 Maintaining your Asian culture, do you keep all of it or do you discard the bad stuff? Yeah, we got to talk about it. This is a viral threat on Asian American Reddit right now. This person said, do you think critically about maintaining your culture? To what extent do you think it's important to maintain all aspects of your culture? And to what extent are you willing to critically analyze and discard the negative aspects of your culture and upbringing? All right, everybody, we're going to talk about what the negative aspects of Asian culture that he's referring to. How do you mix and match? Can you have the best of both worlds, especially if you're raising an Asian family in America? Everybody wants the best of both worlds. So we're going to talk about it in this video. Please hit that like button and check out other episodes of the hot pot boys. But you know what is not a compromise? This small sauce, it's maintaining the best of both worlds, the Italian chili oil with the Chinese Mala chili oil. Check it out. Foodies and chefs love it. Check out our Instagram right now. We got a lot of cool content. Real quick, man, I think that the weird thing about this post was he didn't provide any like super strong hard examples of what he was referring to. But I'm assuming that he's probably referring to maybe a childhood that was possibly more sheltered, more withdrawn, not allowing the kids to be rambunctious or explore their individualism, possibly keeping the kids or de-emphasizing team sports or especially team contact sports like football in their youth. David, do you think a lot of young Asian parents right now, like we have some friends who are starting to have kids and they do kind of have thoughts in their mind like, wait, how much of an Asian parent am I going to be? Because in a way, there's aspects of their childhood that they really don't like, but they do like who they became. And they understand that there is some value with being a conservative Asian family being strict. But they're like, I don't know what aspects I want to keep and what aspects I don't like. I want to be American. I want to be an American parent, right? Because that means my kid is going to be able to navigate America better. But I also want them to have certain Asian values. Yeah. And I think the truth is, obviously, you want to be the best of both worlds, right? You want to be a Lexus hybrid. Specifically, I'm saying a Lexus hybrid. You know why? Because the Lexus hybrids are still very powerful, which is one of the major downsides typically of hybrid cars, right? That was one of the major complaints about the Prius series. Of course, the 2023 Priuses, they're trying to fix that issue. But here's the issue. You have to study Eastern culture or your own parents' culture or your own even socioeconomic education way from that culture, as well as have a deep study of American culture to really like mix and match properly, right? Because otherwise, you're just living as a mishmash of things that you are organically. You're not actually being hyper calculated in which aspects you're picking and choosing and mixing and matching with. You mean almost like they should make a list of Asian aspects and then American aspects and then pick and literally circle the traits that they want to continue with? Like, this shouldn't be that specific, maybe? Yeah. I mean, that could help. Yeah. You could say, oh, I don't know. It's weird to me to break down culture or, you know, so compartmentalized. Yes. If you made me ultimately say whether it's better to just to have vague Reddit posts or actually break it down on a bullet point by bullet point level, the bullet point method would be preferable. I think the immediate answers is when it comes to Asian parenting, Andrew, a lot of people are going to associate the old way with authoritarian parenting, right? Right. Which is the unfun, sheltering, emotionally compressed, not very loving, very cold, stoic East Asian stereotype. Right. It's particularly more of a confusion upbringing, right? Particularly more prevalent, I say in East Asian families, right? Specifically really academic Chinese families, et cetera. Right. And then I guess, would you contrast that with what a lot of standup comedians call like the hands off white approach where it's kind of like, I don't know, Billy's just acting up. I let him do his thing. And then obviously there's a third style, Andrew, which is authoritative parenting. It's not authoritarian. It's not laissez-faire. It's not hands off. It's authoritative. Where basically you're making the kid understand the mission themselves. Yeah. I mean, that sounds like to be the best balance, to be honest. Yeah. I mean, would you say the best balance of parenting that I guess you could call it a mixture of both the Eastern and the Western style, but ultimately it's just a better style of parenting is that the kid feels the fire to accomplish things in life internally versus the authoritative style is putting a fire below their butt. Yeah. I feel like visually there's a difference between dragging your kid along into a direction that they don't want to be in versus