"Do you dream in English?"

My Chinese American Dream

A Winter Dawn in the Pacific Northwest. Photo Credit: Chi-Fang Chen

I don’t remember how many times I have been asked the question, but I remember feeling flustered because I never knew the answer - “Do you dream in English?”

I am sure I was dreaming in Chinese as an eight-year-old on that day when Uncle Peter came to knock on our door. I opened the door and there was a freckle-faced, strange-looking man, with a similarly freckle-faced, strange-looking little girl in tow. That was Uncle Peter with his daughter Amy, who was about my younger sister’s age. Uncle Peter is bi-racial. The kind old lady who used to wave at us from her window in the garden house next door, was his American mother. When the kind American lady passed away, Uncle Peter and his wife and daughter moved into his mother’s place. He must have heard the sound of the piano coming from our home, and came to offer to teach my sister and me English, in exchange for his daughter’s piano lessons from my mom.

I hated Uncle Peter’s English lessons the way an eight-year-old knew how. I was intimidated by his foreign look, and bummed by his rule of no Chinese allowed during his lessons—not even in the very first lesson. He seemed incapable of laughing and reserved smiles only for adults. I’d find every possible way to run away from these English lessons. To me, he was the reason that I had another after-school chore in addition to piano practice. No other kids I knew had to do either. It made me special, and I did not like to be special. Being special seemed to attract bullying from the mean kids. And I felt sorry for my sister—she was so lost in these lessons—I believed it was my fault that she became the victim of a “learning companion”. But just like piano practices, the English lessons were “non-negotiables” per my father. So I was stuck with Uncle Peter and his English lessons.

Weeks and months passed by, I picked up more and more English words and got “cast” as Sue in the stories of the integrated children’s English course Look, Listen, and Learn!. The lessons became less intimidating and I stopped finding excuses to skip them. My funny American English accent earned me some popularity points and was even marveled by the bullies at the school.

“Say party again!” They would shout.

“Parrrty,” I’d proudly enunciate the “r”.

Then came one day, just as abruptly as how these lessons began, they stopped. Uncle Peter and his family moved away to an apartment building in the suburbs, and not long after that, they emigrated to his mother’s country, America.

I missed the English lessons, and I missed Uncle Peter. We did not reconnect until more than 30 years later, with the help of none other than the social network. (That would be a story for another time.)

What Uncle Peter instilled in me, with his stoic teaching manner, sustained my top-of-the-class position in English from the 3rd grade all the way to college. And armed with that, I boarded the flight from Shanghai to San Francisco, the first leg of a three-part air journey shortly after graduating from college, heading to Lincoln, Nebraska for my graduate study. That was the beginning of my American dream.

I was speaking Chinese in that dream.

For the first few months after arriving in Lincon, I must have been in too much of a cultural shock to even have any dreams. I always formed what I wanted to say in Chinese first, then translated it to English before I had to pick up a phone. Phone number in one hand and the other gripping the handset, I’d go over the lines in my head one last time before punching in the numbers. “Hello! This is Yi and I am calling for …” I uttered the well-rehearsed question as fast as possible to free up my brain to manage the answer. The first time when the person on the other end of the line asked a question out of the scope of my rehearsal, I slammed the handset back to its cradle, as if out of reflex, probably leaving the other person bewildered. After regrouping my thoughts, I’d try again. One time, after a couple of tries, I just walked the few blocks, went into the Graduate Administration Office, and told the lady behind the desk, “I am the one who just called and this is the form I have a question of.”

Those first few years flew by so quickly that much of it now feels like a dream, in which I was still speaking Chinese although while not dreaming, I was working hard to learn to speak English, properly. You know how you only remember bits and pieces of your dream when you wake up? That’s how I feel when I look back on these years.

I remember being flabbergasted by how fast Prof. M talked during the Medieval Music History class, my first class on my first day; I remember wanting to drop the class, pack up, and go home; I remember burying my head in notes taking and often stayed in the library until its closing time listening to the Medieval chants; I remember on the exam day walking to the class, the sidewalks slippery in the bitter cold of Nebraska weather, and I would make sure not to trip because I was afraid a fall on the ice-covered sidewalk would empty my brain of the English words stuffed there the night before; and I sure remember being told to “speak English” in a parking lot by a stranger passing by, just when I was excited to speak Chinese with the new friends I met in the Foreign Student Union.

