Writing POC 101

Chinese Western* Characters - @somniant

*Western being Canada and United States of America

I'm just going to build a little on what @illusoire wrote about Chinese Characters. She covered a lot of the stereotypes and some of the culture, so now I'm going to go into some detail of how most Chinese American (or Canadian) families are like.

I'm Chinese Canadian, and I live in a city in Canada that is actually pretty densely populated with other Chinese and Asians, so I'm really just telling you how most Chinese families here are like. It might be a little different from Americans or other Canadian cities, but it should be close enough.

First of all, there is a difference on how traditional the Chinese families are. Usually, the parents are immigrants, and depending on when they came to America. Some come during university, and those Chinese families tend to be a little more whitewashed. Others come as young adults, or as parents hoping to give their children a better education, those Chinese immigrants tend to stick closer to how they lived in China. My parents came as young adults, and they're more traditional. We sometimes speak Chinese at home (but less and less as us kids become more whitewashed, heh) and we mostly eat Chinese food. If we go out to eat, there are a ton of Chinese restaurants in our area to choose from.

There's a difference between "American Chinese Food" and real, authentic Chinese Food, by the way. If it's take out Chinese food, it's probably more American than Chinese. Chinese foods include noodles, rice, buns, hotpot, dim sum etc. I could go on forever about how amazing and diverse Chinese food is, but that'll take way too long. Different restaurants usually specialize in different aspects of Chinese food. Personally, my favourite is Shanghainese food (buns, noodles, these-sticky-cake things-I-don't-know-the-English-name). Different cities in China, and different minorities, often have a dish they are famous for.

Enough about food. This is what happens when you write right after eating dinner. Anyways.

Most Chinese families I know have their kids learn piano. It's a general trend I see, I don't even know why, but all my Chinese friends have learned piano some time during their life. I would say Chinese parents are pretty strict, at least, waaaay firmer than white parents, but that could be just how they were brought up. The education system in China is pretty tough. Every single exam is a competition with the rest of your grade or maybe even the country, and learning is basically the equivalent of memorising information. My cousins go to school in China (Beijing), and to be honest, Americans are pretty lucky. You guys should count your blessings instead of moaning about your sucky education. One of my cousins goes to a school with a little under 50 kids a class, 20 classes a grade. The school keeps the students inside because there are so many of them it's uncontrollable, also the air condition can get really bad with all the pollution in China now. Because of the education system, most Chinese parents are pretty firm on their kids getting straight A's, though this depends on how white-washed and strict the parents are.

Chinese parents have a different way of showing their love to their kids than white parents, in my opinion. They don't say "I love you" that much, but you can see their love through how much food they stuff in your bowl, or their concern on your education and whatever. Again, this all depends on the parent's personality and how much they've integrated themselves into the American culture.

The Chinese-American/Canadian kids, however, are basically just like any other kid in North America. We complain about school and homework and everything else other children complain about. We can be fashionable, chat about celebrities, fangirl and cry over fictional characters and all that other shiz. We can be sporty and dumb and whatever other stereotypes you can think of for teenagers. In my school, we joke about stereotypes a lot. No one takes offense for it (I'm not sure if this applies anywhere else but why not), since 80% of the school is Asian anyways. We find the racist jokes about Chinese people really funny since we know how accurate or inaccurate it is. But if it gets too far, it stops being cool, obviously.

If you wanna write about a Chinese-American/Canadian character, go for it. They're really like any other character you can make up. The only difference would probably be on how they live their private life, which greatly depends on whether their first generation Chinese-American/Canadian or not. If they are, then everything I said above usually applies. If not, their just like any other American/Canadian family that loosely holds to Chinese traditions.

If I messed up on some of the facts go ahead and point it out or something. I hope this helped, feel free to PM me if you have any questions :3