kind of like slightly pushing them into a direction or I'm saying even them having the internal guidance themselves or telling them like, yo, this is this way. This is this way. If you take this path, choose your path, but this is what you're going to see when you go there. Yeah. Cause I do think that the problem with a lot of Asian parenting is you get results, but ultimately it's still different because there's a lot of resentment from the kids. You get the results, but at what cost? Obviously when it comes to food, Andrew, I don't know if this person was referring to food, but it's probably best to expose your kid to low, middle, high versions of all different types of cuisines, right? Not just their own, not just American food. I guess probably organically growing up in America, you're going to be exposed to low end, mid end, high end American food without much effort, but then it's going to take more effort to expose your kid to both motherland heritage food or country of origin food, as well as a diverse range of foods. Yeah. I mean, especially that a lot of Asian American parents that are like in the thirties and forties, they're probably not as traditional of cooks themselves. So whatever they cook at home is only going to be partially authentically Asian. You said it's already going to be Asian fusion. It's already kind of, kind of be Western. Yeah. I think the most important thing though is not to only focus on is my kid being exposed to this or exposed to that. It's a, I think it's letting your kids know to not use food, Andrew, as a cheap dopamine drug. Basically, you know what I'm saying? Like, like beyond even the cultural thing, it's more important for your kid to have a healthy relationship with food in general. Oh, okay. Also, I think you need to look at counter balancing weak points. Like, you know, this person is talking about like, Oh yeah, should I discard it all or should I keep it all? Obviously you should mix and match. But I think that for the parts that you didn't take, what are you replacing it with? Right. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like there's, I didn't see any talk in the post of like, yo, I'm going to read all the stories of all these great Americans. And those are going to be the aspects that I'm going to replace the gaps in my childhood teaching with. Like you got to fill the gaps that you want to fill with some quality material. I think it's totally cool to discard or not carry on certain aspects of a culture, but you understand that that, that whole is going to have to get filled with something. So you should know what the other culture is that you're filling it up with. Yeah. I think that one thing that a lot of people could look at, Andrew, is maybe like a lot of upward mobile black American sort of like Denzel Washington, Jay-Z, Michael Jordan, D Wade, LeBron with like Maverick Carter and Rich Paul, Andrew. You know what I mean? Like I could see that being a nice counterweight, because your kid is still going to get the American success story, but with a little bit more of a minority bent to it, right? Because they're not going to, they're going to be, you're going to be raising a minority child. Right, right, right. But yeah, I mean, obviously you could look at Franklin D, Roosevelt, Tom Brady, Walt Disney, Ray Dalio, et cetera, et cetera. There's so many other ones to learn from. And like we're saying, it's really important to not only know Asian stories, but also Western stories of diverse types, particularly success stories that you want to incorporate in your kids' teachings. Right, right. Um, last but not least, Andrew, there's actually a lot of racial identity development models developed by researchers over time. And I pulled a bunch of the infographics here. So a lot of people are saying that it actually starts, Andrew, a lot of minorities, they either go into conformity or dissonance, and then they can go into resistance and immersion, and then they become either integrative or introspective. And this is actually like a very classical flowchart for second generation immigrant kids. So it's almost like conformity. A lot of it, that's like the self-hatingness of being Asian where you're like, I don't want to be around Asians. I don't want to be around. And then all the way to introspection and integrative awareness. That's when you're like, yo, I understand it all. I appreciate it. I like being Asian. I like my Asian culture. I know what Asian culture is. Right, right, right. And last but not least, Andrew, here's a quote, a quick thought from Bruce Lee. Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own. Of course, easier said than done. It's all about ultimately the execution, right? All right, let's get into the comments section here. This first person said, well, first of all, culture isn't all static. If you studied any history, you'd know culture is constantly changing and exchanging from influences with neighboring groups and religions. Yeah, they go on to say the Chinese culture of today is different from Chinese culture 50 years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago. There's a reason why we don't practice foot binding and castrating men to serve as Unix anymore. Cultures change and adapt to times and situations. Yeah, okay. Yeah, this is a smart comment, but it's not fully addressing, in my opinion, what the original poster was trying to get at because as much as people don't do foot binding and castrating, you could essentially proverbially or in a metaphoric sense, still be a Unix in 2023. Oh, yes, you could be. Yeah, and I think that that's like the biggest issue where I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, we're not going to be Unix in 2023. Like the physical, but we could be the metaphorical manifestation of proverbial Unix. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And in terms of it relating to it in a proverb type sense. This guy said, I don't really think we can think about things critically because we're already based biased on how we're raised. This person was saying like, how do we understand living in an individualistic country and words like individualism and collectivism? How do we really understand that? Because, Andrew, oftentimes in the East, it's characterized as collectivist and the West is characterized as individualistic, but how do we even see itself? How do we see these things manifest? Yeah, I mean, I guess, I mean, wouldn't you say that you see a manifest in America being individualistic where it's like, yo, it's all about my identity, how much money I want to make, my life, don't get in my way. I won't try to stop any other people. I won't get in your way, but don't get in my way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm going to reach the highest peak of as possible. Yeah, I think people have to understand there is a micro application and then a macro application. I would actually say that sometimes in a way America, Andrew, people can be really helpful towards each other and that's more collectivist on a micro level, but in a macro sense, it's very individualistic. Yeah, there's different applications in different. It's very hard to sum it all up and like to put a blanket statement on something. Right, right, right. This person was saying that we have to realize that whatever culture that we got raised in is not necessarily representative of Asian culture back in Asia. Yeah, that is true. It went to move on and develop without us. And also like if your culture from Asia could be a different part of Asia, what do you mean by Asia? So of course, I think the best thing is, is that you recognize whatever culture you grew up in and what culture aspects of culture that you like that you would plan to raise your kid in and just pick and choose and just and that's having a plan and a vision, right? Like let's say you didn't have a lot of music being played in the house growing up, right? Right, so it's going to be hard for you to feel super musical, right? Yeah. And let's say you're like, well, I don't know what type of music would I like to play in the house with my kids? Is am I going to play classical music? Do I want to play 90s, R&B and rap? Do I want to play Afro beats? Or am I going to be playing Latino music when if I had a kid right now or like whatever folk pop music, you know, like you can even ask yourself that question because ultimately, if you have a desire to play music in the house with your kids, what are you going to play? K-pop? Yeah, let me know. For example, I would say that we are very much a product of parents that came what in the 1970s, as part of Heart Seller Act, highly educated, right? Had came on academic scholarships, like the only way to understand that that was a very specific subset of the Chinese American experience, right? That wasn't every Chinese family's experience. Yes, exactly. Like you said, we got to identify even your like sub subset to really get a grasp on like how you were raised. This person said, after some soul searching, I fully accept the label Asian American, which is ultimately its own culture. It's basically picking and choosing what you want. And yeah, somebody was just saying forge your own identity and worldview. I like it. I like it. Yeah. I mean, that's ultimately what you should do. Somebody said all culture is relative to the interpreter. I mean, there's some truth to that, but I think usually when you're trying to just talk about something, you oftentimes have to use the most accurate broad brushstrokes. Like we can't get lost in like the micro tiny brush. Like when you're painting a painting, there's like the really big brushes and the little brushes and they all matter and the details and nuances and the niches and the exceptions, they matter. But if we're just trying to break down something in a very broad generalized sense, there there is like a way to paint a canvas very quick. Right. Right. No, there is. There absolutely is a stereotypical way to do it. I don't like that. Oh, this person says, you know what? I personally am choosing to discard my parents toxic Chinese culture. I no longer want to celebrate the holidays because I associate the holidays with some of the toxic outdated thinking that I was raised with. Oh man. I mean, listen, guys, everybody, Johnny, you