This article is part of Mochi’s spring 2025 issue on Traditions, where we examine how cultural practices shape, challenge, and evolve within our lives today.
As my family weaved through a maze of packed tables to get to our own, eyes followed us as if we were celebrities half-nude on a red carpet. Judgment, confusion, and some amusement lingered in the air. They felt hot, the stares. Each one sticking to me, building up on my skin, and dragging me down to a sluggish speed. The mixture of quick heat and slowed time was confusing, two ends of a sensory spectrum pulling me toward their respective sides. I stayed in the middle.
I felt like a failure to my supposed “community.” The sea of Asian families whispered in hushed Mandarin as my multiracial family made our way to the table. Though I was supposed to blend in with these people who shared the same skin and same eyes as me, the only thing I felt was “other.”
Once we were seated at our booth, I seemed to regain consciousness and I was able to take in my surroundings a bit better. Red lanterns hung from the ceiling, loud clanging of pots and pans came from behind swinging double doors, and those kitschy cats bobbed their arms in mockery at me.
I didn’t even want to come to this restaurant. I was completely satisfied with our usual Chinese joint, which we had been dining at weekly since I was 6 years old. It was frequented by the normal suspects you would find in a wealthy suburb like ours: old retired couples, dads grabbing takeout on their way home from work, and a few families. Except the families were never like my family. They were always pale-faced and the children were a perfect mix between the parents. On the contrary, my bright blond American-born mother had one hand held by a Guatemalan daughter with almond skin and brunette locks that shimmered red in the sunlight, and another hand held by an Asian daughter with a peachy complexion and thick hair as dark as the night.
It was Mom’s idea to branch out of our regularly scheduled program, but it was our neighbor, Yan, who planted the seed in my mother’s head. My easily guilt-ridden mother jumps at any chance to potentially make me feel connected to my genetic roots, so when our Chinese neighbor recommended Mu Lan as the most authentic Taiwanese food she has had since emigrating from Sichuan Province, my mother was eager to bring me and my sister.
My mother adopted me on Dec. 5, 2002 in Nanning. I was 9 months old and she was 37. Although through her, I became the passionate, hard-working woman I am today, her numerous efforts to make me feel confident in my Asian identity often fell flat. Once a month, starting when I was 4 years old, I would go to class where a native Shanghai woman would teach Mandarin to me and a few of my adoption sisters. I don’t know what it was about this class, but we all hated it. Our mothers, on the other hand, all loved it. I feel like the collective decision to keep us in the class for years on end was somewhat made in ignorance. Our parents loved to chat about the weather and sip on lattes while their daughters sat uncomfortably in a classroom, force-fed vocabulary that never digested naturally. Even my non-Asian sister had to attend the classes. It didn’t matter that we groaned and threw tantrums when it was time to leave at 9 a.m. on the first Saturday of the month. All my dear mother saw was the “Best Adoptive Mom Award” that would be coming her way.
It was difficult for me to feel any sort of Asian because, really, it wasn’t part of my life. Sure, I had numerous Asian friends, some of whom were in fact adopted, and my family often not only got Chinese takeout, but sometimes even Thai. We went to museums with exhibits on Chinese porcelain and attended Chinese theater performances. Still, it was hard for my mother to emanate a culture that was not part of her daily life. And in turn, it wasn’t part of ours.
What my mom did understand was that the nights she brought home Chinese food for dinner, or when we would go to the restaurant ourselves, were the nights her daughter seemed the most at ease. There was not a dish on the menu she wasn’t interested in trying. Xiao long bao, cheung fun, char siu: all of it called her name.
I couldn’t tell you what it was about eating Chinese food that makes me feel, to this day, relaxed in my own skin. Maybe it’s that food is the universal language of love, an eternal gesture of nourishment and caring. Or, that it often brought the opportunity to learn about my background (like when our Mandarin teacher held annual celebrations every Lunar New Year where we made dumplings together and exchanged red envelopes). It could have been just simply in my DNA: the traditional flavors of my genetic ancestors bringing a visceral state of comfort and belonging. Yet, I think the most plausible explanation was that eating Chinese food with my blended family was the intersection of where I came from and who I came to be. I am Chinese. I am American. I live in America. I am a sister. I am the daughter of a single mother. I was left at a post office when I was a month old. I speak English. I am a lover of food. All the pieces of my complicated identity felt that they fit together perfectly, like the different components of a soup dumpling tucked together warmly inside of its wrapper.
Once the food at Mu Lan was served to us, inevitably, the stares from the other families went away. A few nosy folks may have glanced over at our table once or twice while we were eating, but at that point it was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was satisfying the pang in my stomach with the savory sweetness on the table in front of me. As I slurped down silky eggs from my soup and tore off pieces of soy-dipped scallion pancake, the spiraling panic of being different around people that should have made me feel the same subsided. We passed plates, giggling and sharing anecdotes between bites. My non-traditional family was just that: a family. We didn’t see each other as strangers, mismatched from each other to come together unnaturally, and it was unimportant if others did see us this way. We would continue to go eat at Chinese restaurants. They would need to get used to the sight of us. We would brave the lingering eyes and bemused expressions. We would sit and eat together, our wonderful, beautiful, non-traditional family, so long as it meant I got the last dumpling.
Read the memoir by Illustrator and Author Callie Ware that inspired this piece:
Illustrations by Callie Ware
