I always looked forward to going to the Ranch 99 Market with my mom as a child, especially after my art lessons. My mom would award my hard work with my favorite Hello Panda cookies or Pocky. Ranch 99 is a popular Asian grocery store. The name of the chain includes “99,” which I learned is a number that is considered to be lucky in Chinese culture, because the number nine in Mandarin sounds like the word “long-lasting.” Ranch 99 is one of the only places where you can find my mom’s favorite gai lan mui (Chinese Broccoli) and the Lee Kum Kee Oyster Sauce. It’s also where Chinese families go to buy ingredients to prepare for Lunar New Year and mooncakes for Zhongqiu Jie (Mid-Autumn Festival). Growing up shopping at Ranch 99, I was caught off guard when I struggled to find Asian snacks at a regular grocery store with only a shelf of “ethnic” products.
This was not the first or only time I felt as if my culture and food were confined. My parents sent me to a Chinese Immersion school in Kindergarten, where the curriculum was taught in Mandarin, and my peers looked just like me. There, I learned how to read and write in Chinese, as well as the history of the Chinese Zodiac, and I celebrated East Asian holidays. However, my family moved to a new town, so I was pulled out of the immersion program and began attending a traditional school. I did not know that Caucasian people existed outside of movies or TV shows before moving schools. My mom still laughs at the time when I met my first-grade teacher at the new school, and I began to cry because I was afraid of the sweet white lady. My classmates were from all over the globe. They tried to make conversation with me, but my English faltered in front of them. I struggled to convert Mandarin characters in my head into English letters that made sense. At lunch, I scanned the cafeteria for anything that resembled the Lo mein (Chinese dish with noodles) my mom had packed me. Still, I only saw brown paper bags with fruits, sandwiches, and cafeteria-served pizza slices with rubbery cheese I could never digest. After the final bell rang that day, I ran into my mom’s arms and begged her to let me go back to my old school, but to no avail. My mother never tells me that she loves or cares for me as if “Wo ai ni” (I love you) is taboo. Instead, she prepares school lunches and plates of carefully cut fruits for me. That night, my mom made me my favorite braised duck with the oyster sauce from Ranch 99 to celebrate my first day.
Although people say my English is nearly flawless now, I still feel like that little girl in first grade sometimes. I know that I am entitled to take up space, and I should be proud of my heritage, but it can be difficult to remember these things when the world says differently. While I have never experienced blatant racism, I have scabs from the comments people have made that were not enough to kill but enough to nick me and remind me of how I am unlike them. In times like these, when I feel small or restricted, I go back to the place I know will always welcome me. Ranch 99 is freedom from the grocery stores with a sad selection of Asian snacks, and more importantly, I can peel off the labels that people have slapped onto me because of the melanin of my skin and the shape of my eyes. In the aisles of Ranch 99, I am no longer seen as the “straight-A student” or as “quiet,” but as somebody who belongs. Someone with roots that stretch all across the Pacific Ocean and who keeps stashes of Hello Panda cookies and enjoys home-made braised duck.
Revisiting Ranch 99 empowers me to be myself and recognize my Chinese heritage unapologetically. Knowing that I am indulging in the same dishes and snacks as my relatives seven thousand miles away strengthens my connection with them. I hope that Asian Americans like me can all embrace who they are and the food, holidays, and language that they inherited from their ancestors. May our roots and resiliency as a community remain “99.”
Kaelyn Tan is a high school sophomore from the Bay Area, California, interested in literary arts and advocacy. Her work often explores themes like identity, coming-of-age, and social issues. When she is not matchmaking words, she enjoys studying East Asian history and drinking pearl milk tea.
Featured image by Mae Mu on Unsplash.
