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El Centro resident Dr. William Quan stands next to his son, Derek, in this June 2012 file photo. (JOSELITO VILLERO PHOTO / February 9, 2013) |
As many second- and third-generation immigrants struggle to keep their native traditions alive in the United States, so have many Imperial Valley-born Chinese residents.
“It is important to make sure that there are people to pass on the Chinese culture to when we are gone, because if there’s no one, then who will continue the tradition?” said El Centro resident Dr. William Quan, Chinese gallery manager for the Pioneers Museum and Cultural Center.
In his youth, Quan tried to find a balance between being an American and being Chinese.
“When I was growing up there was two types of Chinese people, the ABC’s, the American-born Chinese residents like me, and the FOB’s or fresh off the boat Chinese, meaning they had just recently migrated here,” Quan said.
Having skipped out on Chinese school as a child, Quan soon learned while growing up that he needed to learn his culture and its language to fully understand who he was.
“I only knew English while growing up. It wasn’t until I got older did I teach myself Cantonese,” Quan said.
Quan faced a culture clash when he met his first wife, Anna May Wong, an ABC like himself, but who was raised under strict traditional customs.
Quan soon learned speaking to Anna May would only be possible if they both spoke to one another in English, due to his inexperience with Mandarin Chinese.
“I only knew Cantonese and she had been raised knowing Mandarin, which was a completely different language for me, so we only spoke in English to one another because that was the only way we could understand each other,” Quan said.
With a majority of Chinese immigrants having migrated to the Valley from remote villages in Southern China, the common language spoken amongst villagers and now many local Chinese residents is Cantonese, although Mandarin is a more widely used language in China and around the world, Quan explained.
Now in his late 60s and remarried, following the death of Anna May, Quan looks back at his life, born and raised in El Centro, and recalls a conversation he had with his father.
“When I was just a boy my father had asked me who I was, and I had paused for a moment to think of something really profound to say, and I told him I was American. He didn’t like that very much. I think he was looking for me to say I was Chinese, but now that I’m older I wish I had told him I was Chinese-American. I think he would have liked that,” Quan said thoughtfully.
Staff Writer Celeste Alvarez can be reached at 760-337-3442 or at calvarez@ivpressonline.com
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