The Triple Package (37 page)

“Since ancient China began as a culture island”
:
Fairbank, “China’s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” p. 456; Wang, “History, Space, and Ethnicity,” pp. 287–8.

“barbarians”
:
Wang, “History, Space, and Ethnicity,” pp. 287–8.

“tribute” to China
:
J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Têng, “On the Ch’ing Tributary System,”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
6, no. 2 (1941), pp. 135, 148–57, 182–90; see also Chua,
Day of Empire
, pp. 79–81.

Mongols
 . . . ultimately “sinicized”:
Fairbank, “China’s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” pp. 456–8; see also Paul Heng-chao Ch’en,
Chinese Legal Tradition Under the Mongols: The Code of 1291 as Reconstructed
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Ping-Ti Ho, “In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawksi’s ‘Reenvisioning the Qing,’”
Journal of Asian Studies
57, no. 1 (1998), pp. 123, 141.

China rose to heights unprecedented
:
Chua,
Day of Empire
, pp. 178–81; Paul Kennedy,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
(New York: Vintage Books, 1989), pp. 4–9; Gavin Menzies,
1421: The Year China Discovered America
(New York: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 45, 52, 63, 70; Leo Suryadinata, ed.,
Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia
(Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005), p. 150 (contemporary Ibn Battuta reported seeing “1000 men on board” vessels).

“plates” of stale bread
:
Chua,
Day of Empire
, p. 178; Menzies,
1421
, p. 63.

“barbarians that send tribute”
:
Fairbank and Têng, “On the Ch’ing Tributary System,” pp. 182–5; see also Chua,
Day of Empire
, p. 80.

“used to take every opportunity”
:
Philip Jia Guo,
On the Move: An Immigrant Child’s Global Journey
(New York: Whittier Publications, 2007), p. 93. In passing down a sense of Chinese identity and pride from one generation to the next, parents are not the only agents. Chinese language schools, which children attend after regular school or on weekends, also play a critical role. Sociologist Min Zhou has been a pioneer on the subject of such ethnic institutions as “mediating grounds” and “cultural centers” where “traditional values and ethnic identity are nurtured.” Originally located mostly in West Coast Chinatowns, these Chinese schools have exploded in number over the last several decades. As of 2006, there were 95 such schools in the Los Angeles area alone. In addition to Mandarin language instruction, these schools teach young children Chinese history, geography, painting, and calligraphy, as well as badminton, Chinese chess, kung fu, cooking, and dragon dance. Children memorize Chinese sayings, recite Chinese poems, and quote Confucian sayings. They are taught to write phrases like “I am Chinese” and “My ancestral country is in China.” Many kids will eventually drop out of Chinese school, protesting that it’s boring and that their parents forced them to attend. Nevertheless, as Zhou writes, most children of Chinese immigrants have attended a Chinese language school “at some point in their preteen years,” and it is often “a definitive ethnic affirming experience.” It’s important to note that Chinese school is different from—and usually piled on top of—academic tutoring or music lessons. A primary function of Chinese school is to “nurture ethnic identity and pride that may otherwise be rejected by the children because of the pressure to assimilate.” See Min Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity: Intergenerational Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families in the United States,” in Ramaswami Mahalingam, ed.,
Cultural Psychology of Immigrants
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 2006), pp. 328–32; Min Zhou, “The Ethnic System of Supplementary Education: Nonprofit and For-Profit Institutions in Los Angeles’ Chinese Immigrant Community,” in Marybeth Shinn and Hirokazu Yoshikawa, eds.
Toward Positive Youth Development: Transforming School and Community Programs
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 229–51, especially pp. 234–8, 242; the Los Angeles statistic is from p. 237.

“[I]n our house, everything important in life came from China”
:
Andrea Jung, “International Conference Keynote,”
Business Today
(Spring 2009), p. 20.

date to the fifteenth century
:
Kennedy,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
, pp. 3–7.

shame and humiliation
:
See Orville Schell and John DeLury,
Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century
(New York: Random House, 2013), pp. 6–7; Suisheng Zhao, “
‘
We are Patriots First and Democrats Second’: The Rise of Chinese Nationalism in the 1990s,” in Edward Friedman and Barrett L. McCormick, eds.,
What If China Doesn’t Democratize? Implications for War and Peace
(New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), pp. 25, 42.