And I certainly remember the day I received my final project back from Prof. S’ Introduction to Graduate Studies in Music.

“Your English writing is by far the best among the foreign students I have had in my classes,” she handed me my paper. “I can tell you can write well in Chinese.” Her green eyes looked emotionless as usual but I desperately hung on to the warm thread I thought I found in her compliment—that was a compliment, wasn’t it?—and for a brief moment, I was encouraged.

“If you are going to continue with your doctoral study, however, there is no way you can produce the dissertation with your English.” The tiny hint of a polite smile had disappeared as she delivered what she believed was her advice, "If I were you, I’d go back and take English writing classes before getting into any music-related courses.”

I don’t remember much of my other interactions with Prof. S., nor any of her classes. But her assessment of my English, and how far below my English writing skill was from the bar she held for graduate students, stayed with me.

I am sure I still did not speak English in my dreams back then.

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Years later, I was invited to give a technical presentation on an emerging technology, to the IT leaders of top-tier Chinese Banks in Beijing; the same session I had already delivered at several global network conferences. Only this time, I was asked to present in Chinese. That shouldn’t be a problem, given I was still dreaming in Chinese.

Well, was I?

I struggled during that presentation. English words kept popping out of my mouth and I stumbled not just on technical terminologies, but also when articulating technical scenarios and business strategies. I scanned the audience, hoping to find nodding heads but met with blank stares and polite smiles. I turned to my local colleagues with a look of plea (and probably panic). They came to the rescue and not only filled my awkward blanks but offered to explain that I had been living in the United States for many years. The audience nodded with understanding, not without a hint of sympathy in their smiles.

My English was far from flawless but my Chinese had turned rusty.

“Do you speak Chinese or English in your dreams?” half-jokingly, one of my colleagues asked at the dinner afterward. That sent my head spinning: Do I speak Chinese in my dreams? Or is it English? Maybe both? I sat there, gazing into the void.

Maybe I did not speak in my dreams. Maybe I no longer used language to navigate the plots of my dreams. I was not quite sure if I should be relieved or concerned with that conclusion. At least I had a probable answer.

When I told my husband that I registered for a writing class with the University of Washington’s online certification program, he could not understand why I wanted to take a class in English writing.

“I always want to write; I always love to tell stories,” I tried to explain.

“I know you love to tell stories,” I could hear his confusion. “But why do you want to write in English? Isn’t writing in Chinese easier for you?”

“Yes, but …,” I hesitated, contemplating how to articulate my reasoning. “But I want to take an English class. It is what I want to do and I would like to be able to do what I want to do instead of what I have to do, for once.” As if answering my husband helped me find clarity, I waved my hand and ended the conversation. I didn’t feel I needed more reasons outside of the do what I want to do part.

On the first night of the class, after a simple introduction, the instructor sent the class into a 10-minute writing prompt exercise: Tell us what you are thankful for during the pandemic shutdown. That’s easy, I told myself. With 20+ years working in the engineering and IT business, writing a bullet list in 10 minutes would be a simple task! I am thankful everyone in the family is healthy. I am thankful my job allows me to be fully remote, and work from home. I am thankful that I am sitting in a class for the first time in 25 years. I was done before the 10 minutes were up. One by one, my classmates volunteered to read what they wrote. One of them wrote a lyrical poem about a stroll on a peaceful beach; another wrote a sentimental prose about past love; and another an emotionally charged narrative about personal struggles with addiction and mental health ... I sat there in disbelief: You wrote that in 10 minutes??? I promptly withdrew my virtually raised hand and chose not to read out my list of gratitude as it now felt primitive and pathetic.

Three classes and a writing certificate later, I can now explain to myself why I wanted to take a writing class in English—I have been living and breathing in a world where thoughts are explained in English, emotions are expressed in English, and stories are told in English. I want to be able to tell my stories to people who only speak English, and I want to tell them about my dreams in English, even if in my dreams I speak Chinese or both or don’t speak at all.

There are times when I want to write my stories in Chinese. There are still words that just come to me in Chinese, and I have to find ways to translate them just right, into English. But there are also times when sentiments come in English, and my thoughts flow in English, and my stories connect to the English-speaking world naturally.

So here I am, straddled between the two distinctly different linguistic worlds. Maybe I will never be able to tell if I dream in English or Chinese. But I am okay with that, as long as when I wake up, I can write down my dreams, whether in English or Chinese, and I find my audience in both worlds.