Instead of growing up around friends, Jennifer spent much of her alone time with a huge collection of stuffed animals in her room, babying them as if they were her children, sleeping with them, and naming them. Her favourite “stuffies” were monkeys, three in particular, including Mr. Chipmunk, Mr. Bubbles, and Munkey. These characters played a role in her life well into her twenties. Her childlike tendencies could not only be seen in her stuffed animals, but in her diary, which spanned from childhood right up to her mid-twenties. In her entries, according to those who read them, she laid out her grandest dreams and aspirations, supplemented with bubbly drawings in the margins, which one investigator describes as “all puppy dogs, rainbows and butterflies.” He also uses those words to describe her childish style of writing.
In many ways, however, Jennifer might have grown up not realizing how much she missed the social interaction real friends could provide; after all, she had her cousins, who were always around. While she always sensed something was missing, she was also very busy, and simply didn’t have time for much else. She also had her beloved little brother, who she could befriend, bond with, and baby. When Jennifer was three, the family’s second child, Felix, was born. The happy-go-lucky boy’s arrival was a boon for the family, providing Jennifer with a social and emotional attachment that turned the home into a happier place. Jennifer, meanwhile, became to Felix almost like a second mother. The pair’s bond grew unshakable. He looked up to his sister for guidance while providing her with the eternal playmate she longed for, as well as a sympathetic ear and a window into the childhood she felt she missed out on.
Very early on, the pair’s roles were cemented: Jennifer, the overachieving big sister, and Felix, the family baby, who felt comfortable in his role. “My parents did push my sister a lot … for me it was always okay to be worse,” he admits, saying he never wished to be like his sister, never wanted to be under that sort of pressure. “My sister was always too perfect almost. Like when we used to do piano, my dad got mad at my sister for coming in second.”
Along with strict gender roles, the first-born is often forced to carry the burden as the example for the rest of the children. This is, of course, true in many homes, but is particularly pronounced in Asian ones. If the first-born happens to be female, that burden grows ever stronger. Dr. Helen Hsu, who was raised in a similar environment and has worked in the field of psychology for more than a decade, says first-born children often feel the brunt of their parents’ wishes. “It’s a powerful feeling, one of ‘You owe us. We sacrificed everything and we have a huge burden,’” she says, explaining the filial piety phenomenon. “Duty and loyalty are seen as paramount. Girls are supposed to take care of the family and act as a second mother. [Parents] truly believe that forcing them to go to Stanford will truly make them happy. [Parents] were raised to believe that all you have to do is push and [your children] will have a good life.”
Like his sister, Felix was a precocious child, but he was softer and not nearly as tenacious as his big sister. Therefore, he was far less responsive to Hann’s controlling tendencies. He excelled in mechanics as a boy, always tinkering, taking things apart, and trying to figure out how they worked before attempting to reassemble them. And, like Jennifer, he shared an emotional bond with his mother. “My mom would just watch over me. If I had a question, I would ask my mom,” says Felix. “I was a lot closer with my mom than my dad.” In many ways, the Pan household seemed to resemble an old Chinese adage: “strict father, kind mother.”
In the essay “Parenting of Asians,” Ruth Chao and Vivian Tseng write that, in Asian families, often “fathers exert high degrees of authoritarian control and mothers manifest high degrees of warmth. The traditional role of fathers as authority figures also implies that fathers do not typically display much closeness and affection toward children.” However, this is not to say that mothers aren’t difficult. Bich had high expectations of her children, and she would grow enraged, yell, scream, or cry when they were not met. Chao and Tseng write: “In studies of Chinese from the P.R.C. [China], Taiwan, and Hong Kong, mothers in all three countries were more warm and less restrictive than fathers, but they were also more demanding.”
Felix says his mother was always “comforting,” while his father was “controlling” but always trying to lead them in the “right direction.” However, listening to Jennifer and Felix describe their upbringing, it is clear they had different experiences inside the Pan home. If Hann viewed his daughter as self-assured, with prodigious abilities, he appeared to see Felix as sensitive and, a late bloomer, someone who would achieve heights of success in school and otherwise with a little more time and guidance. Just by being himself and, on account of being the second child and a male, Felix got away with things that Jennifer never dreamed of doing in her youth, including coming home with poor grades. And while Felix always excelled in math, partly because of Hann’s assistance, he earned poor grades in many other subjects. His overall marks would eventually grow so bad that in grade four he was moved to a private school after Hann grew unsatisfied with some of the teachers at St. Barnabas.
Similarly, in piano, Jennifer’s teacher, Ewa Krajewska, who also taught Felix and her cousin, Michelle, says, although Michelle was much better than Felix, who left the conservatory only years after he first began, neither could hold a candle to Jennifer. “He was lazy and she was not,” Ewa says matter-of-factly. “Parents didn’t push him because he was second. [Jennifer] tried to help him, but he didn’t listen. Michelle was good, but not as talented as Jennifer. Jennifer wanted to be first at everything. She was a perfectionist. When I was telling her there was a mistake or we had to change something, she’d listen. When I saw her next, she fixed it.”
