Do You Believe in Dragons?

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

Growing up in a low-income housing project in New York City as a young Asian-Hispanic kid, the thought of dragons within my neighborhood was as foreign as the combination of my ethnicity. Yet my Asian father, Yiu Hon, always expressed great patience in explaining to my mom, Patricia and me the importance and benevolence of dragons. It did not matter to Yiu Hon that few residents in our neighborhood understood the importance of dragons.

My father often reminded us that “dragons are benevolent creatures and not the dark and evil characters depicted in western culture.” His favorite dragons were the Red Dragons. These creatures controlled our luck and good fortune. It is not hard to see why they became my favorites. Growing up in a culture of minimal resources, we relied on these dragons to navigate us through our world of scarcity!

It is not hard to understand why red dragons became a central focus of my upbringing. Red swept me off my feet and became my favorite color. Embracing anything around me that was red or decorated with traces of red became an obsession. I always wore a red garment or carried something embedded with the color. I knew that the odds of my success would increase if the Red Dragons noticed my respect and admiration for them.

On the first day of school attending my first grade, (my parents opted not to enroll me in Kindergarten), I put a red envelope I received during the celebration of Chinese New Year in my school bag.

I understood that the odds of my success were deeply against me since I was fluent in Spanish, struggled to speak Cantonese, and was unable to speak English. There were no bilingual transition classes during my childhood. My only hope was to rely on my Red Dragons to guide me at school in the right direction. At first, I became impatient as my first week in school was quite challenging. I understood less than 10% of what was going on around me in school.

I remember a bell would ring every 45 minutes to signal that we needed to change the subjects of our instruction. I never understood why we did not focus on one subject for an entire day until we fully understood it before switching to a new topic. Considering that I had no idea what my teacher was saying, spending less than an hour on a subject was not an optimal strategy in my mind.

My first encounter with reality came after my second week in school. I received my first grade of 55 on a math quiz. I thought that was pretty good for someone struggling to learn how to speak English and communicate with others, but my parents thought otherwise. My mom and dad went into overdrive and abandoned their efforts to help me better understand their native languages. They both began to teach me how to speak, read and write in their versions of broken English.

However, that was what I needed. Understanding the words coming out of my teacher's mouth was a real challenge for me. Coming home to parents that helped me with my homework was what I needed to survive.

Within five weeks, I was able to talk with other students and with my teacher. I was not proficient, but I was now on par with the students in the lower quintile of my class. My efforts and reliance on my Red Dragons did not lighten up as the semester progressed. I worked so hard that I felt I was on the verge of getting a nervous breakdown. My dad advised me to keep pushing and reminded me that at 6-years old, my body could withstand the stress. It was okay to continue so that when my body became vulnerable, I would be able to lighten up on the gas pedal.

Clearly, I would have never survived the first grade without the help and support of my parents and the direct intervention of my beloved Red Dragons!