The Triple Package

by Amy Chua

  “intensely proud” . . . “descendants of the ancient Phoenicians”: Joseph J. Jacobs, The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family, Culture, and Ethics (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1991), pp. 13–16, 21.

  singled out the Phoenicians . . . alphabet, arithmetic, and glass: See Benjamin Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 324–8; J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co., 1979), pp. 63, 67; Elsa Marston, The Phoenicians (New York: Benchmark Books, 2002), p. 60; Sabatino Moscati, ed., The Phoenicians (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), pp. 551–52, 558. In the elder Pliny’s Natural History, a mammoth encyclopedia written in the 70s AD, he literally says, “The Phoenicians invented trade.” See Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, pp. 324–8.

  “greedy knaves” . . . “greed and luxury”: Isaac, The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, pp. 324–8.

  “the original Christian disciples”: Jacobs, The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur, p. 13–14.

  “look up at the Christians”: Kristine J. Ajrouch and Abdi M. Kusow, “Racial and Religious Contexts: Situational Identities Among Lebanese and Somali Muslim Immigrants,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 1 (2007), pp. 72, 83.

  “Having no one to speak for us”: Jacobs, The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur, pp. 16–7.

  “need to please my mother”: Ibid., pp. 29-35.

  “I meant your own store!”: Ibid., pp. 28–9.

  “doubly driven to succeed”: Ibid., p. 17.

  self-esteem-centered . . . popular psychology: See, e.g., Lori Gottlieb, “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy,” Atlantic Monthly, July/Aug. 2011 (questioning “self-esteem” that “comes from constant accommodation and praise rather than earned accomplishment”). We discuss the self-esteem movement in more detail in chapter 8.

  CHAPTER 5: IMPULSE CONTROL

  “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots”: Eric Zorn, “Without Failure, Jordan Would Be False Idol,” Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1997.

  large and growing body of research: See, e.g., Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (New York: Penguin Press, 2011); Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Random House, 2006); Angela L. Duckworth, Christopher Peterson, Michael D. Matthews, and Dennis Kelly, “Grit: Perseverance and Passion for Long-Term Goals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92, no. 6 (2007), pp. 1087–1101. See also Kelly McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It (New York: Avery, 2012).

  “marshmallow test”: Walter Mischel, Ebbe B. Ebbeson, and Antonette Raskoff Zeiss, “Cognitive and Attentional Mechanisms in Delay of Gratification,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 21, no. 2 (1972), pp. 204-18; Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower, pp. 9–11; Jonah Lehrer, “The Secret of Self-Control,” The New Yorker, May 18, 2009.

  Mischel followed up . . . doing much better academically: Walter Mischel, Yuichi Shoda, and Monica L. Rodriguez, “Delay of Gratification in Children,” Science 244, no. 4907 (1989), pp. 933–8; Yuichi Shoda, Walter Mischel, and Philip K. Peake, “Predicting Adolescent Cognitive and Self-Regulatory Competencies from Preschool Delay of Gratification: Identifying Diagnostic Conditions,” Developmental Psychology 26, no. 6 (1990), pp. 978–86; Inge-Marie Eigsti, Vivian Zayas, Walter Mischel et al., “Predicting Cognitive Control from Preschool to Late Adolescence and Young Adulthood,” Psychological Science 17, no. 6 (2006), pp. 478–84.

  numerous studies: Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower, pp. 10–3; McGonigal, The Willpower Instinct, p. 12.

  better predictor than SAT scores: Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower, p. 11; Duckworth et al., “Grit,” pp. 1098, 1099; Angela L. Duckworth and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting Academic Performance of Adolescents,” Psychological Science 16, no. 12 (2005), pp. 939–44; Angela L. Duckworth, Patrick D. Quinn, and Eli Tsukayama, “What No Child Left Behind Leaves Behind: The Roles of IQ and Self-Control in Predicting Standardized Achievement Test Scores and Report Card Grades,” Journal of Educational Psychology 104, no. 2 (2012), pp. 439–45.

  researchers in New Zealand tracked: Terrie E. Moffitt et al., “A Gradient of Childhood Self-Control Predicts Health, Wealth, and Public Safety,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 108, no. 7 (2011), pp. 2693–8. For a summary, see Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower, pp. 12–3.

