Second-Generation Chinese

Second-generation Chinese are Chinese Americans born in the United States to at least one Chinese-born parent. This is a technical definition, but culturally, sociologically, and emotionally, [Page 800]there are grey areas: The children of a fifth-generation Chinese American and a Chinese immigrant are likely to have different experiences growing up from those of the children of two recent Chinese immigrants, for instance, and there is often little difference in the experiences of the U.S.-born children of immigrants and that of immigrants who immigrated from China as young children. Those who immigrated as young children sometimes identify as the 1.5 generation for this reason, a term coined in the Korean American community to denote the vast difference in experience and acculturation between Korean immigrants who immigrated as adults and those who immigrated as children. The term has proven useful throughout the Asian American community. The term second-generation immigrant is sometimes used to refer to the children of immigrants but has the negative connotation of implying a permanent foreignness, a stigma Asian Americans are already burdened with.

The manner in which second-generation Chinese negotiate the two cultures with which they are connected and assimilated differs from that which first-generation immigrants experience. Second-generation Chinese generally have better English fluency—they are usually raised speaking English—and in the aggregate have higher earnings as adults due to better cultural fluency and fewer barriers facing them. Second-generation Chinese often maintain a connection to Chinese culture that more assimilated Chinese Americans may lack and may maintain a relationship with China and relatives there, second-generation Americans in general being more likely to do so than Americans further removed from their immigrant roots. There are large numbers of second-generation Chinese because of the higher birth rate among immigrants than among the American-born population.

Second-generation Chinese have the highest graduation rates among second-generation Asian Americans, which are already high to begin with. They tend to be bilingual, though some are what the Chinese derogatorily call jook-sing—Chinese Americans who do not read, write, or speak Chinese. (A jook-sing is a bamboo stick—bamboo is both hollow and compartmentalized, such that water can be poured into it but does not flow out the other end.)

There are numerous frictions and conflicts between second-generation Chinese and their first-generation parents. While first-generation immigrants may acculturate, they are not as assimilated as their children, usually, and maintain ties to older traditions. If they continue to rely on Chinese-language television or radio programming, newspapers, or entertainment, for instance, they are consuming different cultural products than second-generation Chinese who partake in mainstream American culture. Second-generation Chinese are also deeply involved in the creation of Chinese American culture—Chinese American rap and other music, literature drawing on the Chinese American experience, the politics of Chinese America, and the fusion cuisine that drives Chinese American cooking.