I. La mian: also known as “pulled noodles” in English
These long, thin noodles are known for the effort and time it requires to make them the authentic way.
 
My father made pulled noodles almost every night of my early childhood. I remember watching him as he kneaded the dough with powerful hands, specks of white flour falling under smooth rolling hills of tan. To shape the noodles, he first stretched the dough out, flung it between his hands like a jump rope, and then brought the two ends together to do the same thing over again. He started the process early in the afternoon and worked all the way until dinner time, beads of sweat trickling down the side of his face and glistening in the evening sun.

Along with the noodles, my father spent a lot of time hanging up paintings in our house. Every corner I turned, I would stumble across a new guo hua of China. My parents also sent me to Chinese school every Sunday so I could learn how to read and write Chinese. Perhaps they saw me as dough that they would stretch and shape to form the noodles they had grown up with.
 

Summers we flew thirteen hours to China and stayed there for a month. At the time, I breathed China in with simple curiosity. I was too young to filter my own experiences and instead, I navigated that world through sense. The sizzle of nian gao (rice cakes) against the pan. The streets bustling loud with people, cars, bicycles. The white smoke of cigarettes, the stench of the bathrooms, the sweltering heat of the summer. The streetside stores with their savory baozi and piquant kebabs.

When we got home, we slurped up my father’s noodles with shameless noise and speed, because they tasted like China. Those noodles were the comfort of my childhood, a semblance of family and familiarity that I embraced with infinite warmth.
 

But the thing about noodles is they’re only good immediately after they’re made. When they grow old, they lose their elegant smoothness and become a sticky, smelly mess.
 

One day, our social studies teacher announced that we’d be studying Chinese dynasties.
As soon as she said this, several heads snapped toward me.
 

I remember sitting there, throat suddenly tied in a knot, ears burning. I had always known I looked different, but that was when it first dawned on me that other people saw me as different—as Chinese.
 

The dinner of my childhood was now old and cold. That word, Chinese, now became heavy with connotation. I was trapped in the viscous soup, and wherever I went, I felt like the noodles stuck to my body.
 
II. Spaghetti:  also known as Yi Da Li Mian in Chinese
Originating from Italy, these thicker noodles are made of wheat and water. They are usually eaten with tomato sauce, meatballs, and parmesan cheese.
 
One day in 6th grade, I pushed away my bowl of noodles at dinner.
 

“I don’t want these anymore. A girl at school said my noodles smell like farts.”
 

“So?” my father said in Chinese, still slurping the noodles.
 

“People don’t want to be my friend because of them.”
 

He shook his head dismissively. “Don’t worry about that. Noodles are nutritious. Bone broth makes you grow taller. Just eat.”

 

I stared at my bowl of noodles for a long time without moving, then asked, “Can you make spaghetti instead?”
 

“Spa—spa—shen mo (what)? Is it American?”
 

“Spaghetti. Yeah, the other kids at school eat it. It’s yellow noodles and it has red sauce on it and cheese.”
 

“Ay yo! Cheese!” my father groaned. “Cheese is nasty—full of fat. Just like other American food. No spaggy.”
 

“It’s spah-GEH-tee.” This wasn’t the first time he’d mispronounced English words. In public, he sputtered out incoherent sentences with his thick Chinese accent everywhere we went. He was like some sort of brainless parrot clinging onto my shoulder. I always dreaded moments at school when the kids gave me weird looks and whispered about his accent and his noodles.
 

“Doesn’t matter how you say it. We never ate spaggy in China.”
 

“Well this is America,” I retorted.
 

My father shook his head. “China is your homeland. Just because we live in America doesn’t mean you are not Chinese.”
 

“Yeah, well I wish I wasn’t.”
 

Suddenly, the air grew stiff.
 

“What you mean you wish you were not Chinese?” My father glared at me.
 

A sternness stitched itself onto both my parents faces. My throat constricted, and neither air nor words could escape. The steam from the bowl of noodles in front of me thickened, wrapped around me, and started to suffocate me.
 

“You will eat the noodles,” my father said. “And remember: you will always be Chinese.”
 

I remember staring down at the soup afterward and seeing the reflection of myself in it—an Asian girl with stringy black hair, squinty monolid eyes, and a round flat nose. As long as I kept eating those noodles every day, I would have to face that reflection every day.
 

So from that point on, I started secretly dumping what my father packed into the trash. Instead, I ate spaghetti from the school cafeteria. Spaghetti tasted weird—the noodles were a little too thick, the tomato sauce a little too salty, and the cheese had the texture of melted plastic. I ate it nevertheless, and over time, acquired a liking for these western flavors.
 
III. No noodles (Mei You Mian)
 
I bit down on the Cane’s fried chicken, savoring the crunch of its crispy skin and the juiciness of its oil-soaked flesh.
 

“Ewww, you eat it plain?” Selena, one of the girls on my volleyball team, scrunched up her face in disgust. “I could never eat chicken plain. You’re supposed to eat it with like ketchup or like barbecue sauce or something.”
 

