Lunar New Year is the most significant holiday for those that celebrate the lunar calendar. It’s different from the calendar we are used to and was used before the 12 month calendar. Depending on where you celebrate it, the duration of the holiday varies from country to country.

As for me, I had spent most of my Lunar New Year’s Day alone. I had not talked to any of my friends and all I heard throughout the day was my mom and her many friends greeting her from her phone, occasionally hearing my dad chime in here and there. I will admit that this year was much different from previous years, especially during a pandemic.

It’s crazy to think about the family I have and how isolated I feel compared to all of them. Sure, my parents aren’t with their families back in Vietnam and California, but they still talk to them so comfortably. Honestly, I’m still surprised by that. 

Every time my mom points the camera to my face for me to say “gon hay fat choy” I get so embarrassed that I shoo the camera away from my face. Every time someone at school discovers that I do speak Chinese and they ask me to “say something in Chinese,” I have no answer even though I can speak it fluently.

The reason why I have no answer is partially because of embarrassment but also because I feel as if I would be humiliated despite living on a completely different continent and only having seen them in person once in my entire life.

Spending most of my life in a community where I don’t often see people who look like me was very isolating to me to the point where I yearned to be part of the majority because of casual racist remarks. As a result of that I disliked the fact that I wasn’t “American enough” despite being BORN here. Even at home when I talk to my family they make unintentional jokes about how “not Chinese enough” I am. Having no siblings to boot, it really made me feel even more isolated. 

With the Lunar New Year being almost over, this year’s really put things in perspective about the Asian diaspora and how truly different people’s experiences are, at least to me. This year especially has amplified the isolating feeling of being, not just an Asian American, but a person born from immigrant parents as well.