A look at Chinese cultural pride through a humorous book excerpt about "Chinese torture" and a childhood story of a mother meticulously tightening pigtails with a bobby pin. The speaker reflects on how many Chinese and Asian families take pride in doing tasks thoroughly, no matter the circumstances.
This exchange is pretty funny in the book. Okay. About torture. About torture. Okay. I need to get my glasses. Good thing I brought them. Okay, about torture. Do you want me to read it out loud or just read it to her? I asked her, ma, what is Chinese torture? My mother shook her head. A bobby pin was wedged between her lips. She wetted her palm and smoothed the hair against my ear, then pushed the pin in so that it nicked sharply against my scalp. I remember those days. Who say this word? She asked with a trace of knowing how wicked I was being. I shrugged my shoulders and said, some boy in my class said, chinese people do Chinese torture. Chinese people do many things. She said simply, Chinese people do business, do medicine, do painting. Not lazy like American people. We do torture best torture.
I actually tag this because we take pride in doing things the best, no matter what it is. I cracked up when I read that. Okay, yes, we call this torture, but we do it best way.
Yeah. It's so funny. Yeah. And I think that's what's the Chinese people take pride in everything they do. Whether it's because I remember my mom pulling my hair to make my pigtails and tying it so tight that I felt like she was scraping my scalp so hard. But the final product was, oh, my gosh, there's perfect little pigtails with the perfect little. But, I mean, she ironed my ribbons before she tied them. That's how we get attention to detail. The attention to detail. And I think there's that pride in everything we do. We do it well, no matter. And actually, I think that even goes across all economic status, you know, any socio. We just take pride in what we do and we want the best for our family. And I think that's what is kind of the running theme in a lot of Asian families. We just want the best. You might not have, like.
You know, it's the quality over quantity type of thing. Yeah. And it's the pride that you take in it. So, yes, the daughter was embarrassed by what this boy said. And she's trying to almost, like, goad her mom saying this. Oh, he says we do torture. As she was being tortured by having this bobby pin scraped against her scalp. And the mom just takes it and Shri, yes, we do torture, but we do best torture. It's like, put her in her place. So good. So good.
