A VERY LUCKY DAUGHTER

I should have been just another face in the hotel lobby in Zhangjiajie, a city in central China. But my words singled me out.

"Yun dou," I repeated to the clerk. Maybe he understood English: "Do you have a gym here?"

The clerk blinked, and then reached behind the counter and pulled out an iron.

I smiled blankly. My brain rooted through my limited Chinese vocabulary. Just then my dad strolled up, his eyebrows arched in amused triangles.

"She wants to know where the gym is," he supplied in rapid Mandarin Chinese, his native language. He turned to me and explained gently, "Yun dong is exercise, Sharon. Yun dou means iron."

I mumbled a sheepish apology to the laughing clerk and glanced at my dad. A look of recognition flashed through his eyes. We'd gone through this before. Only this time, the tables were turned.

When I was younger, I would try to imagine my parents growing up in China and Taiwan. But I could only envision them in the grainy black-and-white of their faded childhood pictures. Their childhood stories didn't match the people I knew. I couldn't picture my domestic mom, unsure of her halting English, studying international economics at a Taiwanese university. I laughed at the image of my stern father, an electrical engineer, chasing after chickens in his Chinese village.

I related to my parents' pre-American lives as only a series of events, like facts for some history exam. My dad fled to Taiwan in 1949 as a 14-year-old, after the Communists won the civil war. His father fought for the losing side, the Nationalists. My mom, who was born in Taiwan, grew up thinking that her family would eventually return to China, after the Nationalists reclaimed their homeland.

But that didn't happen. As young adults, my parents moved to the United States to lead better lives. They did not step onto

Chinese soil for more than 50 years. Then their friends arranged a trip to China. And they asked me to join them on the six-city tour.

My list of why-nots was jam-packed. And yet something inside- I could not explain what-urged me to go.

When the plane jerked to a stop in Shanghai, our first destination, all of those reasons I decided to go materialized in the expression on my parents' faces. My mom folded and unfolded her hands impatiently in her lap. I was surprised and slightly scared to see my stoic dad's eves glimmering with emotion. He slipped his hand, soft and spotted with age, in mine.

"Last time I was here," he said, "my parents going from north to south, away from the Communists. So much bombing. A lot of people starving." He leaned close. "You very lucky, Sharon."

That was my dad's line. When I would whine as a child, my dad's response was inevitable: "Some people not as lucky as you."

But I never cared about being lucky. I just wanted to be like the other American kids.

My parents, however, intended me to become a model Chinese American. Starting when I was ix, they would drag me away from Saturday cartoons to a Chinese church. I would squirm like a worm in my seat while a teacher recited Chinese vocabulary. I dutifully recited my bop o mo fos- the ABCs of speaking Mandarin. But in my head, I rearranged the chalk marks that made up the characters into pictures of houses and tress.

When I turned nine, I declared I wasn't going to Chinese school anymore. "This stinks," I yelled. "None of my friends have to go to extra school. Why do I have to go?"

"Because you Chinese," my mom replied coolly."Then I don't want to be Chinese," I shouted back. "It's not fair. I

just want to be normal. Why can't you and Dad be like everybody else's parents? I wish I were somebody else's kid."

I waited for my mom to shout, but she just stared at me with tired eyes. "If you don't want to go, don't have to," she said.

Though my parents had lived in the United States for decades, they still led a Chinese life at home. They spoke to each other in

Chinese and read a Taiwanese paper. Chinese food covered our dinner table. Breakfast consisted of watery rice with pickled vegetables and meat, or fried eggs with soy sauce. At dinner I would douse my rice with ketchup and remind my parents that Sara's family ate hamburgers.

I envied my friends' relationships with their parents. My friends didn't have to worry that their parents would embarrass them with questions like "Is this good price?" and "What's this meaning?"

My friend's parents chatted easily with each other and our teachers. Their parents understood dating, and what it was like to grow up with the pressures of drinking, drugs, and sex. My parents discussed only my grades, career, and prospective salary.

My mom speaks English like I speak Chinese: slowly and punctuated by urns and ahs. When someone speaks English. too rapidly, my mom's eyes cloud with confusion. I instantly recognize her I-don't-get-it look, and I know it's time to explain something.

About a month before we left for China, I helped my mom return a purchase to Wal-Mart.

The clerk rudely ignored my mom's slow English, speaking to me instead.

Later my mom thanked me for my help. "Xie xie, Sharon," she said, patting my shoulder. "I have good American daughter."

"It's nothing, Mom," I said.In the airport before we departed for China, my parents' friends

herded around me. "Your parents so proud of you," said one man. "Always talking about you."

His words surprised me. I felt like I barely spoke with my parents. Did they really know who I was? Then another question, the one always managed to skirt, surfaced in my conscience: did I even come close to understanding them?

The tour was a 17-day whirlwind. We visited lakes laden with lotus flowers, snapped pictures of jagged mountains rising out of the Yellow River, and hiked up stone stairs to intricately painted temples.

I saw rice paddies cut like square emeralds into the mountainside. I toured a factory where the employees spunk silk into sheets of gloss.

But the best part of the trip was watching my parents. They carried themselves with an ease unfamiliar to me. They blended into the throngs of Chinese people instead of sticking out in the crowd. Their voices swelled with authority. My mom translated the tour guide's Chinese in her unwavering voice, whispering historical anecdotes she'd learned in school.

Often during the tour, my own face resembled my mom's I-don't-get-it look. At meals, my parents answered my constant questions about each colorful bowl that would rotate by on the Lazy Susan.

My parents chuckled at my response when a waiter put a bowl of soup on our table. While the other diners shouted with excitement, I was horrified to see the remnants of a turtle floating in the clear yellow broth.

My table cried in dismay when I let the soup circle past me. “Strange," said one man, shaking his head. "Such good soup."

A few days after "the iron incident," as my run-in with the hotel clerk became known in our tour group, my parents and I sat on a bench overlooking stone monoliths. "Too bad I don't speak fluent Chinese," I said. "I should have listened when you tried to teach me."

My dad looked at me with understanding. "It's okay," he said. "You learning it now."

My mom smiled supportively. "Never too late," she said.

Houghton Miffin Reading Series, Book 1Boston: Houghton Miffin Company, 2003