曾经推荐过一篇短篇小说用中文说爱你，原文是华裔作家Ken Liu的The Paper Menagerie. 文章以折纸为线索讲述了母子二人在文化冲突下产生的隔阂和最终的理解。妈妈来自中国，是一个mail-ordered bride, 她不会讲英语。随着儿子慢慢长大，他越来越讨厌妈妈。其中有一段:

Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. "Fashao la?"

I brushed her hand away. "I'm fine. Speak English!" I was shouting.

"Speak English to him," Dad said to Mom. "You knew this was going to happen some day. What did you expect?"

Mom dropped her hands to her side. She sat, looking from Dad to me, and back to Dad again. She tried to speak, stopped, and tried again, and stopped again.

"You have to," Dad said. "I've been too easy on you. Jack needs to fit in."

Mom looked at him. "If I say 'love,' I feel here." She pointed to her lips. "If I say 'ai,' I feel here." She put her hand over her heart.

Dad shook his head. "You are in America."

相比西方国家而言，我们中国人在情感表达上比较含蓄，这慢慢的也成为了我们的一个标签。在Google上搜索关键字"Chinese parents don't say I love you", 会有许多的解释。对我们的父母说“我爱你”，他们的反应是如何？2014年的时候有一个"测试":

One clip shown on an Anhui TV station showed a group of college students telling their parents "I love you" - many doing so for the first time in their life. Some parents were baffled, answering with questions like "What is going on?" "Are you drunk?" or "Are you pregnant?"

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=k01780b4vdm&width=500&height=375&auto=0

Daily Life的编辑Candice Chung写到:

One of my parents’ favourite ice-breakers is, “So, have you eaten?” It doesn’t matter what time of day it is or which meal, specifically. Rather than asking each other how we are, we’d end up spending most of the time describing our dinners over the phone.

Like many Asian families, we’d become incredibly proficient at reading cryptic emotional signs. There may not be big hugs and open praise, but once in a while, mum would put an unexpected fried egg in our noodles or dad would try and make conversation by asking us to pronounce, then spell every street name he’s ever had trouble remembering. Those, as we’d try to explain to our friends, are their ‘affectionate’ sides.

From time to time, my sister and I would wonder whether it’s time we started challenging the awkward PDE (public display of emotion) policy at home. But the sheer difficulty of trying to make our parents break character after years of polite reticence would end up holding us back.

我们有我们独特的PDE policy, 简单的一句“你吃了吗”有着满满的爱意。我很喜欢的一个YouTube频道Wongfu Production拍了一个短片What Asian Parents Don't Say

开始的时候觉得“父母是人家的好”， 自己“躺枪”了，最后的时候又是非常的感动。语言只是传递情感的一种方式，这种方式可以有很多种，无论是含蓄的还是直接的，我们分享同样的温暖。

我一直觉得不同文化之间分享更多的是相同点，"After all, just like any random person next to us, we’re all people with feelings, social creatures of some sort that need to love and be loved in return."

一起来看这个短片，顺便学一下英文。

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=t0178fqnzkr&width=500&height=375&auto=0

试一试对你的爱的人说一句I love you吧, 或许ta会很开心。

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