Whereas Jennifer took criticism to heart and worked even harder, the extra pressure never helped Felix. In academics, he seemed to retreat from conflict and often performed worse when pushed — much like in piano. However, it would be misleading to say that Hann was any gentler when it came to Felix. He was unafraid to show his anger with either child. Felix says his father was uncompromising and refused to demonstrate any sympathy toward his son after an accident, even when it caused intense physical pain. One time, Felix says, his father grew enraged after Felix fell off his bicycle during a family bike ride. “I fell off my bike and broke my arm. My dad comes by and yells at me. He walks his bike and my bike home and I walk home alone [crying].” In another instance, he explains Hann’s reaction after Felix chopped off part of his finger using a kitchen knife. “I cut my finger, [and] he yells at me — ‘How did this happen? Why did you do this?’” Felix says he eventually grew to understand the behaviour was “tough love,” pointing out that his father yelled all the time and often sounded angry, but “that’s just the way he speaks.”
Felix makes a point of describing an instance when, expecting a tirade at his mistake, he was instead treated gently by his father. “That’s kind of how my father is … like tough love in a sense, he always got mad at me if I did something wrong, if I was lazy or he thought I was lazy. I remember when we first moved in to [238 Helen Avenue]. I accidentally spilled a bucket of sand, and he was so angry at me just because he thought I was really lazy at the time. But then, a couple of weeks later, I had my scooter in a box and it dropped and broke a tile in the kitchen, and I thought he was going to be really mad at me. But he kind of was like ‘I’m not going to get mad at you for this just because it was an accident and you were trying to help clean up the house.’ That’s all he wants from me. He wants me to be hard-working, I guess.”
Julie Park, in her article “On Tiger Moms,” insists that, depending on how the tough-love message is implemented and followed up on, it can be viewed as either proactive parenting or simple abuse that can backfire over time. “[Tough love] often leads to gridlocked conflict, unwillingness to empathize, festering resentment and long-lasting family strife,” she writes. In some overtly strict Asian homes, the words “I love you” are never
uttered. Hugs are just as rare. Instead, parental love is often shown through action.
Another American journalist, Candice Chung, in an article entitled “Why Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You,” writes about her experience growing up in an emotionally rigid household. “Like many Asian families, we’d become incredibly proficient at reading cryptic emotional signs,” she writes. “There may not be big hugs and open praise, but once in a while, mum would put an unexpected fried egg in our noodles or dad would try and make conversation by asking us to pronounce, then spell every street name he’s ever had trouble remembering. Those, as we’d try to explain to our friends, are their ‘affectionate sides.’” She continues by saying that some Chinese parents display love through irony, screaming at you for spending too much money on them and fighting to the death in a restaurant for the right to pay the cheque. “Chinese families know how to love fiercely,” writes a blogger quoted in the article. “They do it through immense generosity, unwavering loyalty, and a lot of food.” The rationale is that Asian-American parents’ affection is conveyed through instrumental support, devotion, close monitoring, and aid for education, rather than through physical, verbal, and emotional expressions such as hugging, kissing, and praising, which are typical indicators of Western parental warmth.
Dr. Helen Hsu says there are positives and negatives to both parenting styles, noting that while some of her Western friends received plenty of love, care, and affection growing up, they were also kicked out of their homes at the age of eighteen. “Asians are kept by their families in strength-based relationships in which they are kept in the family unit, almost no matter what they protect and shield you from harm,” she says. “The other side is that no matter what you do, they always want to weigh in.”
Hann, for example, might have shown his love for his family by never blinking when his alarm clock went off at 5:00 a.m. This unwavering loyalty saw him forgo all but a few years of his existence to provide a solid foundation for his family. Hann’s devotion appeared so great that he would have sold the shirt off his back if it meant Jennifer could continue her piano lessons, the basis for her later successes. This seemed so valuable to him that, without it, his own well-being was meaningless. Often exhausted after a day’s work, he jumped at the opportunity to work overtime to pay for her skates or expensive lessons. He spent almost nothing on himself or his wife, wearing the same tired clothing for years on end until the family was secure. Suppressing his own ego for the sake of his family was not only the way he was raised, but also how everyone around him had grown up. He didn’t just spend his hard-earned money on Jennifer’s extracurricular activities, but also used his free time to drive her across the region on his weekends, showing devotion to his baby girl in the best way he knew. Although Bich begged Hann to visit Vietnam on holiday, he utterly refused, insisting that he wanted his children’s future guaranteed first.
Despite Hann’s cold exterior, he was immensely proud of his daughter and her achievements. The first destination for any visitor to his home was the cabinet containing Jennifer’s plaques, scholarships, awards, medals, and ribbons. One of the most prominent photo arrays showed Jennifer wearing a sequined figure-skating outfit performing a variety of graceful movements. But Jennifer’s achievement exacted a high price. She felt pressure to succeed in not only one but in all her pursuits from an early age. Hann originally wanted her to be a doctor, but that would eventually shift because, as Jennifer put it, her father knew she “didn’t have the stomach for it.” She was expected to come in the top three at piano recitals and figure-skating competitions, preferably, as she often did, first. She was encouraged to shoot for the Vancouver Olympics in figure skating and the Beijing Olympics in martial arts. Goals she said were originally her father’s soon became hers.
