Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories. And that next story is
about a man named Bruce Wang. He's Chinese born, a
college student in Texas, and he learned a Southern accent
by watching of all things Duck Dynasty and got a
job as a cowboy on a ranch. As you were
about to hear, Bruce maybe Chinese born, but he's all American.
(00:34):
Here's Bruce Wang to tell his story.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
My friends and partners. Has been my great honor to
be invited by mister Greg Angler to be on a
show and talk about my experience here in America. My
name is Sheba Wang, but I also go with beerce Way.
In school is on. I am a graduate student at
(00:59):
tech Tech University, but when there's no school, I am
a feedlock cowboy. As some of y'all may not expect
that I am actually from China, and it's kind of
rare to see an Asian cowboy across the country. Well,
if you come to West Texas, if you see one,
(01:21):
that might be me. I am from Queenan Union, southwest China,
and the city where I came from as the nickname
of the city of Eternal Spring, meaning that the weather
in my hometown is always like spring all the year around.
(01:43):
So in a sense, I was a southernary in China
that came to the States and became a southernary again.
But this transformation was not as smooth as some people
might assume, because no matter where you live, life is
not always easy. About eight years ago, I said goodbye
(02:03):
to my parents, got on an airplane, and then came
here to the States, set my foot on soul of America.
The very first state that I went to for college
was the state of Oklahoma. And we got on this
mini van from the airport and the driver just took
us to the campus and I know on the map
(02:27):
it said Oklahoma City. So I've been sitting that mini
van for a long time and all I saw, which
is flatness and houses that were separated from each other
as if they did not have business with each other,
which is kind of shocking to me. But what really
(02:47):
made me uncomfortable, at least in the state of Oklahoma,
was when it came down to food. For one and
a half years, I put chocolate pudding on my pizza
and my burgers. The reason was I just couldn't get
used to the taste of American food for that period
(03:08):
of time. But whatever I did, I found a way
to compromise so I could eat burgers and go to
school at the same time. The state of Oklahoma was
very welcoming to foreign students like me. Local people were
really friendly, and I didn't feel the need to integrate
(03:29):
much at that point because I had a lot of
friends from other countries, other continents, and I was finally
at that time. After the second year of me being college,
one day my mom called and said, well Son, you
need to transfer to a bigger university with a better
engineering program. Well, I thought to myself, Well, I've been
(03:54):
here for more than two years and I had some fun,
and it won't hurt to go to other parts of
the United States and to see the rest of this country.
So I agreed. Initially, I was planning to transfer to
the University of Wyoming. However, my mentor at the time
called me. Back in the old days, he and his
(04:16):
wife both worked at the university where I went to
school for in Oklahoma, but then his wife came to
Texas for her PhD program, so he followed her. Then
he called me and tried to convince me to come
down to Texas. I said, no way, because in my
mind and upon all my own understanding of all the
(04:38):
stereotypes of Texas, this is one of the least places
I would ever want to come now. Eventually I thought
about it and reflected upon my experiences with so called
ricism in America. Then eventually came to the conclusion that
the most important determined factor of my happiness is me,
(05:04):
not someone else. So once that thought kicked in, I
decided to say, you know what, why can't I just
give Texas a try? And if my mentor came to Oklahoma,
we loaded up my stuff and we were all our
way to Texas. Unfortunately, when I got to Texas, things
(05:26):
had a downturn. There were more churches where it was
a bigger campus, which made it more difficult to make friends.
And after the first semester since I transferred to school
to Texas, I decided to drop out because coming to
a bigger university with a better engineering program made me
(05:48):
realize I had zero interest for being an engineer and
I just did not see any point for continuing my
higher education. So my men asked me to go to
his office at the International Cultural Center, and I sat there.
He basically lectured me in a mildly loud Southern accent.
(06:12):
For some strange reason, I decided to stay in college
and just to finish. So at that point I was
no longer an engineering student. I switched to my major
to enter disciplinary studies, which contained three minors instead of
a major. And during that summer, my appendix was about
(06:36):
to burst, so I had to go to the hospital
and have a surgery. And during my stay at the hospital,
I had some rare opportunities to just completely be surrounded
by quietness. I couldn't move much in my bed. I
would watch TV from time to time, but there was
(06:57):
this one day when it was about to ring side.
