Feb 27, 2007

ABC - American Born Chinese

Categories:  America, Asia, ENGLISH, Languages, cross-cultural, ethnic, "race", multicultural, mixity, culture, literature, architecture, photography, art, society, demography, global trends, Zeitgeist

Cantonese lyrics / English subtitles (by “Jin” / “Learn Chinese”). Read the lyrics, and you’ll understand why I believe this song is of interest. Bear in mind it is a “rap” song.

An ABC is a person of Chinese ethnic descent, born in the US - second generation or later ones. They usually are the best integrated “ethnic chinese” within the USAmerican society (which sounds quite logic).

They do not especially live in Chinatowns (which is a bit of a cliché), but sometimes in more affluent suburbs (depending on the level of income and education).

It is interesting to note “Chinese” (as a visible identity) in Canada, mix the least with other ethnicities (numbers including CBC (Canadian Born Chinese)). The degree of integration depends as well on how populated and concentrated “Chinese” communities are (usually on the coast, groups are stronger than the ones in mainland US where they tend to blend more within the local USAmerican society).
So it goes with the Chinese language… ABC / CBC do not especially speak Chinese, sometimes they could express themselves within their (grand)parent’s local dialects, but could not read or write it. Please note that Jin sings in Cantonese which is a Guangzhou - Hong-Kong dialect.
official website, ABC-Jin

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3 Comments to “ABC - American Born Chinese”

  1. tanguy | February 28th, 2007 at 11:45 am

    TVB is a Hong-Kong based television channel, they broadcast all over the world. (Hong-Kong=Cantonese)

  2. Kai | February 28th, 2007 at 5:14 pm

    Thanks for the post and link, John. As an ABC myself, I love this song.

    As you note, some ABCs don’t speak much Chinese, but generally speak at least some in order to communicate with grandparents and such. We sometimes refer to this as “kitchen Chinese”, which means you know how to talk about food at home, but not politics or business or anything in the broader world.

    Jin has another song on his new album entitled “Speak Can’t Read” which deals with the phenomenon that most ABCs cannot read or write Chinese because of how demanding the process of learning it is (generally takes a good 7 or 8 years full time to get decent), which always puts us in an awkward position with restaurants menus and many other situations.

    Anyway, thanks again. Cheers.

  3. john | February 28th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    Hei Kai,

    Thanks for your comment ! I really enjoyed going through your website, so it’s normal for the link.

    I agree with you that learning chinese is quite tough (I actually tried - just managed to reach 500 characters (write and read) but that’s it) after 4 months - it was when I lived in Asia (the best professor ever - she was such an incentive, sighhh :-).

    The main problem I believe might be the so many different dialects in such a concentrated location - Chinatowns must be gathering people from all over China (even if…) - so many different dialects ; might be tough to understand each other, especially if ppl can’t read and write… if you don’t meet ppl from your province, it might be tough to keep the language alive (family being too closed)…

    Honestly, I like this topic…

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