1) I want to talk about something that deviates from my normal tweets. I've been hesitant about expressing this since I am not an Asian American.
But I want to talk about Chinese culture's implicit acceptance of pain in exchange for survival. And how that makes us silent.
But I want to talk about Chinese culture's implicit acceptance of pain in exchange for survival. And how that makes us silent.
2) A recent article came out about Viya (China's most success livestreamer who can command 37m viewers per stream). She sleeps 4-5 hours every day and spends the rest of that time working, rarely has time for her kids or a break. She's getting surgery for her vocal cords rn.
3) The article stresses the tough lives these livestreamers live and in fact, the tough lives everyone lives in China. Eating bitterness is taken as given. The cost of not just doing business but surviving.
4)A livestreamer dying at 29 from overwork. Food delivery drivers carrying their sleeping children on their back as they ride their mopeds to the next delivery. Pig farmers carrying 100lbs of livestock to and fro for 17 years for their children's tuition.
5) These stories reminded me of the way I grew up, watching my parent's generation work themselves to the bone. In a largely uncaring and sometimes hostile foreign land. And teaching me and my peers to work just as hard.
Eat bitterness. Don't complain. Everyone's life is hard.
Eat bitterness. Don't complain. Everyone's life is hard.
6) There is a sense of pride in enduring. In the silence of the suffering.
"Today was hard, tomorrow will be harder, but the day after will be better"
The bargain is that there will be a future payoff. But I wonder how that makes us subsume our pain.
"Today was hard, tomorrow will be harder, but the day after will be better"
The bargain is that there will be a future payoff. But I wonder how that makes us subsume our pain.
7) "Our pain is made invisible by our success"
An academic said that in respect to the Chinese diaspora experience recently, and I was undone. A sentence that cut me to the core. A lifetime summed up in 8 words.
The pain doesn't go away. It never goes.
An academic said that in respect to the Chinese diaspora experience recently, and I was undone. A sentence that cut me to the core. A lifetime summed up in 8 words.
The pain doesn't go away. It never goes.
8) I think why this moment of violence against the Asian community is hard. We've been silent about the pain for very, very long. In a hope that this would bring us acceptance.
This moment seems to reveal that was an illusion.
This moment seems to reveal that was an illusion.
9) So I feel for us. For what has happened with the Asian American community in recent months. For what has happened to us over the years.
For we endured, and we worked and we continue to endure and continue to work.
But we don't need to be silent anymore.
For we endured, and we worked and we continue to endure and continue to work.
But we don't need to be silent anymore.
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