Happy Chinese New Year!

The Chinese New Year 2010 falls on Feb 14th, Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine's Day! Happy Chinese New Year!

In the city where I live, Asian makes up about 1% of the total population. I don't know out of that percentage how many of them are actually Chinese. Though there are 1.3 billion of us on the planet, I'm undoubtedly in the elite minority status here. I have only met several Chinese people around here so far. A couple of times when I saw an Asian looking person in the stores, I felt compelled to approach her/him for some quick chit-chat in Chinese. Usually I was approached before I made up my mind. Make no mistake about it. Though we lonely Chinese minorities here can't swing the votes, united we can stand voicing our native language in the stores. Having lived among the American communities for so long, I sometimes forget I am a Chinese. My American husband and a couple of close American friends claimed to have forgotten that too when they slipped their tongues by making unflattering remarks about Chinese goods or China in front of me. Only when they turned to look at me, my furious look reminded them of me being a Chinese. They would immediately apologize "Oh I'm so sorry. I forget you are a Chinese". When it comes to forgetting, it should be a double-standard: I can forget I'm a Chinese but you can NOT! However, most of the times, I don't have to worry about that. Just my face and my accent alone don't let me get away with being mistaken as an American even if I want to . When I first started with John L Scott real estate office as a sales associate, I solicited a few of the "For Sale by Owner" telephone numbers in order to prospect some new listings. As a rule, I had to identify the company name I worked for during the soliciting calls. Shortly after, my broker received a complaint from a FSBO Seller I previously called. "Shame on you! You are outsourcing your business overseas, to China?". And I didn't even mention to the Seller where I was originally from and where I was then!

5 years ago, on one weekend before the Chinese New Year's Day, I invited my American colleagues for a Chinese New Year's celebration dinner party. My broker volunteered his house as the venue. I volunteered myself as the Chinese iron chef. Since I have been educating my American colleagues all along that the Chinese food they have had was only American Chinese food, I was supposed to demonstrate to them how the authentic Chinese food should taste like by cooking for them at the party. Fearing my limited cooking skills will fail the authenticity part, I drove a couple of hours one-way and bought a lot of takeouts from a Sichuanese restaurant to the party. Along with the takeouts, I only made a couple of easy dishes. I didn't lie per se but I did lead them to believe I made all of them. Misleading is not lying, right? All the colleagues and their families seemed to love the food I "cooked". My broker wanted to keep the leftover "eye balls". That's how he called those white sticky rice balls, and everyone else started calling them "eye balls" also. That dish was actually called "Tangyuan" in Chinese. It was the single most traditional Chinese new year's dish made of sticky rice and sweet filler. One of my colleague's 3-year old daughter was a little traumatized watching us adults eating the "eyeballs". Several agents asked me to give them the recipe of some of the dishes they liked. A couple of them kept bugging me about releasing the recipes afterwards. I never did. How could anyone expect me to give recipes for the food someone else cooked? Oops! Hush. Can't really blame them.

We invited my Chinese girlfriend and her family from another city over for a hotpot dinner celebration on Chinese New Year's Eve this year. Hotpot is like fondue in Chinese sauce. I like it burning spicy hot but I will have to tone the spice down for others. This will mark the first time in USA that I celebrate the Chinese New Year with my Chinese people!

God bless America! God bless China! Happy Valentine! Happy Chinese New Year!