“Oh… my bad, I didn’t know.”
 

The other girls giggled. Selena tossed locks of golden blonde hair over her shoulder.  “You’re so Asian.”
 

“What?” I froze.
 

“I said, ‘You’re so Asian,’ not knowing that chicken goes with ketchup.”
 

A sudden sense of sickness churned in my stomach. I became painfully aware of the contrast between all the other volleyball girls and me. Their gorgeous large eyes and my own, one-dimensional, black slits. Their smooth, pearl white skin and my coarse, yellowed complexion.
 

I shook my head forcefully. “No I’m not. I know I look Asian, but I’m really American on the inside.”
 

Vivian chimed in. “Dude. You do math in your free time, you play the piano, and you don’t know that chicken goes with ketchup because you’re used to eating those stinky noodles all the time.”
 

“Ugh, I didn’t even like those noodles. My dad just forced me to bring them.”
 

“Does your dad force you to study math and play the piano too?” Belle asked.
 

“Yeah, duh. If it were up to me, I’d never do those nerdy things.”
 

“Ohhh… So you’re like us, but trapped in an Asian body?” Selena said.
 

“Yup, pretty much. I was born here, just like you. I haven’t even been to China.” This was a lie. My parents and I traveled to China to visit my grandparents every summer. “I don’t even know Chinese.” This was a lie as well. I was fluent in Chinese.
 

I picked up another chicken wing with greasy fingers, this time scooping up a giant blob of the blood-red ketchup before taking a bite.
 

During my junior high years, I frequented fast food restaurants like Cane’s with my volleyball team. We had practice every day after school, and games several nights a week. It was team tradition to go to fast food restaurants in the time between practice and games.
 

I had taken up volleyball because it was the most American thing I could do.
 

For so long, my discomfort at being Chinese had been only that—a feeling of discomfort. It tugged and pushed and nudged me, and was powerful enough at times to draw cries from a raw throat. But it lacked words, lacked structure, lacked a backbone that would give it a life of its own.
 

When I got a phone in 8th grade, I finally started to understand the “American Dream” through social media and YouTube. This dream was one narrated by words, one that spoke to me from every screen. Chinese had a sense of familiarity, but it was blurry, something I couldn’t describe with my words. “American”, on the other hand, talked to me in eloquent English. So, when my parents protested against me taking up volleyball, I spoke without hesitation.
 

“Alice, you are wasting your precious time with sports,” my father would say.
 

“That’s not true. Sports give me a social platform. You don’t want me to be a social outcast, do you? It is statistically proven that social outcasts experience higher rates of depression and suicide.”
 

“Alice, you barely have time for homework. It’s affecting your grades.”
 

“Whatever. Grades don’t mean anything. The education system is so stupid. Like all those standardized tests--they don’t represent someone’s true intelligence. Just search it up. There’s articles all over the Internet about it.”
 

Family life in my teenage years became a shadow of my Chinese identity that clung to me in my life outside. I tried everything to shed that shameful shadow—listening to mainstream American pop, letting my grades slide, and especially frequenting at fast food restaurants with my friends.

 

I remember those outings for their loudness. The loudness of the restaurant’s brightly painted interiors, of their sticky booths and sticky floors, of the odor of salt and oil sparkling in the air. The loudness of our lipstick, of our hair of bouncy curls, of our sparkly tops and little high heel boots. The loudness of our giggles and yelps in response to gossip and guys flirting with us. And most of all, the loudness of our foods. Squishy hotdogs breaking open in pockets of savory flavor in our mouths. Heavy, warm, comforting carbs soaked in oil, melting with a thick sweetness on our tongues. Cheese—which tasted to me like salty plastic--draped over everything. My “happiness” was louder than ever, and more filled with flavor than ever. I tasted the thrill of sports, of gossip, of boys. I spoke loud and laughed loud, hoping my heart would echo my body.
 

Yet fast food too flavorful. Almost overstimulating. It was greedy. I had become addicted to my American Dream, but I didn’t realize that the fast food version of it was shallow, a misrepresentation of what it really meant. It was high-calorie, low-content. I gorged, hurting my stomach because my heart was never satisfied. And I forced myself to enjoy the taste of these heavy flavors on my tongue, but nights I would wake up to barf into the toilet, head spinning with a nausea that grew like cancer inside me.
 
IV. Ramen: also known as Fang Bian Mian in Chinese
Typically dried and packaged to be sold in stores, these wheat noodles have a curly texture and a golden yellow color. They are known for the piquant flavor of their seasoning packets and their convenience.
 
I started eating Ramen halfway through my 9th grade year because of what my first boyfriend said about Asians.
 

“Babe, I’m really jealous of you because you’re Asian.”
 

“What? Why?”
 

“Y’all are just naturally smart. I mean, you don’t even study and you have all As, and you’re definitely gonna get into Harvard.”
 

I stared at him, dumbfounded.
 

“And like, not only are y’all super smart, your culture is also so… exotic.”
 

