A lot of people wonder how Chinese bird parents raise such stereotypically successful birds. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many flying whizzes and chirping prodigies, what it’s like inside the flock, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it.
Here are some things my chicks were never allowed to do:
- get preened by another bird
- visit another bird family's nest
- fly in a V-formation with birds I haven't met
- complain about my regurgitated meals
- sit on telephone wires
- get any USDA grade less than an A
I'm using the term "Chinese bird mother" loosely. I know some Korean, Indian, Jamaican, Irish, and Ghanaian birds who qualify too, as well as some sparrows, chickadees, cardinals, and ravens. Conversely, I know some bird mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always hatched in the West, who are not Chinese bird mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western bird parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties: budgie, ostrich, seagull, etc.
All the same, even when Western bird parents think they’re being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese bird mothers. For example, my Western feathered friends who consider themselves strict make their chicks practice flying 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For a Chinese bird mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough. If one of my chicks has worked harder than another, I feed that chick first. The one who has displeased me gets a claw in the face.
Despite our squeamishness about avian stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and quantifiable differences between Chinese birds and Western birds when it comes to bird parenting. What Chinese birds understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it--getting the early worm, pecking out the eyes of frightened townspeople in a Hitchcock film, appearing majestically on the back of a United States quarter. To get good at anything you have to work, and chicks on their own are goddamned lazy fuckers, which is why it is crucial to crush their wee spirits.
Chinese bird parents can get away with things that Western bird parents can't. Once when I was young--maybe more than once--when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, not opening my gullet responsibly wide so she could fill me with her regurgitation, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Peking swallow dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of willful beaky disobedience. But it didn't damage my bird-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage. I felt like a bird.
The fact is that Chinese bird parents can do things that would seem unimaginable--even legally actionable--to Westerners. Chinese bird mothers can say to their chicks, "Hey fatty--are you training to be fois gras?" By contrast, Western bird parents have to hop awkwardly around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and "preening" and "mating season" and never ever mentioning either f-word, and their kids still end up in roasting pans and as roadkill.
Here's a story in favor of coercion, Chinese-bird-style. One of my chicks did not quite have all her adult feathers in yet, but I was pushing her to fly before the rest of the birds in our neighborhood of trees. Sure, she had big bare patches on her wings where I could see her unattractive prickly pink skin. She plummeted out of the nest over and over again. After she climbed back up for the hundredth time, she announced in exasperation that she was giving up, and hid her head under her scrawny, underdeveloped wing.
"Get back to the edge of the nest now," I screeched.
"You can’t make me."
"Oh yes, I can."
Back at the nest edge, my chick made me pay. She thrashed, flapped, and pooped indiscriminately. She tore apart the fine mud and twig sidewall of our nest. I threatened her with jet engines, avian influenza, taxidermists. When she still kept flopping right out of the nest, I told her she was purposely flapping like an inferior Western bird because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, bird-indulgent, and pathetic.
My bird husband took me aside. He bobbed his head a few times, squawked, and told me to stop insulting our chick--which I wasn’t even doing; I was just motivating her--and that he didn't think threatening her was helpful. Also, he said, maybe she really just couldn't fly--perhaps she didn't have the proper feathers or wing strength yet--had I considered that possibility? "
You just don’t believe in her," I accused.
"That's ridiculous," he said scornfully, puffing out his chest feathers. "Of course I do."
"Our last chick could fly when she was this age."
"I'm pretty sure that last chick was a cuckoo that had pushed all of our eggs out of the nest," he pointed out.
"Oh no, not this again," I said, blinking my beady eyes with their creepy scrotum-like bird-eyelids. "'I don't think this giant bird is ours,'" I mimicked sarcastically.
Then, out of the blue, our chick did it. She spread her wings wide, all full 35 centimeters of her proud Chinese swallow wingspan, flapping them so swiftly they became a fantastic blur, and she hovered in the air for a second before returning to the nest's edge.
My chick realized it the same time I did. I held my breath. She tried it tentatively again. Then she flew higher, faster ...
And that's when that hawk just picked her out of the sky in its giant talons.
My bird husband left me after that, but fuck it, I'm a goddamned superior Chinese bird mother.
A lot of people and birds see Asian avian mothers as scheming, callous, overdriven birds indifferent to their chicks' true interests. For their part, many Chinese bird mothers secretly believe that they care more about their chicks and are willing to sacrifice much more for them--like, say, their chicks' very lives to a giant hawk with mighty talons. In conclusion, caw! Caw caw caw squawk caw!
Now, where's my motherfucking brandy? I'm going to drunk-fly with a hundred of my closest friends and fall out of the sky dead, freaking people the fuck out.