Growing up in old Chinatown
By adamg on Sat, 03/13/2021 - 11:14am
Set some time aside for Cynthia Yee's reminiscences of life as a young girl in Chinatown in 1958, trying to navigate between two different worlds:
I spoke Taishanese, a country dialect from southern China, like a Chinese peasant girl. But I wasn’t. I was a city street urchin from Boston, United States of America. Don’t let my face mislead you. A Boston accent crept into my English, and into my Taishanese, too. I spoke Chinese with a Boston accent. I spoke a country dialect from the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong, China and also the Boston English I had learned in American School.
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Comments
Great stuff
Really enjoyed Cynthia Year's remembrances.
This is wonderful!
Adam - thank you so much for posting this! It's a treasure. I encourage everyone to read it. Also, read a post from the same author set a few years later.
https://hudsonstreetchronicles.com/2019/06/03/mo-hi-dont-look/
Excellent!
Thanks for posting this.