NANCY NGOK

NYSU: Is this your wedding dress [that you’re wearing]? 

Nancy: This [dress] is, yeah. I did my tea ceremony the morning before the actual wedding ceremony, and everything, with just our family and some of our close friends. But I was really happy because my grandparents were actually able to make it for the tea ceremony so that was really, really nice. 

What is the name of the [traditional] dress? 

This is a Qun Kwa, and this is only worn when people get married – the top and the skirt combination typically – otherwise, people would just wear a Qipao, or a cheongsam, which is the Mandarin version [that can be worn at any time]. The significance really is all the embroidery and all the phoenixes on the dress itself because the phoenix symbolizes the queen, and when you get married, you're like the queen. My husband wore a jacket that had a dragon that was embroidered on it because the dragon is the king. Traditionally, if you actually go back many thousands of years ago, only the emperor and the queen or the empress wore dragons and phoenixes, except for on your wedding day. That's the only day you're allowed to. 

Where did you get [the traditional dress] made? 

My mom had it made in Shanghai by one of her friends there, and then they shipped it over.

Is your husband also [Chinese]?

He is not. He is Italian, an American, so he grew up in New Jersey, and we met in New York. 

Are you full Chinese? 

I am full Chinese, yeah. A lot of people ask me if I'm fully Chinese because I don't really look very Chinese or fully Chinese. 

Have you always gotten that? 

Yeah. Since growing up as well, really, everyone was always asking if I was half [Chinese] or some type of mix. 

How did that feel, growing up, influenced your own sense of identity? 

It was very confusing because I guess Americans would think that I'm Asian, but they're not really sure. But then all of the Chinese people were also like, ‘Oh, you're not Chinese.’ That kind of made me feel like I wasn't either, which was already part of the identity crisis of a Chinese American growing up – you don't really know what you're identifying with. Not looking fully Chinese confused me, too, especially because my family typically looked more Chinese than I did, so sometimes it would make me feel confused or I didn't really fully belong – that was difficult. I grew up in a predominantly white and Hispanic neighborhood, so there weren't a lot of Chinese people [around me] growing up, either. We were really the [only] Asian people around. It was my family and maybe two other families, and we really kind of stuck together. Then, I think a part of me growing up, was also partly rejecting a lot of my Chinese-ness. I had a sense of wanting to belong [but] I wasn't fully belonging in American culture nor was I also fully belonging in Chinese culture. 

How do you feel like that relationship [with your Chinese culture] is changing? 

It has changed a lot, actually. Over the last — I want to say five to ten years — I really started embracing my Chinese heritage a lot more and just wanted to educate people on what it is to be Chinese and how it is to be a Chinese American. I think a lot of YouTube has influenced that as well. When I was in high school, there were more Chinese Americans making YouTube videos, such as funny content, so we were more recognized as people who are growing up with two different cultures that are very, very different. I think that helped a lot. I also went to a very large high school where there were a lot of Asians, and Chinese people, and I think that also helped me feel like I belonged a little bit more because they were also going through [the same struggle] I was. 

Speaking of your husband who is Italian American. How do you feel like you're embracing your culture while also keeping your culture prominent within this future you're building with him? 

I think he is, thankfully, very, very open. Throughout the last few years of us dating, and getting engaged and stuff, [my husband] really embraces my culture and wants to learn more. He's trying to learn Cantonese now. It's really, really sweet. My sister just had a baby a year ago and she's trying to teach her [kid] Cantonese, and then my husband is right there next to her trying to learn as well. He's learning how to order [Chinese] things and talk to people, so that's been really nice. We really do want to raise our family bilingual, and that's really why he's wanting to learn as well. Cantonese really is kind of a dying language now because in China they're trying to have everyone just learn Mandarin. Even children who are growing up in Guangzhou, where it's predominantly Cantonese-speaking back then, are only speaking Mandarin now, or they're being taught not to speak Cantonese. I think it really is up to us now, here in America, who are mostly speaking Cantonese at home, to continue that [practice] with our children to keep it alive because they're kind of not doing that anymore in China. 

You're intentionally embracing Cantonese and really teaching your husband who is also committing to learning this dying language, as well. How do you continue to preserve your own culture in this day and age within your day-to-day life? 

I think, really just continuing to eat Chinese food.

Do you cook Chinese Food? 