NO DOGS AND CHINESE ALLOWED
:
See Stella Dong,
Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City
(New York: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 198. Dong adds, however, that “those with sharp memories say no such sign existed: instead, two notices were posted on the gate, one reading “No Dogs Allowed,” and the other, “Only For Foreigners”).

massacring
 . . . and raping:
Iris Chang,
The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II
(New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 6.

“Never will China be humiliated”
:
Jean-Pierre Lehmann, “Learning from China’s Past,” Forbes.com (Oct. 1, 2009), http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/01/china-history-60-anniversary-opinions-contributors-jean-pierre-lehmann.html. See also Zhao, “‘We Are Patriots First and Democrats Second,’” p. 42.

“twin burdens”
:
Vivian S. Louie,
Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 60.

“you won’t have to work like me in the restaurant”
:
Ibid., p. 54.

“we don’t speak English that clearly”
:
Ibid., pp. 58–9.

only 24 percent of Chinese Americans
:
Pew Research Center,
The Rise of Asian Americans
(Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, April 4, 2013) (updated edition), pp. 110, 114.

“work too hard”
:
See Chiung Hwang Chen, “‘Outwhiting the Whites’: An Examination of the Persistence of Asian American Model Minority Discourse,” in Rebecca Ann Lind, ed.,
Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers
(Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2004), pp. 146, 149; see also Suein Hwang, “The New White Flight,”
Wall Street Journal
, Nov. 19, 2005, p. A1.

anti-Chinese animus
:
See Matthew Yglesias, “White People Think College Admissions Should Be Based on Test Scores, Except When They Learn Asians Score Better Than Whites,” Slate.com, Aug. 13, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/13/white_people_s_meritocracy_hypocrisy.html; Chen, “‘Outwhiting the Whites,’” pp. 146–9; Lee Siegel, “Rise of the Tiger Nation,”
Wall Street Journal
, Oct. 27, 2012, p. C1; Ian Lovett, “U.C.L.A. Student’s Video Rant Against Asians Fuels Firestorm,”
New York Times
, Mar. 16, 2011, p. A21; Hwang, “The New White Flight,” p. A1.

“so driven to prove her wrong”
:
E-mail to Amy Chua, Nov. 14, 2012 (on file with authors).

“I’m going to have to prove myself more”
:
Ben Golliver, “Jeremy Lin: Bias Provides ‘Chip on the Shoulder,’” CBS Sports, Feb. 24, 2012, http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/34980303.

“you have to be smarter than other people”
:
Louie,
Compelled to Excel
, p. 61.

“It’s better that you’re taught the truth”
:
Anchee Min,
The Cooked Seed
(New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 343.

“You have to work harder”
:
Louie,
Compelled to Excel
, p. 61.

Confucian “learning virtue”
:
Jin Li,
Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 49–50, 63–5, 91–2, 139–42; Nicholas D. Kristof, “China Rises, and Checkmates,”
New York Times
, Jan. 9, 2011.

A cultural chasm separates “learning should be fun”
:
See, e.g., Li,
Cultural Foundations of Learning
, pp. 111–2, 258–60, 267–8; Ruth K. Chao, “Chinese and European Mothers’ Beliefs About the Role of Parenting in Children’s School Success,”
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
27, no. 4 (July 1996), pp. 403–23. Cf. Gish Jen,
Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self
(Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 48 (“I am struck every year by how consistently President Drew Faust’s addresses to Harvard freshmen emphasize free exploration and playfulness—an emphasis appropriate to a stable, egalitarian, individualistic society. . . . The traditional Chinese template . . . was geared toward attaining safety and social standing in a dangerous, interdependent, hierarchical world”).

you’ll find students sitting upright
:
See Li,
Cultural Foundations of Learning
, pp. 124–5, 129, 145–6; Carmina Brittain, “Sharing the Experience: Transnational Information About American Schools Among Chinese Immigrant Students,” in Clara C. Park, A. Lin Goodwin, and Stacey J. Lee, eds.,
Asian American Identities, Families, and Schooling
(Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2003), pp. 177, 189–90; Hywel Williams, “When It Comes to Education Can Britain Be the Singapore of the West?,” Mail Online, Jan. 23, 2012, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2089507/When-comes-education-Britain-Singapore-West.html.