  Willpower and perseverance can be strengthened: See, e.g., Baumeister and Tierney, Willpower, pp. 11, 124–41; Dweck, Mindset, pp. 71–4; Mark Muraven, Roy F. Baumeister, and Dianne M. Tice, “Longitudinal Improvement of Self-Regulation Through Practice: Building Self-Control Through Repeated Exercise,” Journal of Social Psychology 139, no. 4 (1999), pp. 446–57; see also Heidi Grant Halvorson, Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (New York: Plume, 2012), pp. xvii–xxi; M. Oaten and K. Cheng, “Improved Self-Control: The Benefits of a Regular Program of Academic Study,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 28, no. 1 (2006), pp. 1–16; Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng, “Longitudinal Gains in Self-Regulation from Regular Physical Exercise,” British Journal of Health Psychology 11, no. 4 (2006), pp. 717–33; Lori Gottlieb, “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy,” The Atlantic, July/August 2011.

  Blaine’s feats: John Tierney, “If He Starts Nodding Off, Try Another Million Volts,” New York Times, Oct. 1, 2012; “David Blaine Nears Final Hours of ‘Shocking’ Stunt,” USA Today, Oct. 8, 2012.

  “[F]or once”: Chris Britcher, “David Blaine’s Latest Trick: Making Mountains Out of Molehills,” Kentnews.co.uk, Oct. 8, 2012, http://www.kentnews.co.uk/blogs/david_blaine_s_latest_trick_making_mountains_out_of_molehills_1_1592494.

  “hunger artist”: Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist and Other Stories, trans. Joyce Crick (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  two-thirds of today’s Chinese Americans: U.S. Census, American Community Survey, Table S0201: Selected Population Profile in the United States (2010 3-year dataset) (population group code 016 – Chinese) (showing that 69 percent of Chinese Americans are foreign-born).

  China’s massive superiority complex: See, e.g., John K. Fairbank, “China’s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” Foreign Affairs 47, no. 3 (1969), pp. 449, 456–63; Q. Edward Wang, “History, Space, Ethnicity: The Chinese Worldview,” Journal of World History 10, no. 2 (1999), pp. 285, 287–8, 291. See also Yingjie Guo, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), pp. 83–4 (tracing emergence of “Chinese superiority complex” at least as far back as Confucius); Larry Clinton Thompson, William Scott Ament and the Boxer Rebellion: Heroism, Hubris and the “Ideal Missionary” (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2008), p. 67 (referring to the “overweening Chinese superiority complex”); Unryu Suganuma, Sovereign Rights and Territorial Space in Sino-Japanese Relations: Irredentism and the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000), p. 15 (“Chinese superiority complex”).

  combined to make China an extreme case: see Amy Chua, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall (New York: Doubleday, 2007), p. 62.

  “Since ancient China began as a culture island”: Fairbank, “China’s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” p. 456; Wang, “History, Space, and Ethnicity,” pp. 287–8.

  “barbarians”: Wang, “History, Space, and Ethnicity,” pp. 287–8.

  “tribute” to China: J. K. Fairbank and S. Y. Têng, “On the Ch’ing Tributary System,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 6, no. 2 (1941), pp. 135, 148–57, 182–90; see also Chua, Day of Empire, pp. 79–81.

  Mongols . . . ultimately “sinicized”: Fairbank, “China’s Foreign Policy in Historical Perspective,” pp. 456–8; see also Paul Heng-chao Ch’en, Chinese Legal Tradition Under the Mongols: The Code of 1291 as Reconstructed (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979); Ping-
Ti Ho, “In Defense of Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawksi’s ‘Reenvisioning the Qing,’” Journal of Asian Studies 57, no. 1 (1998), pp. 123, 141.

  China rose to heights unprecedented: Chua, Day of Empire, pp. 178–81; Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), pp. 4–9; Gavin Menzies, 1421: The Year China Discovered America (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), pp. 45, 52, 63, 70; Leo Suryadinata, ed., Admiral Zheng He and Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005), p. 150 (contemporary Ibn Battuta reported seeing “1000 men on board” vessels).

  “plates” of stale bread: Chua, Day of Empire, p. 178; Menzies, 1421, p. 63.

  “barbarians that send tribute”: Fairbank and Têng, “On the Ch’ing Tributary System,” pp. 182–5; see also Chua, Day of Empire, p. 80.