I try to. It's actually much harder than cooking traditional American food where everything is just thrown in the oven and stuff. But with Chinese food, you have to really think about the ingredients with so many steps, so many different things that go into it – things that are sometimes hard to find in one store, and you have to go to multiple stores to find it all. This past year, our wedding day was actually the night of a Mid-Autumn Festival because it was always my favorite holiday growing up. I made mooncakes as a traditional part to share with all the guests that came [to the wedding]. It's just continuing to put my [Chinese] culture into everything that I'm doing in my day-to-day life, and continuing to celebrate all of the big holidays that meant so much to my family, and embracing new holidays. I never used to celebrate Christmas as much as I did until now. Even now with my husband, who has a very Catholic family – they're really big on Christmas – so now I celebrate that with them and he's celebrating all the Chinese holidays with me. 

It's like a blended household. 

Yeah, we're trying our best, and I think so much of Chinese culture is in food, and being able to share that. I always bring him to Dim Sum with our family, and he loves it. He wants to learn how to make all the [Chinese dishes], and that really means a lot because I think that's the biggest way to [preserve] our culture in foreign places. 

What does it mean to be at the intersection between being a woman – being a woman now and in America – and being a Chinese woman? 

I find my identity as a woman to be really strong, and it goes into my work as well since I'm a midwife. I take care of women while they're pregnant and when they have their baby – I deliver their babies. I feel like that is a really big part of my identity. I don't know if it's totally related to me being Asian, but I think it also helps that I feel really connected with other women all the time. I partially came into becoming a midwife to help Asian women. Unfortunately, not many Asian women come to my service, as weird as that is. I work at Elmhurst, but a lot of the Asian women in Elmhurst end up going to Flushing for their care. So, I end up seeing a lot of predominantly Hispanic-speaking women, and Bengali as well as other Asians, like South Asian women as well. I think growing up in America as a woman is really difficult because we are seen as minorities. I find a lot of power in the work that I do because I am a midwife who [helps] women. I want to take care of them and empower them to make good choices for themselves health-wise.
With a Chinese upbringing, how has that also influenced your values and your understandings and perspectives? 

I think my mom raised me very traditionally, but I didn't become what she wanted me to. She wanted me to be a lot more quiet and studious and have less opinions, or have only opinions internally, but not outspoken about them. But I have never been that way. I think that has always made it hard, especially because I married someone who is not Chinese, and that had been something that neither she nor my dad had wanted for me. My whole life, I was to be a good Chinese girl, grow up, marry a Chinese man, continue that – which I didn't do and I couldn't do because [that lifestyle] didn't feel like me. I had dated some Chinese men in the past, or Chinese American men, but they wanted me to be a little more quiet, and less opinionated. 

Almost everyone [part of this Roots & Radiance campaign] who has a partner, is with someone who isn't of their same culture. It makes you even more committed to really holding onto your own culture and embracing it and teaching it. 

I totally agree with that because sometimes, if you're just in the same culture as your partner, this is just the way it is. But by [being in a multicultural relationship] we're really intentionally trying to continue [sharing our cultures]. My husband [who’s not Asian], is really trying to learn more about my [Chinese] culture. I'm more willing to teach him versus [an Asian] who’s from the same culture but doesn’t make the effort to learn more or dive deeper into the history.

Which is also helping you learn even more about yourself by doing so?

Even in planning the wedding, I learned so many other [Chinese] traditions that I didn't even know about. I only knew of the [traditions] I dabbled into or I knew [traditions] a little bit growing up, but when I really went to plan my wedding to try to incorporate my culture more, that's when I learned even deeper levels or why things are done a certain way, which I wouldn't have done. If I had married someone who was Chinese, I probably wouldn't have added all of these additional [traditional] elements. 

What makes you the most proud to be Chinese? 

That is a hard question. I think I'm just really proud of what my parents did to bring us [to America], and their willingness to give us everything that we wanted. I feel like that's maybe more personal, and less [about being ]Chinese, but I think a lot of women, or a lot of Asian women and men, come to America so that they can provide more for their children. I was thinking about how that is what my parents did for [my family], and maybe that does have to do a little bit with their [Chinese] culture because they really wanted that [determination] to be instilled in us as well. The [Chinese] history, and the culture of a Chinese [person], has played a bigger part in my life recently. I think [learning and] understanding the history behind my culture has made me most proud to be Chinese.