At my job, we'd just transitioned a summer intern to a full-timer. I just spent my summer living in San Francisco and recently moved to LA. I'd interacted with him very few times so far. The only times I heard from him were at our daily stand-up calls over Slack.

So when I came into the office for the first time since moving to LA, I wasn't surprised when he gave me a very curt greeting and bee-lined to his desk.

I started overanalyzing the situation and just as quickly, I got a notification on Slack.

"Hello. Are you Chinese? Do you speak Chinese? My English isn't so great so I prefer speaking in Chinese or texting."

I explained to him that I'm Chinese, where in China my parents are from, and how I didn't speak Mandarin, but I did speak Cantonese.

We started chatting more at work and became friends. I invited him out to dinner with my friends at a Filipino skewer spot. He was fascinated that I also ate organ meat and balut. He was also intrigued that I wasn't a stranger to the different regions of Chinese food, or that I was keeping up with some Chinese pop culture.

He later explained that he usually doesn't like American Born Chinese, or ABC colloquially. He finds them generally spoiled, disconnected from their Chinese roots, and pandering to Americans. But he said he liked me, and that I was different from a "typical" ABC.

I understood what he meant, but it still weirdly struck me. Not unlike the typical 2nd generation Asian-American, I'm at a weird place with my culture; there's one foot in the door, the other out.

Going to a PWI college only confused me. I clutched onto that Asian identity even more than usual. I'd center my design projects around themes of Chinese culture, doing very little research and basing them on my surface-level knowledge. I'd be sure to mention that I was a child of immigrants when trying to make friends and, hopefully, to find someone with a similar foundation.

However, when I met other Asian Americans in college they were almost always 3rd, 4th, 5th, or so on generation. One college ex-boyfriend was like that. He explained how his high school tuition cost more than his college tuition. But, it didn't matter anyway. He would graduate debt-free thanks to his parents' very intense corporate climbing. He and his parents only spoke English, they didn't have any cultural practices, and they did not eat any cultural food.

One night, he smiled at me sincerely and said something to the tune of "I really like you, I like how you're a white-washed Asian. We get along because of that."

I immediately got defensive and snapped at him to not say that. I just about turned red in the face defending myself and giving my reasons why I'm not a white-washed asian, as if that was an insult.

Truthfully, I felt like I didn't have a right to get so upset. His statement wasn't completely baseless.

I practice rituals with my family, but don't know the meaning behind them. I love Cantonese food but rarely replicate it at home. I can speak a conversational level of Cantonese, but feel weirdly insecure and avoid speaking it to others.

My Grandma teased my cousins for not being able to speak Cantonese anymore. That secretly stung me because I wasn't that far off from that. I felt embarrassed to speak to my Grandma because I didn't want her to point out how bad my pronunciation had become. There's a word in Cantonese that my mom said about me all the time.

Ngaang: Stiff. She said my mouth was stiff from not practicing Cantonese. I could hear it, understand it, and even form the sentences in my head. But as soon as I'd try speaking it, I couldn't get the words out. Cantonese is very tonal; once you lose the ability to make the distinctions, you'll just be repeating for clarification every time you speak.

How far of a boundary does there have to be considered unable to speak anymore?

I started watching Hong Kong movies, curated a playlist of Canto pop, and purchased Cantonese textbooks. I called my parents more often, asking for my mom to correct me and trying to pick up new vocabulary. My parents were really happy, they would comment about how much I've recovered and improved. Still though, when I'm in Chinatown, I avoid speaking. I'm too afraid they won't understand my inflection of tones. I'm afraid I'm too white-washed for them to understand me. I'm slowly building up the courage and will cross this minor hurdle someday.

It seems silly to put in all this effort, knowing now that Cantonese is a dying language.

Similarly, I had talked to my friend about this over coffee. She said she felt the same; she grew up in Shanghai, speaking Shanghainese. She watched it slowly fall out of favor.

We talked about what we'll do to pass our language on to the next generation.

I expressed to her that I have a fear of having children, and for them to become the typical ABC that my coworker despises.

Some things he said resonated with me. He found it absurd that ABCs don't make an effort to connect to their roots. There's hardly a difference between a typical white American teenager and an ABC.

I'm afraid that there'll be a string of disconnected generations to come after me, and it'll start with me being unable to pass on customs, traditions, and language. I'm afraid that I'm diluting my own culture. Thinking about my college design projects only make me cringe. How can I be afraid of diluting my culture when I do so little to research the intent and history in what I was deriving my projects from. What a shame it'd be for my parents to come from Asia, and for it to feel like it meant nothing. I don't want our culture to go when they go.

How do I prove everyone wrong? That I'm not just another Chinese American who can't read Chinese, who can't speak Mandarin, that I'm not white-washed? And why do I feel like a stereotypical ABC for having this train of thought to begin with?

I've come to terms with the idea that I'll just try my best, and that'll be it. I'll continue to speak to my parents over the phone. I'll read my Cantonese textbooks. I'll watch the Hong Kongers on youtube that show their vastly different lives. I'll go to Hong Kong someday and overcome my fear of speaking. Maybe being so conscious of this issue is the reason why I'm not like a typical ABC.

Maybe the distinction between me and every other ABC doesn't exist, after all, I am just an American-born Chinese girl.