  “used to take every opportunity”: Philip Jia Guo, On the Move: An Immigrant Child’s Global Journey (New York: Whittier Publications, 2007), p. 93. In passing down a sense of Chinese identity and pride from one generation to the next, parents are not the only agents. Chinese language schools, which children attend after regular school or on weekends, also play a critical role. Sociologist Min Zhou has been a pioneer on the subject of such ethnic institutions as “mediating grounds” and “cultural centers” where “traditional values and ethnic identity are nurtured.” Originally located mostly in West Coast Chinatowns, these Chinese schools have exploded in number over the last several decades. As of 2006, there were 95 such schools in the Los Angeles area alone. In addition to Mandarin language instruction, these schools teach young children Chinese history, geography, painting, and calligraphy, as well as badminton, Chinese chess, kung fu, cooking, and dragon dance. Children memorize Chinese sayings, recite Chinese poems, and quote Confucian sayings. They are taught to write phrases like “I am Chinese” and “My ancestral country is in China.” Many kids will eventually drop out of Chinese school, protesting that it’s boring and that their parents forced them to attend. Nevertheless, as Zhou writes, most children of Chinese immigrants have attended a Chinese language school “at some point in their preteen years,” and it is often “a definitive ethnic affirming experience.” It’s important to note that Chinese school is different from—and usually piled on top of—academic tutoring or music lessons. A primary function of Chinese school is to “nurture ethnic identity and pride that may otherwise be rejected by the children because of the pressure to assimilate.” See Min Zhou, “Negotiating Culture and Ethnicity: Intergenerational Relations in Chinese Immigrant Families in the United States,” in Ramaswami Mahalingam, ed., Cultural Psychology of Immigrants (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 2006), pp. 328–32; Min Zhou, “The Ethnic System of Supplementary Education: Nonprofit and For-Profit Institutions in Los Angeles’ Chinese Immigrant Community,” in Marybeth Shinn and Hirokazu Yoshikawa, eds. Toward Positive Youth Development: Transforming School and Community Programs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 229–51, especially pp. 234–8, 242; the Los Angeles statistic is from p. 237.

  “[I]n our house, everything important in life came from China”: Andrea Jung, “International Conference Keynote,” Business Today (Spring 2009), p. 20.

  date to the fifteenth century: Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 3–7.

  shame and humiliation: See Orville Schell and John DeLury, Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-First Century (New York: Random House, 2013), pp. 6–7; Suisheng Zhao, “‘We are Patriots First and Democrats Second’: The Rise of Chinese Nationalism in the 1990s,” in Edward Friedman and Barrett L. McCormick, eds., What If China Doesn’t Democratize? Implications for War and Peace (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2000), pp. 25, 42.

  NO DOGS AND CHINESE ALLOWED: See Stella Dong, Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), p. 198. Dong adds, however, that “those with sharp memories say no such sign existed: instead, two notices were posted on the gate, one reading “No Dogs Allowed,” and the other, “Only For Foreigners”).

  massacring . . . and raping: Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997), p. 6.

  “Never will China be humiliated”: Jean-Pierre Lehmann, “Learning from China’s Past,” Forbes.com (Oct. 1, 2009), http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/01/china-history-60-anniversary-opinions-contributors-jean-pierre-lehmann.html. See also Zhao, “‘We Are Patriots First and Democrats Second,’” p. 42.

  “twin burdens”: Vivian S. Louie, Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education, and Opportunity Among Chinese Americans (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), p. 60.

  “you won’t have to work like me in the restaurant”: Ibid., p. 54.

  “we don’t speak English that clearly”: Ibid., pp. 58–9.

  only 24 percent of Chinese Americans: Pew Research Center, The Rise of Asian Americans (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, April 4, 2013) (updated edition), pp. 110, 114.

  “work too hard”: See Chiung Hwang Chen, “‘Outwhiting the Whites’: An Examination of the Persistence of Asian American Model Minority Discourse,” in Rebecca Ann Lind, ed., Race/Gender/Media: Considering Diversity Across Audiences, Content, and Producers (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2004), pp. 146, 149; see also Suein Hwang, “The New White Flight,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 19, 2005, p. A1.

  anti-Chinese animus: See Matthew Yglesias, “White People Think College Admissions Should Be Based on Test Scores, Except When They Learn Asians Score Better Than Whites,” Slate.com, Aug. 13, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/08/13/white_people_s_meritocracy_hypocrisy.html; Chen, “‘Outwhiting the Whites,’” pp. 146–9; Lee Siegel, “Rise of the Tiger Nation,” Wall Street Journal, Oct. 27, 2012, p. C1; Ian Lovett, “U.C.L.A. Student’s Video Rant Against Asians Fuels Firestorm,” New York Times, Mar. 16, 2011, p. A21; Hwang, “The New White Flight,” p. A1.