I saw clouds getting thicker and thicker, and then ring
drops started to tap on my wingdow. Everything else was
just quiet, And that was the moment I thought about
how I judged myself, how wrongly I judged a society
(07:20):
that I didn't even know. In what other way can
I further learn about the society by integrating myself into it.
The semester after that summer, I went to a rodeo
and that was life changing. The things that changed me
was not necessarily the events that were going on during
(07:43):
the road deal, but all the people and animals that
were part of the show. There was country music playing
at the background, and the host had a very thick,
yet authentic West Texan accent. I remember seeing this little boy,
probably only seven or eight year old, with a cowboy
(08:03):
hat on, and he was in charge of that gate
which controlled the movement of all the other cattle, which
were at least five or six times his body size.
Yet he was calm and professional, and for all the
participants with their animals, I was amazed by the relationships
(08:24):
that were formed between two legged creatures and four legged creatures.
Roughly about a month after the rodeo, I got my
first pair of cowboy boots and my cowboy hat. And
when I put that hat on, I couldn't remember how
much regret that just went through my body. I thought
hard about how dumb I was for not embracing this
(08:48):
culture earlier and wasted so much time on things that
were not important. So from that point on, my integration
to this region of the southern parts of the United
the States started.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
And you're listening to Bruce Wang tell his story, and
when we come back, we're going to hear more from Bruce.
This remarkable American story. By the way, there aren't many
American Chinese, but there are a whole lot of Chinese Americans.
With that thought, we continue this story Bruce Wang's story
an immigrant song as good as we've ever heard here
(09:25):
on our American stories. And we continue here on our
American stories with the story of Bruce Wang. And this
(09:47):
is an all American immigration story, if ever we've had one.
Now let's return to Bruce Wang and his story.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I believe one of the most important things to a
person can ever do to integrate him or herself into
a community is to talk like the community. So initially
I thought it would be funny to be an aging
person with a Southern accent. I made some jokes by
speaking with a Southern accent in front of my classmates
(10:19):
and everybody laughed. I thought it was fun, so I
started to look for more materials to enhance my ability
to speak like a Southern nerd. But what I found
during this process of learning, the more I learned, the
more of an affection I developed for Southern accents. And
(10:40):
even though before I was able to communicate with people
in the English language, by learning the accent, what open
up new windows for me to look at America. One
of the first learning materials that I used was a
video on YouTube of Jeff fox Worthy.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
But it's kind of a spokesman for this portion of
the population. I got to think, and you know, it
has reached the point where we do need a few
redneck fashion tips if you've mastered the art of putting
on makeup with your non smoking hand while driving with
(11:22):
your knee.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
That I did more research on how people talk in
the state of Georgia than eventually. I found that the
residents around the Appalachian Mountain area have the type of
accents that melted my heart most of the time. What
I further learned was that the region was devastated by
(11:49):
poverty for decades, and there were people in poverty that
I would never imagine that I would see in America.
That it was real. Learning about how people suffering that
region really made me connect with the accents better. Why
because if you think about it, all the good old
(12:11):
classical literatures, what they reveal is suffering from people, regardless
of culture and regardless of a country. People suffering made
me resonate more with them because there are things that
were very similar between the Appalachian Mountain region and my
home province where I came from, we were surrounded by mountains.
(12:35):
In a sense, we are the urbanized Hillbillies in China,
and typically we're about ten or twenty years behind the
most developed area in China. And based on what I
learned about the Appalachian Mountain region, those people suffering made
me resonate more with them and also made Southern accents
(12:56):
dear to me. And that was the point I decided
to further master the accent. And somewhere down the line,
this show came to my intention. Duck Dynasty. On the surface,
it may seem like that the show was about a
bunch of rand next shooting ducks, but what really goes deeper.
