Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua [28]
“How do you know?” Sophia asked.
“I think it’s more important, Sophia, for you to ask yourself what it would be like if you moved to China. How perfect do you think your accent would be? I don’t want you to be a provincial American. Do you know how fat Americans are? And now after 3000 years of being skinny, the Chinese in China are suddenly getting fat too, and it’s because they’re eating Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
“But wait,” said Sophia. “Didn’t you say you were so fat when you were little you couldn’t fit into anything in stores and your mom had to sew you clothes?”
“That’s right.”
“And you were so fat because you stuffed yourself with your mom’s noodles and dumplings,” Sophia continued. “Didn’t you once eat forty-five sio mai?”
“I sure did,” I replied. “My dad was so proud of me. That was ten more than he could eat. And three times as many as my sister Michelle could eat. She was skinny.”
“So Chinese food can make you fat too,” pressed Sophia.
Maybe my logic wasn’t airtight. But I was trying to make a point. I value cosmopolitanism, and to make sure the girls are exposed to different cultures, Jed and I have always taken them with us everywhere we traveled—even though, when the girls were little, we sometimes had to sleep in one bed to make it affordable. As a result, by the time they were twelve and nine, the girls had been to London, Paris, Nice, Rome,Venice, Milan, Amsterdam, the Hague, Barcelona, Madrid, Málaga, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Munich, Dublin, Brussels, Bruges, Strasbourg, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, Istanbul, Mexico City, Cancún, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro, São Paolo, La Paz, Sucre, Cochabamba, Jamaica, Tangier, Fez, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and the Rock of Gibraltar.
The four of us looked forward to our vacations all year. Often, we’d time our trips to coincide with my parents and Cindy’s trips abroad, and the seven of us would travel around together in a giant rental van driven by Jed. We’d giggle as passersby stared at us, trying to figure out our weird racial combination. (Was Jed the adopted white son of an Asian family? Or a human trafficker selling the rest of us into slavery?) Sophia and Lulu adored their grandparents, who doted on them and acted ridiculously unstrict in a way completely inconsistent with the way they’d raised me.
The girls were especially fascinated by my father, who was unlike anyone they’d ever met. He was constantly disappearing into alleys, returning with his arms full of local specialties like soup dumplings in Shanghai or socca in Nice. (My dad likes to try everything; at Western restaurants he often orders two main meals.) We’d always find ourselves in nutty situations: out of gas at the top of a mountain pass or sharing a train car with Moroccan smugglers. We had great adventures, and those are memories we all cherish.
There was just one problem: practicing.
At home, the girls never missed a single day at the piano and violin, not even on their birthdays or on days when they were sick (Advil) or had just had dental surgery (Tylenol-3, with codeine). I didn’t see why we should miss a day when we were traveling. Even my parents were disapproving. “That’s crazy,” they’d say, shaking their heads. “Let the girls enjoy their vacation. A few days of not practicing won’t make a difference.” But serious musicians don’t see it that way. In the words of Lulu’s violin teacher Mr. Shugart, “Every day that you don’t practice is a day that you’re getting worse.” Also, as I pointed out to my girls, “Do you know what the Kims will be doing while we’re on vacation? Practicing. The Kims don’t take vacation. Do we want them to get ahead of us?”
In Lulu’s case, the logistics were easy. The violin was Lulu’s airplane carry-on and fit nicely into the overhead compartment. Things were more complicated with Sophia. If we were going somewhere in the United States, a couple of long-distance phone calls usually did the trick. It turns out that American hotels are overflowing with pianos. There’s typically one in the lobby bar and at least two in