Straddling two worlds and belonging to both

For a while, I could not understand why I felt melancholic after meeting four Chinese friends from my graduate school days. I had not seen them, two married couples, for 14 years. Alex and Alice were in the same Biology program as me. Mary was studying for her PhD in Jewish History, and David, joining Mary on a spousal visa, was just starting to sell life insurance back in 1995.

Fourteen years later, David's insurance business has boomed - no longer does he need to convince poor Chinese students to buy the policies; now he has thousands of clients on his list. Mary, unable to find a job with her PhD, has switched to computer programming and is now a program manager at a software company. Alex holds a professorship at Harvard Medical School. Alice has an American MD and has just found a job as a pathologist at a research hospital.

"It's really nothing," Alice laughed, in the same bashful way as before, when we congratulated her and Alex on the new purchase of a million-dollar house in posh Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Each couple has two kids. The four little ones are aged from 1 to 11. They were well-behaved Chinese-American kids - quiet in the noisy restaurant, and only speaking, in perfect English, when addressed.

"Do they speak Chinese?" I asked Mary and Alice.

"Aiya," exclaimed Mary, "couldn't get them to. They understood Chinese but they wouldn't speak it at home."