don't want to celebrate Chinese New Year with us. You don't want to come back for Mid Autumn Festival. How come you don't want to come back home? It's like, mom, dad, I don't like home. Man, especially if you had to eat some of the more whack mooncakes and you just remember just eating so much of the whack. Some of the mooncake flavors, the ones with the meat in them. I don't like those. But you know what? I will give it to this comment right here and say this person is at least giving things a hard yes and a hard no. They have a plan. He's making a decision. Now, that is very important. Now, I'm not going to tell him if he had a bad childhood or he associates the Chinese holidays Lunar New Year with some something whack about being Chinese. That's his choice. Right. But as long as his life. Yeah. But he knows he's not going to do it. He's like, I'm going to stay far away from that. I'm not even going to give my kids he read packets home bow. I don't care about that. You know, and I respect that. I respect that he's making a decision. Right, right, right. You know what? It's not wrong. I'm not going to tell everybody. Oh, no, you need to just come up with a better version of a home bow because your parents probably took your home bow and they put it in a bank account and they went and used it. You never saw the money. You never were able to use it to generate dopamine like all the other American kids. And then that's why you hated your upbringing. It might be easier for some people to just completely compartmentalize and then just cut that out of their life. Yeah. My overall takeaway after reading these comments, I think the one and I think like blending cultures is something that we've thought a lot about on this channel. So not that I know how to raise a kid in it, but I've definitely thought about it for myself and I feel like you do pick and choose, but you got to understand what your culture is because I think that it's very easy to just continue to carry on the culture that you experience from your parents. Just what you know, but your parents may not have been executing that culture on the highest level just like this guy's parents who clearly they did not have any fun growing up as far as the Chinese holidays, but maybe you grew up with a really good experiences with Chinese holidays and you're like, that's what I want to keep up. Just like different families celebrate Christmas on a different level. Let's say you already had horrible Christmases. Your parents were never there. You had a broken family. There's never a tree. Nothing was ever wrapped. They never had good gifts. And all it reminds you is how much better all the other kids had it than then you got to decide like, you know what, maybe that just wasn't the best way to celebrate Christmas though. So I'm going to do it the best way for my kids. That's what I want. Right, right, right. Or you could just say, I'm not going to celebrate Christmas at all. It's just depends. Everybody's going to make their own decisions. I think that a lot of methods could work or not work. I think a lot of times people focus too much on methodology when ultimately the execution is the devil's always in the details and stuff like that. But I do think certain game plans have more standardized outcome ranges than other game plans. You know what I mean? Like that's that that's a fact too, even though anything's possible. I think ultimately everybody, like we said, is going to make their own decisions. I think that some people find it extremely hard to break down culture and then rearrange it like a fusion puzzle, like Legos. You know, it's almost like taking two different Lego sets, an Eastern Lego set and a Western Lego set. And everybody's got a different sub subset of each Lego set, right? Like you could get the cowboy package. You could have got the log cabin package from the Western set. You could have got a variety of different Eastern cultures that a variety of different income levels or education levels. And it's like you're trying to fuse them together. But ultimately, if you can do it, it is something pretty amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I do think there is it is possible to have best of both worlds, but it definitely takes some takes some planning. Right. And I can see why people either opt to just like, you know, and I wouldn't want to do this, but like just become a spitting image of their parents or they just go with the, you know, obviously adopt like whatever mainstream American norms there are. Right. Right. I think that those are pretty common outcomes, but the best would be to mix and match the two like Alexis hybrid guys. Let us know what you think in the comments down below. How do you plan on doing? How do you pick and choose which aspects of Asian and American or whatever other culture that you are in? How do you decide on it? And what are you going to decide on? Let us know what you think about this concept. Can you have the best of both worlds as an Asian in America? Is it possible? Yeah. Let me know. Hit that like button. Check out smallassauce.com. And until next time, we out. Peace.