Bruce Wang, All-American: The Chinese Cowboy With A Southern Accent

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Bachelor in Paradise premieres Thursday 9, 8 central on ABC. And stream on Hulu. This is our American Stories. And our 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're about to hear, Bruce may be Chinese born.

But he's all American. Here's Bruce Wang to tell his story. Hi friends and partners. It's been my great honor to be invited by Mr. Greg Hengler. To be on the show and talk about my experience here in America. My name is Shibo Wang.

But I also go with Bruce. When school is on, I am a graduate student at Texas Tech University. But when there's no school, I am a feedlot 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, that might be me. I am from Kunming, Yunnan, Southwest China. And the city where I came from has the nickname of the City of Eternal Spring.

Meaning that the weather in my hometown is always like spring all year round. So in a sense, I was a southerner in China. Then I came to the States and became a southerner 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 to my parents. Got on an airplane and then came here to the States.

Set my foot on the soul of America. The very first state that I went to for college was the state of Oklahoma. And we got on this minivan from the airport and the driver just took us to the campus. And I know on the map it said Oklahoma City. So I've been sitting in that minivan for a long time and all I saw was just 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 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 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 much at that point. Because I had a lot of friends from other countries, other continents, and I was fine at that time. After the second year of me being in 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 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 just 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 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 understanding of all the stereotypes of Texas, this is one of the least places I would ever want to come.

But eventually I thought about it and reflected upon my experiences with so-called racism in America that eventually came to the conclusion that the most important determining factor of my happiness is me, 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? When my mentor came to Oklahoma, we loaded up my stuff, and we were on our way to Texas. Unfortunately, when I got to Texas, things had a downturn.

There were more churches. It was a bigger campus, which made it more difficult to make friends. And after the first semester, since I transferred school to Texas, I decided to drop out because coming to a bigger university with a better engineering program made me realize I had zero interest for being an engineer. And I just did not see any point for continuing my higher education. So my mentor 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. 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 my major to interdisciplinary studies, which contained three minors instead of a major. And during that summer, my appendix was about 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 this one day when it was about to rain outside, I saw clouds getting thicker and thicker, and then raindrops started to tap on my window.

Everything else was just quiet. And that was the moment I thought about how wrongly I judged myself, how wrongly I judged a society that I didn't even know. And in what other way can I further learn about this 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 the rodeo, 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 hat on, and he was in charge of that gait, 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 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 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 States started. 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 on Our American Stories. The 2023 NFL season is here. Nothing compares to witnessing it live, in person.

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Learn more on Tech Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. weekly listen to echoes of history bagdad sound walks on iheartradio or wherever you get your podcasts for each person living with myasthenia gravis or mg their journey with this rare neuromuscular condition is unique that's why untold stories life with myasthenia gravis a new podcast from iheartradio in partnership with argenics is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with mg host martine hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by this rare disorder each episode will uncover the reality of life with myasthenia gravis from early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care every person with mg has a story to tell and by featuring these real life experiences this podcast hopes to inspire the mg community educate others about this rare condition and let those living with it know that they are not alone listen to untold stories life with myasthenia gravis on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts so and we continue here on our american stories with the story of bruce wang and this is an all-american immigration story if ever we've had one now let's return to bruce wang and his story i believe one of the most important things that 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 asian person with a southern accent i made some jokes by speaking with a southern accent in front of my classmates and everybody laughed i thought it was fun so i started to look for more materials to enhance my ability to speak like a southerner but what i found during this process of learning the more i learned the more of an affection i developed for southern accents and even though before i was able to communicate with people in the english language by learning the accent would 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 foxworthy but as kind of a spokesman for this portion of the population i got to thinking 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 your knee then i did more research on how people talk in the state of georgia then 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 poverty for decades and there were people in poverty that i would never imagine that i would see in america but 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 classical literatures what they reveal is suffering from people regardless of culture and regardless of the country people's 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 and in a sense we are the urbanized hillbillies in china and typically we're about 10 or 20 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 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 attention duck dynasty on the surface it may seem like that the show was about a bunch of rat necks shooting ducks but what really goes deeper 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 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 that is so native yet important to some of the forgotten regions of america even though i was fascinated by how all the rednecks 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 so i started to think of other ways that i could do to further southernize myself by integrating myself not only linguistically but economically then 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 the most iconic images of america and to some degree the southern parts of america too