(13:20):
The show touches about Christianity, about family and a unity
of a community, which I believe are great values that
are echoed among many other countries, including China. Again, I
could resonate with people in the show, and which excavated
(13:42):
more passion out of me to learn the accent. Throughout
this journey of learning the accent, I laid my eyes
on things that I would never look at if I
kept a judgmental attitude towards the American society and would
never found comfort in knowing, listening, and speaking another accent
(14:07):
that is so native yet important to some of the
forgotten regions of America. Even though I was fascinated by
how all the Ramnacs lived in Duck Dynasty, I didn't
realize for me, as a foreigner, it would be hard
to put my hands on a firearm and shoot ducks.
(14:29):
So I started to think of other ways that I
could do to further Southernize myself by integrating myself not
only linguistically but economically. It's not too hard to notice
there are a lot of cattle here in West Texas
and cowboys, at least according to Hollywood. It's one of
(14:50):
the most iconic images of America and to some degree,
the southern parts of America too. So I decided to
try and getting into the kettle industry. At first, what
I did was just to drive up to some range
or feet yard and have some conversations with people who
(15:10):
are in the beef cattle industry. And all I did
was just chatting with done. I took some pictures of
cattle and made some of my videos under properties, and
at that time that's all I thought. What I could do. However,
I was very amazed and really appreciate how welcoming people
in the beef cattle industry were in West Texas to meet.
(15:34):
So after building relationships for one and a half years,
one day I got a call from a feet law
owner and he got a lot more cattle going into
his property and he needed some help. So I got
my paperwork lined up and done at the International Cultural Center,
and then I had my way to become a cowboy.
(15:56):
The training was not easy. I made a lot of mistakes,
get screened, dad alive, and yes, like many other cowboys
out there, there were times that I thought about couldn't
now thinking back, I'm glad I didn't do that. Still
was a hard laugh. Every day started early in the
morning and you won't get done until the sun goes down,
(16:18):
and sometimes we would be still working when the moon
is up and high. However, I would not trade anything
with the experience I gained on the journey of becoming
a cowboy. I couldn't wait for the school to be
over so I can go back to the Feet Guard
and participate in beef cattle production. And the relationships I
(16:41):
formed with cowboys and other people who are in the
beef cattle industry, who may not be cowboys, but still
crucial to provide safe and sustainable animal protein to America.
There was a period of time during my transformation where
it did struggle very much about identities. Am I Chinese?
(17:04):
AM I American? Am I Southerner? Or what kind of
Southerner I was? For my case, Over time, the philosophy
of Buddhism really helped me to ease my urgent questioning
on the matter, because eventually I do realize, no matter
what identity I claim myself to be, at the end
(17:27):
of the day, I put down my cowboy head, take
off my cowboy boots, and falling asleep by myself what
its self? Who's really able to answer that? Whenever and night,
despite whoever I'm with, or whatever I've done, or whatever
I've been going through, I fall asleep by myself. And
(17:50):
maybe that is me And I acknowledge that. While I
was learning the accent and trying to southern now as
myself further, there were times that I denied to learn
about other people. But if I really think of it,
everybody have two or three meals a day, go to work,
(18:13):
come home, and go to sleep. No matter what color
you are, or no matter what kind of identity you
claim to be, it is the same way. Everybody is
fundamentally the same. So on this journey of southernizing myself,
it also made me more open minded towards others, which
is kind of like the opposite of what people really
(18:35):
perceive of how Southerners would think of people who are
different from them. At least for me, via this journey,
it was through the self embodiment of Southern culture that
I realized I'm not that special, and I'm happy to
be in that way too. Through this journey, it made
(18:57):
me pay attention to the suffering of marriage people, the
earthiness of agriculture producers, and the humbleness of sun and
nurs It is these difficult times that make me realize
how much I care of this land which I only
spent one third of my life, and I sincerely wish
(19:21):
my journey on this land will continue, no matter how
dark the shadows in front of me might be or
how brightly the sun may arise from tomorrow. Thank you
very much for listening to my friends and partners. Wish
you a safe and wonderful day.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Bye, And you've been listening to Bruce Wang, and my goodness,
what a voice, what a story, what a journey. We're
broadcasting from Oxford, Mississippi, just south of Memphis. We love
the South too, so many people from here from everywhere
else in the country, having developed a real taste for
(20:03):
rural and rural suburban life and the intersection of both.
Bruce Wang's story a classic American immigrant story. Here on
our American Stories.