The Cut - The Monterey Park I Remember

Born in the Year of the Pig, I grew up seeing the symbol of good fortune and prosperity everywhere. Pigs were an auspicious sign to be born under, and my parents took that seriously. Glass, wood, and ceramic pig figurines decorated every shelf in our house, and garish stuffed pigs lined my dresser and the tops of our closets. But classmates I invited over often found my parents’ obsession with pigs strange and overwhelming, so as a kid I shied away from embracing my Chinese-astrology counterpart.

That all changed one day when my uncle took 6-year-old me to the locally beloved SUPERCO appliance store on Garvey and Atlantic in Monterey Park, California. In the parking lot, a large picnic blanket covered with children’s toys caught my attention. An older Chinese woman sat on the sidewalk beside it, a black visor shielding her eyes from the sun. A plush, pale-pink pig stood out to me in the sea of fluorescent animals. “I want that one. I’ll name her Piggy,” I said in Mandarin to my uncle, who knew my distaste for pigs and was surprised at my choice. Unlike the Chinese sculptures that stood out around our house, this pig looked like any other American kid’s stuffed animal; I could keep this part of my heritage with me everywhere I went while still feeling like a “normal” kid.

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