We ate rice for every meal growing up, save the occasional spaghetti night. My grandfather sawed a few sets of chopsticks in half for my generation and I learned to use them before the years when you begin to remember learning stuff. Sometimes I was allowed to put a small pad of butter on my rice, but this was largely frowned upon- you should like the taste as it is.
We were, we are, a Chinese American family. But with each generation, our Chinese heritage becomes less expressed in our faces. My Grandfather was Cantonese. He married a German-Irish woman and bore 6 children. Those that married, with one exception, married Caucasians, and also with the one exception, my generation followed suit.
The first and second generations were trying to fit in and make a buck; the third and fourth generations are ever explaining that we really are Chinese, and why you really ought never put butter on rice.
Rice is a staple in the Asian diet, we know. It is also a powerful metaphor for so many things in life.
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