop to the back of the neck. He collapsed onto his knees. My adrenaline was pumping and I was ready to finish him. David quickly jumped in between us and screamed, “Stop! Stop!” I stood still in my kung fu stance and stared them down. I saw the fear in their eyes as David picked Diego up from the ground. David said to him:

  “Don’t fuck with this kid, he’s fucking Bruce Lee.”

  From that day on, nobody said one more word about my mama ever again.

  THE PUBLIC SCHOOL HUSTLE

  In second-period science class, I sat across from Juan Menjivar. He was like the Mexican Bart Simpson, a notorious troublemaker. He wasn’t the nicest kid per se, but he was fun to be around. He would always make fun of people and disrupt the class. The teachers thought he was a nightmare, but I’ve always seen him as a friend; in fact, one of my first friends in America. I became friends with Juan when we struck a business deal early in the school year when he sold me his lunch tickets. Juan had government-issued lunch tickets; they are basically food stamps for students from underprivileged households. Each ticket could be exchanged for a free lunch that normally cost five dollars and Juan would sell his tickets for three dollars. He would go up and down the lunch line every day and ask, “Does anyone need a ticket?” I always thought you’d be a fool not to buy from these lunchtime pushers. You got the same exact lunch for a two-dollar discount. Even my mom would think that was a good deal. So I quickly raised my hand and said, “Yeah, I’ll take one.” Juan became my lunch ticket dealer for every lunch in John Burroughs.