I hate family reunions.  I know what you're thinking -- it's
the cruelty of sitting in a crowded room filled with people that you
hardly know while they pinch and prod and compliment and question you;
the only thing that's missing is the white-hot spotlights.  That's not
what I really hate about family reunions, because my relatives don't
do that.
	Or maybe they do.  That's the problem.

--
	
     There's a stereotype about Chinese people and the way they talk;
their voices are low and quiet, respectful and perhaps a bit
embarrassed as they struggle to coax those halting English syllables
from tongues that have never known an L or an R.  You'd only believe
that if you'd never heard them speaking to each other in their first
language.  In Chinese, they are transformed -- they are loud and
boisterous like the Italians, their words carry the lyrical lilting of
the Irish, ... I guess it's ironic that I break one stereotype by
viewing it in terms of others.

--

     Standing there, looking at those rows of strange, dancing strokes
of ink, marching row upon row, I was suddenly reminded of another form
of pictorial language representation -- Egyptian hieroglyphs.  When I
was young, I was fascinated by the hidden depth of their meaning. 

--