Calligraphy
:
Li,
Cultural Foundations of Learning
, p. 131.

hours of additional study and tutoring
:
Ibid., pp. 167–70; Amy Chua, “Tigress Tycoons,”
Newsweek
, Mar. 12, 2012, pp. 30, 34–5; Chuing Prudence Chou and James K. S. Yuan, “Buxiban in Taiwan,”
The Newsletter
, no. 56 (Spring 2011), p. 15, http://www.iias.nl/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL56_15_0.pdf.

“You need to make more effort, not be so lazy”
:
Li,
Cultural Foundations of Learning
, pp. 258–60.

“little emperors”
:
“Thirty years into China’s one-child policy, many are concerned about the prospect of letting a hundred spoiled brats bloom. . . . But China’s ‘little emperors’ are coddled in a distinctly Chinese way. While doted on and catered to, they are also loaded up with the expectations of parents who have invested all their dreams—not to mention money—in their only child. These ‘spoiled’ children often study and drill from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.” Chua, “Tigress Tycoons,”
Newsweek
, pp. 30, 34–5.

Chinese immigrants parent far more strictly
:
See, e.g., Louie,
Compelled to Excel
, pp. 42–5; Chao, “Chinese and European Mothers’ Beliefs,” pp. 403–23; Paul E. Jose, Carol S. Huntsinger, Phillip R. Huntsinger, and Fong-Ruey Liaw, “Parental Values and Practices Relevant to Young Children’s Social Development in Taiwan and the United States,”
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
31, no. 6 (November 2000), pp. 677–702; Richard R. Pearce, “Effects of Cultural and Social Structural Factors on the Achievement of White and Chinese American Students at School Transition Points,”
American Education Research Journal
43, no. 1 (Spring 2006), pp. 75–101; Robert D. Hess, Chang Chih-Mei, and Teresa M. McDevitt, “Cultural Variations in Family Beliefs About Children’s Performance in Mathematics: Comparisons Among People’s Republic of China, Chinese American, and Caucasian American Families,”
Journal of Educational Psychology
79, no. 2 (1987), pp. 179–88; Wenfan Yan and Qiuyun Lin, “Parent Involvement and Mathematics Achievement: Contrast Across Racial and Ethnic Groups,”
Journal of Educational Research
99, no. 2 (2005), pp. 118, 120; Parminder Parmar et al., “Teacher or Playmate: Asian Immigrant and Euro-American Parents’ Participation in Their Young Children’s Daily Activities,”
Social Behavior and Personality
36, no. 2 (2008), pp. 163–76.

Juilliard Pre-College students
:
See Grace Wang, “Interlopers in the Realm of High Culture: ‘Music Moms’ and the Performance of Asian and Asian American Identities,”
American Quarterly
61, no. 4
(2009), pp. 894, 901 n. 6; Joseph Kahn and Daniel Wakin, “Increasingly in the West, the Players Are from the East,”
New York Times
, Apr. 4, 2007. See also Mari Yoshihara,
Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), pp. 2–3, 53.

“focused activity”
:
Jose et al., “Parental Values and Practices,” pp. 689 (Table 4), 690.

one-third less television
:
Ibid.; see also Pearce, “Effects of Cultural and Social Structural Factors,” pp. 75, 81, 89 (table 4).

Asian kids are more likely
:
Laurence Steinberg,
Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 91–4.

extra work
:
Chao, “Chinese and European Mothers’ Beliefs,” p. 410; Louie,
Compelled to Excel
, pp. 42–5. See generally Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity,” pp. 326–7; Min Zhou, “Assimilation the Asian Way,” in Tamar Jacoby, ed.,
Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 146–51.