2024 Scholarship Winner: Bianna Chen

What do you think is the greatest challenge in your community today and how would you address it?

Growing up as a Chinese-American kid and surrounded by other Chinese-American kids in Manhattan’s Chinatown, I have met diverse and talented people in my demographic. From creating art and singing to growing a garden, Chinese-American kids are expressive and have unique and introspective interests.

What disappoints me though, is that older generations of Chinese-Americans, our parents, grandparents, aunties, and uncles, discourage their kids from pursuing “unconventional” careers and working with their unique interests to make it something more. However, I know the root of this discouragement is well-intentioned.

Growing up, my mom and dad would tell me about their lives in China and in the US. My parents never had the chance to go to college and had started working during their teenage years, balancing school, work, and taking care of their families, as both of them were the oldest siblings in their families. Moving to New York, life became tough in a different way, they made a living through working long hours in textile factories and other factory-line work. Like all other parents, my parents expected me to pursue a “safe” career route out of fear that I would have to endure the same hardships as them if I didn’t have a secure high-paying job.

Like my parents, many Chinese-American parents are immigrants who came to America with little to no English skills and had to work tough, laborious jobs to make ends meet. From their perspective, all the Chinese-Americans who have succeeded or had successful children had STEM-related occupations or occupations that were prestigious. Occupations like doctors, pharmacists, engineers, lawyers, and accountants. Chinese-American parents would not wish for their kids to experience the same tough work conditions they had to go through, and with that perspective, they push their kids to pursue those same prestigious paths they see others pursuing.

Reflecting on that, I saw how many of my interests have been shot down- from giving up on being an artist for a living at a young age because my parents warned me about the starving artist trope, to focusing on math courses and trying to take interest in them because getting good grades in STEM classes in school was the standard path to getting a “safe” job. I know this is not a unique experience. This goes back to the same problem of Chinese-American kids being interested in a vast variety of things, but there is so much pressure to just follow the status quo. I have a friend who is extremely talented in playing the piano but her parents would not allow her to pursue that as her career, stating that they would not fund her college tuition if she majors in something related to music. I have another friend who wants to pursue game design but her parents are opposed to it, thinking that that career direction is unheard of uncharted territory of whether people can be successful or not to them. To avoid this, my friend is pursuing computer science instead because it’s considered “safer”.

In a way, I am glad that my community works to foster success and wealth, and that we work to live better lives. But at the same time, I wish my community could also be open to the idea that we could be successful and prosper without following the route that everyone is taking, the route that is considered “safe” and even the standard. And sometimes, Chinese-American kids themselves need to know that they can break out of that mold and pursue what they wish.

It’s like the analogy of the fleas in a jar. In an experiment, scientists put fleas, which can jump extremely high, into a jar merely 3 inches tall. After many generations of raising fleas in this environment, scientists observed that after opening the lid of the jar, the fleas cannot jump out, merely jumping less than 3 inches. But once in a while, after a long time, there will be a flea that jumps a little higher and figures out that it could jump out of the jar. The other fleas see this, get inspired, and follow suit. One by one, the fleas can strive outside of their previous constraints.

The same could be said about Chinese-American kids. Exposure to other successful Chinese-Americans in diverse and varied industries can spark the inspiration and courage of rising Chinese-American kids to do the same. Even exposing Chinese-American parents to these role models and examples can prove to the Chinese-American community that Chinese-Americans are successful in unconventional and non-traditional careers and that their kids can be too.

Furthermore, it would help even more for Chinese-American kids to have mentorship programs that teach them how to be successful in their unique passion so that they can learn steps of how to achieve what they want to achieve while also having a mentor, a role model, to advise them along the way. I myself have experienced mentorship programs such as Learn and Earn which exposed me to cooking workshops and other types of creative or humanities focused careers and I know how much that has opened my world and encouraged me to explore my options more and I wish that same experience upon other Chinese-American kids.