Hyphen magazine - Asian American arts, culture, and politics

When it comes to accounts of life abroad written by foreign correspondents, Hyphen blogger Catherine Shu -- also a reporter in Taiwan -- reveals how journalistic shortcuts can have significant cultural implications.

I used to find “Chinglish” funny -- that is, until I moved to Taiwan and found out that the joke was on me.

Last month, an article in the New York Times about Chinglish in Shanghai stayed on its Web site’s Most E-mailed List for more than week. In response, fellow Hyphen blogger Victoria Yue wrote a post on the mixed feelings many Asian Americans have about Chinglish-derived humor.  

Photo: My maternal grandmother and me in 1981

One of the reasons I wanted to learn Mandarin was so that I could converse more easily with my grandparents, but by the time I arrived in Taiwan on a language scholarship, three out of four of them had passed away. I came here anyway, thinking that if I knew more about Taiwan, I’d know more about them -- and about myself in turn.