The valedictorian award at her school was another objective. Like Amy Chua’s children, she was to learn math two years before the rest of her grade. She succeeded in this, as well, resulting in her scoring in the highest percentile for her age at a prestigious math contest in Waterloo, Canada’s own version of Silicon Valley. If there were signs of belligerence, fatigue, or indifference, Jennifer would be measured versus her contemporaries.
In many strict homes, inadequacy is fostered inside children as a means of motivating them to prove otherwise. Often that’s the surest way of ensuring children understand just how important success is. It is the competition with others that drives them to push ever harder. In Jennifer’s case, she said this included comparisons to classmates, fellow piano players, skaters, swimmers, and perhaps most searing of all, her “kid sister” and cousin, Michelle Luong who, like Jennifer, was a perpetual overachiever in school. “My dad and my mom — well, mostly my dad — [would say] ‘well, you know did you hear, Michelle, oh, she’s looking like she’s on her way to many awards this year,’ hinting that I didn’t get any awards the year before,” she said. “[My parents would say] ‘I wish you could have been that person.’ It’s what I have heard all my life. So … it’s nothing.” Chua explains it was normal for her to say to her children: “You’re lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you.”
One online commenter, posting below a Chua article promoting the book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, resents this sort of parenting: “Growing up I hated it and thought it was very unfair (especially as I saw my younger siblings having more liberties than I did — like going out to play with friends on a weeknight and/or before finishing their homework). There was definitely no warm fuzzies from Mom. Never a ‘great job’ or ‘I love you,’ or even a hug, really. I always got the sense that no matter what I did, it was not good enough and was always compared to X person that was better, so I was constantly pushing myself. I dreaded the days that I got B’s on my report card. I was ashamed to tell my mom and she never really actually scolded me but I felt so bad personally that I would lock myself in my room or the bathroom to cry over my “failure”…. My mom would also compare me to cousins to allude that they were better … my grades were never good enough.”
Another commenter says her mother used to make her rank her classmates from “smartest to dumbest,” asking her not to associate with anyone who ranked below her. One of the main criticisms of tiger parenting is that, while children raised this way may grow into responsible, hard-working, and successful adults, they often fail to become leaders, instead, becoming “hoop-jumpers,” according to Hsu.
Jennifer said many of her issues first arose at the time of her grade eight graduation when she discovered she wouldn’t claim the valedictorian or any other prize at her school. She felt spurned, as if all her hard work had amounted to nothing. Julie Park says this can often be the case when “children … stake their sense of personal esteem on public affirmations of success” such as awards and prizes. Jennifer appears to have felt a deep sense of failure as a result of missing out on an award. “I was one of the top of my class in elementary school,” she said. “I tried very hard to get the high marks, but during … grade eight graduation, I didn’t get any solid prizes for all my hard work. Because I had taken piano and skating from a young age, when I did well in those occasions I got medals, I got ribbons, I got badges, trophies…. All that [hard work] accumulated to nothing or no credibility at the end of grade eight. [They] just brushed me aside. I didn’t even get one single good behaviour [award], so I just thought that in high school, what was the point in trying? It was important to me because I had felt growing up the recognition had come from my figure skating and my piano, and that was solid 100 percent recognition … you can be boastful about … [that] you can boast about … to friends and family, ‘Hey, I got first place: here’s my gold medal or second place or third place,’ so it was almost proof that I had done well. When I didn’t get any awards … I was shocked … I felt I was almost invisible in that school for the ten years I attended and tried very hard. I even went back years later. [The] new principal said ‘Oh, you’re Jennifer Pan’ and … they had heard a
bout me, so I just felt like even more of a disgrace because I was like, I had done so much work people are talking about me, but I didn’t get any recognition for my hard work.”
Although Frank Wilcott doesn’t remember exactly how the winner of the valedictorian award was chosen that year, he figures it was handed out to the most well-rounded student, someone who was a stellar citizen, working in the community, popular with teachers and students, and says those who excelled in team sports at school always did well. “Maybe teachers misguided her, leading her to believe she would win,” Wilcott adds. “I hope not.” Regardless, Jennifer described this moment as the crushing blow from which her scholarly ambition never recovered.
22
A Child’s First Deception
When Jennifer first walked through the doors of Scarborough’s Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School, she had little idea what to expect. She had no friends there and little experience making new ones. For the conservative and routine-orientated Jennifer, the change was unwelcome at first. She might have adored the buzz and vibrancy of the place, but she felt lonely and timid, the two vulnerabilities the fourteen-year-old dreaded showing the most. However, Jennifer, like her father, never made a habit of shrinking from challenges. And, while she might have been nervous, she battled her inner fears, determined to find her way. Although she spent years in a tight-knit circle of like-minded friends, she also regularly engaged with adults, especially coaches and teachers, and developed a confidence in conversation and a keen sense of how to speak to people, at least those who didn’t intimidate her. Those who knew her during those nascent years described her as a run-of-the-mill grade nine student, one who didn’t stand out in a crowd. She was humble, quiet, and soft-spoken.
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