Issue of identity for Chinese-American writers

If I carried an ID which says that I am Chinese-American, would you still ask me if I would go back to China? The China I left is a half a century ago. What landmark still exists in Canton, the mouth of the Pearl River, and the sampans that sold fish congee?

My svelt auntie ruffled my hair here in the Canton evenings when the breeze from the ocean was still warm. Lovers and children lie on the grass. Some truant boys are still up in the massive yung trees.

Here the British gun boats that once fired into this oldest of all Chinese sea going city in the attempt to sell opium.

Here they were defeated and they went north to Nanking. The Empress Dowager
sold China because it wasn't hers. She was a Manchu.

The China I can go back to is only in the heart, in memory, and in spirit. Capitalism has stinky up China and so it is becoming like the West. When you begin to have young people grow up on rock'n roll instead of your ancient poets, only one thing can happen, the Merchant sails down the river and is gone forever, along with the ancient wares of China, the treasures that will never come back, nor the emigres to other lands.

I have come to know and like (sometimes) pizza, hamburger, fish fries, and apple pie -- they are good and convenient and the electrical wiring of the coke dispensing machine is more intricate than my logic, I bow to the neon gods,
I supplicate to credit cards, and I love formal poetry, and did I leave out anything? We will take our sales team there.

Is there some things that are invariant when translated into a new domain? Why do there exist Chinatowns? The invisible walls that keep the Chinese "in" or the others "out"?

Even Hu Jintao wears a suit, a business suit.

I wear Lands End clothing in this freezing land. They are a good company. And they did not do like Marco Polo, who stole silkworms from China in a bamboo stick. Gone are the scholars and concubines. Gone is Li Po who crazily embraced the moon. Gone are the water-buffaloes grazing on the perimeter of the village pond. Gone are the bull frogs that croak as the evening descends. It is night over there now if the day begins here.

And here I sit at the Computer, an infinite better refinement of the abacus. But the abacus was all China needed. Then someone said, you got to make things that don't last. That way, you have repeat customers and so you will have a steady source of profits. I think China has learned that lesson from Japan. And so who am I who is here bemoaning Progress?

You can go back to the land, but not to the people. Here you are suspended, uncomfortably straddling two or more cultures. Define yourself through praxis. Define yourself by nothing but love.