  “so driven to prove her wrong”: E-mail to Amy Chua, Nov. 14, 2012 (on file with authors).

  “I’m going to have to prove myself more”: Ben Golliver, “Jeremy Lin: Bias Provides ‘Chip on the Shoulder,’” CBS Sports, Feb. 24, 2012, http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entry/22748484/34980303.

  “you have to be smarter than other people”: Louie, Compelled to Excel, p. 61.

  “It’s better that you’re taught the truth”: Anchee Min, The Cooked Seed (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 343.

  “You have to work harder”: Louie, Compelled to Excel, p. 61.

  Confucian “learning virtue”: Jin Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 49–50, 63–5, 91–2, 139–42; Nicholas D. Kristof, “China Rises, and Checkmates,” New York Times, Jan. 9, 2011.

  A cultural chasm separates “learning should be fun”: See, e.g., Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning, pp. 111–2, 258–60, 267–8; Ruth K. Chao, “Chinese and European Mothers’ Beliefs About the Role of Parenting in Children’s School Success,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 27, no. 4 (July 1996), pp. 403–23. Cf. Gish Jen, Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 48 (“I am struck every year by how consistently President Drew Faust’s addresses to Harvard freshmen emphasize free exploration and playfulness—an emphasis appropriate to a stable, egalitarian, individualistic society. . . . The traditional Chinese template . . . was geared toward attaining safety and social standing in a dangerous, interdependent, hierarchical world”).

  you’ll find students sitting upright: See Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning, pp. 124–5, 129, 145–6; Carmina Brittain, “Sharing the Experience: Transnational Information About American Schools Among Chinese Immigrant Students,” in Clara C. Park, A. Lin Goodwin, and Stacey J. Lee, eds., Asian American Identities, Families, and Schooling (Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2003), pp. 177, 189–90; Hywel Williams, “When It Comes to Educatio
n Can Britain Be the Singapore of the West?,” Mail Online, Jan. 23, 2012, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2089507/When-comes-education-Britain-Singapore-West.html.

  Calligraphy: Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning, p. 131.

  hours of additional study and tutoring: Ibid., pp. 167–70; Amy Chua, “Tigress Tycoons,” Newsweek, Mar. 12, 2012, pp. 30, 34–5; Chuing Prudence Chou and James K. S. Yuan, “Buxiban in Taiwan,” The Newsletter, no. 56 (Spring 2011), p. 15, http://www.iias.nl/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL56_15_0.pdf.

  “You need to make more effort, not be so lazy”: Li, Cultural Foundations of Learning, pp. 258–60.

  “little emperors”: “Thirty years into China’s one-child policy, many are concerned about the prospect of letting a hundred spoiled brats bloom. . . . But China’s ‘little emperors’ are coddled in a distinctly Chinese way. While doted on and catered to, they are also loaded up with the expectations of parents who have invested all their dreams—not to mention money—in their only child. These ‘spoiled’ children often study and drill from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.” Chua, “Tigress Tycoons,” Newsweek, pp. 30, 34–5.

  Chinese immigrants parent far more strictly: See, e.g., Louie, Compelled to Excel, pp. 42–5; Chao, “Chinese and European Mothers’ Beliefs,” pp. 403–23; Paul E. Jose, Carol S. Huntsinger, Phillip R. Huntsinger, and Fong-Ruey Liaw, “Parental Values and Practices Relevant to Young Children’s Social Development in Taiwan and the United States,” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 31, no. 6 (November 2000), pp. 677–702; Richard R. Pearce, “Effects of Cultural and Social Structural Factors on the Achievement of White and Chinese American Students at School Transition Points,” American Education Research Journal 43, no. 1 (Spring 2006), pp. 75–101; Robert D. Hess, Chang Chih-Mei, and Teresa M. McDevitt, “Cultural Variations in Family Beliefs About Children’s Performance in Mathematics: Comparisons Among People’s Republic of China, Chinese American, and Caucasian American Families,” Journal of Educational Psychology 79, no. 2 (1987), pp. 179–88; Wenfan Yan and Qiuyun Lin, “Parent Involvement and Mathematics Achievement: Contrast Across Racial and Ethnic Groups,” Journal of Educational Research 99, no. 2 (2005), pp. 118, 120; Parminder Parmar et al., “Teacher or Playmate: Asian Immigrant and Euro-American Parents’ Participation in Their Young Children’s Daily Activities,” Social Behavior and Personality 36, no. 2 (2008), pp. 163–76.