And with that, being Asian transformed for me. In high school, everyone was intrigued by my “culture”. What does Chinese sound like? Can you speak it for us?
 

“Wo de ming zi shi Ai Li Si. That means “my name is Alice”.”
 

Woah, that’s so cool! What is China like?
 

“The food there is delicious! And there’s the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, and it’s pretty much legal for kids to drink.” I preferred not to think of the pollution, the stinky bathrooms, the heat...
 

“Chinese” became my makeup. My foundation was my “superior intellect”; my mascara was my “exotic beauty”, my lipstick and blush were the few phrases of Chinese and facts of China I could rattle off to impress people. I painted my face meticulously day after day, and savored the taste of the attention it brought me.
 

And so I shed my obsession with being American and swung full power into being Asian. I focused my attention on my grades, and studied hard outside of school. I switched out volleyball for Science Bowl, and fast food for Ramen Noodles.
 

“Those Ramen Noodles aren’t authentic,” my father told me.
 

But Ramen was convenient, and when I devoured them, the soup reflected my face in gold.
 
V. Mi Fen: also known as “rice noodles” in English
These are thin translucent noodles made from rice flour and water. They are known for their soft texture and their ability to absorb any variety of flavors.
 
High on my illusion of exotic identity, I went to China the summer after my freshman year. But I had spent so much time perfecting the image of my culture to people who knew nothing about it that the darker reality shocked me hard. In China, I was an intrigue, yet an abomination. People stared me down because of my tan skin and thick legs. When I opened my mouth, stammering out awkward, Americanized Chinese, people whispered, “Oh, it’s a lao wai (foreigner).”
 

In America people saw me as Chinese, and in China people saw me as American. Yet I was never fully either. I had created a facade for myself on both sides, and untrained eyes couldn’t see through that facade. But when I looked in the mirror that summer, I saw a fraud.
 

And so I sank into a deep state of disillusionment. For too long, I had avoided the uncomfortable question of my multifaceted identity like one would avoid a dusty corner. But now, I uncovered that dusty corner in the spare bedroom of my grandparents’ apartment. I sat there for a long time thinking about the words Chinese and American, and soon, there came a knock at the door.
 

“Ai Li Si?”
 

I stood up and opened it. “Yes, Grandpa?”
 

“It is my eightienth birthday. I want to teach you how to cook Longevity Noodles.”
 

In the kitchen, my grandfather took out a bundle of dried mi fen and put it in a large, ceramic bowl. Then, he lit the mei qi stove. A couple tsks and the the flame jumped up from the shadows.
 

“First comes the soup,” my grandfather explained. “Soup is always pre-made, because it takes a long time for the flavor of your meat to permeate the water.”
 

My grandfather took out a pot of soup from the refrigerator and put it on the stove.
 

“The soup is like our history, the history of the world. It is much bigger than each one of is. It soaks into our noodles to give them an essence.”
 

He picked up the mi fen and gently placed it in the warming pot. “These noodles represent life.”
 

“But aren’t you supposed to use la mian?” I asked. “They represent a long life.”
 

“That is the tradition, but you should not be limited by tradition. To me, good noodles are medium length—not too short, not too greedy. I like using mi fen because it acts like a sponge, soaking up all the flavors around it.”
 

We stand beside the pot and watch as the noodles started to soften and spread, flowering in the liquid.
 

“Next, we put in some vegetables.” I grabbed him some bok choy and bean sprouts from the fridge. “These are the things we bring into our lives—it’s what we do, and who we do it with.”
 

He opened the cabinet and took out a jar of Chinese five spice. “Then comes the seasoning—our culture. This is what gives our noodles flavor.” As he sprinkled a bit of each spice into the pot, their piquant aroma wafted into the air, floating through the kitchen like spirits of ancient times. “But we have to be careful not to overwhelm everything else. Seasoning is crucial, but its purpose is to enhance our noodles.”
 

He turned off the stove, then carefully poured the noodles and soup into the ceramic bowl. “Finally, we add our garnish.” He sprinkled on some chopped green onions and sesame seeds. “Just a little for aesthetic, but they are secondary to the real things.”
 

I gazed at the steaming bowl for a long time. In that moment, something inside me reopened. I remembered those early days of my childhood where I would watch my father make pulled noodles. I had grown up eating noodles, but their delicate and nuanced flavor had slipped through my coarse taste buds. Noodles had been first a tradition that my parents put much effort into preserving. Then it became a source of embarrassment, as their foreign smell turned the noses of my peers. Somehow, they became a semblance of superiority in high school, yet only now did I understand what they truly meant. To create a fulfilling bowl of noodles, I had to find the fine balance between all its ingredients.
 

When I went home that summer, I cooked myself a bowl of rice noodles in bone broth, with American sweet corn and Chinese five spice. The rice noodles soaked up both eastern and western cultures, and although it tasted quite odd, it tasted like something I’d made.
 

And I would continue to make these strange concoctions until they tasted just right.