AAPI Heritage Month From a Taiwanese Immigrant POV ft. Crystal Hsia: What ABCs Actually Need to Know | Real You Mandarin Podcast EP09

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When Crystal and I sat down to talk about Asian-American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, I already knew the conversation would be different from the ones I've had before on this topic. I've talked about Asian-American identity a lot, both on this podcast and on my previous one, But Where Are You Really From?. But I'd always done it from my perspective as someone born and raised in the U.S. This time, I wanted to hear how someone who immigrated here as an adult experiences this month, and whether it means the same thing to her as it does to us.

The Impostor Syndrome Nobody Talks About

Crystal's answer to my first question caught me off guard. She said she sometimes experiences 冒牌者症候群 / mào pái zhě zhèng hòu qún / impostor syndrome around her identity as a Taiwanese-American. She moved to the U.S. for grad school about ten years ago, which makes her legally a Taiwanese-American. But she grew up entirely in Taiwan. So she sometimes feels like she's borrowing an identity that doesn't fully belong to her.

That's a perspective I'd never considered. For those of us who are American-Born Chinese (ABCs) or American-Born Taiwanese (ABTs), our identity confusion usually runs the other direction. We feel too American to be Taiwanese or Chinese, and too Asian to be fully American. But Crystal's version of that in-between feeling is just as real. She's too Taiwanese to feel like a "real" Asian-American, but she's been here long enough that her understanding of Taiwan is frozen in time from when she left.

Why the Timing of Immigration Matters

We got into something in this episode that I've been wanting to discuss for a long time. Crystal and I talked about how the age at which you immigrate profoundly changes your relationship to identity. If you came to the U.S. during puberty, before your sense of self was fully formed, the experience of being a minority in a majority society hits you at your most vulnerable. Crystal used the word 脆弱 / cuì ruò / fragile, and that landed hard.

For those of us who grew up here, feeling different started early. I shared a memory of being in second grade, walking into a classroom with no friends, and immediately connecting with the one other Asian-American kid in the room. From that day on, I felt a deep sense of connection with anyone who looked like me, regardless of whether they were Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or any other background. That bond was forged during a time when I was still figuring out who I was.

Crystal, on the other hand, arrived in the U.S. with her identity already established. When people made comments about her being Asian, it didn't shake her core sense of self. It was uncomfortable, but it didn't define her. She did share something vulnerable though. For a long time, she was so self-conscious about her Taiwanese accent when speaking English that she frantically signed up for courses on how to lose it. Now, she sees her accent as a representation of her identity. It's proof that she grew up in Taiwan, and that's nothing to be ashamed of.

Representation Is Complicated, But It Matters

We also talked about the broader question of what AAPI Heritage Month even means when it tries to represent such a diverse group of people. Crystal brought up the example of the movie "Raya and the Last Dragon," which blended Southeast Asian stories into one narrative and left some people feeling like it was a 四不像 / sì bú xiàng / something that doesn't clearly fit any category. The same criticism gets applied to AAPI Heritage Month itself. Why lump all Asian-Americans together?

Crystal's take was nuanced. She acknowledged the criticism but said that having representation, even imperfect representation, is better than having none. Because when people see it, they get curious. And curiosity is where understanding starts.

Key Vocab From This Episode

亞太裔美國人傳統月 / 亚太裔美国人传统月 | yǎ tài yì měi guó rén chuán tǒng yuè (TW) / yà tài yì měi guó rén chuán tǒng yuè (CH) (AAPI Heritage Month)

冒牌者症候群 | mào pái zhě zhèng hòu qún (impostor syndrome)

認同 / 认同 | rèn tóng (identity / to identify with)

刻板印象 | kè bǎn yìn xiàng (stereotype)

少數族群 / 少数族群 | shǎo shù zú qún (minority group)

脆弱 | cuì ruò (fragile / vulnerable)

深刻 | shēn kè (profound / deep)

口音 | kǒu yīn (accent)

These are all words from the actual episode, not textbook vocabulary, but the kind of words that come up when you're talking about real life in Mandarin.

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