College Essay Recycling Bin: Chinatown

I lick my freshly-pearled whites, the sweet taste of fluoride stubbornly coating them no matter how many times I try to rinse and spit against stern orders of no eating for 30 minutes. It doesn’t mix well with the taste of bao zi, packed tightly like oversized cotton balls in those flimsy Styrofoam boxes. I stab my plastic fork into one, inspecting the chewy pink filling inside. Before I’ve managed to shove my mouth full of bun, my mom comes out into the dingy corridor where I’ve been sitting with my back near the door. No food or drink inside the office. She is followed by my brother and father, and I swallow the rest of my snack in a hurried relief - done!

Growing up, I had a strange affection for going to the dentist. Save for Christmas and summer break, it was one of the few affairs for which I eagerly awaited over six months at a time. It wasn’t that I particularly liked the metal invasion of my mouth. No, the best part of going to the dentist was the excuse to leave — and head downstairs into the bustling streets adorned by Chinese characters. To everyone else I knew, New York City meant Times Square, Central Park. To me, it meant something much greater: food.

Out on the streets of Flushing, my little feet shuffle along the drab cement littered heavily with cigarette butts, my chin of quiet confusion upturned to inspect all the faces made of my same pale butterscotch skin, outlined by silken black hair and defined by almond eyes. These people - they are supposed to belong to me? Chinatown is supposed to be the intersection of the two cultures that shaped me; it’s the one place in this universe, it seems, where I shouldn’t feel caught between two worlds.

Before my young mind can wrap around these thoughts, my mother pulls me into a rundown basement, made lively by the sound of good laughter in the company of good food. Our favorite little secret: an underground strip of local food vendors. My mother rambles off all our usuals in her perfect Beijing accent: this is her forte, and in its rarity I see how natural language comes to her - quick, unbroken sentences impossible in English. Egg custard, spicy duck heads, chive-and-pork-filled dumplings, and liang pi, the best cold noodles around. There’s a saying in Chinese; it goes something like, your eyes are bigger than your stomach. For my family, this was as true as it wasn’t.

After dinner is the all-important trip to the supermarket. My brother and I are given the sweet freedom of roaming through the aisles with our own cart. With each brake of the wheels, we ponder which brand of ramen we should take home and how many bags of strawberry Pocky is “enough”, careful not to forget Mom’s dark vinegar and Dad’s pickled vegetables. Food never imagined in the ShopRite at home is available like running water here. It’s like heaven on earth. Better yet, it’s like China in America.

When darkness fell, my brother and I strapped ourselves in the backseat of the minivan, my father clocking in to his main duty of the night: driving home. Dentist days meant a brief escape from our world of suburbia, life which for my immigrant parents often seemed so frustratingly American and deafeningly English. As we pull away from those short blocks and let the familiarly foreign signs fade away, I let my head fall asleep against the seatbelt, safe in knowing that our trunk was still full of leftovers and groceries.

Over the years, the trunk filled with a place in the Orange County Chinese community, Asian YouTubers, moments like first seeing Crazy Rich Asians in theater, solidarity with my brother, my family — a quiet confusion turned to a loud pride. But I never forgot the foundation beneath it all, the nourishment that first knew how to fill that lacking identity.