The Currency of Silence

Chapter 1 – Essay

We all learn early what our voices are worth.

For some, that worth is measured in respect, power, or love.

For me, it was measured in silence.

This is the story of how I broke free from that currency.

Lessons from the Table

I was six, maybe seven, the first time I realized that being right didn’t matter.

We were at a Chinese restaurant that smelled like overboiled fish and expensive status. Chandeliers hung too low above round tables, each one dressed in white linen and lazy Susans spinning under the weight of shark’s fin soup, Lapu-Lapu, dim sum, and fried rice. Our extended family was gathered—uncles in Hugo Boss shirts, cousins fidgeting, aunties complimenting one another’s designer bags through clenched teeth.

I sat and listened while the adults talked—loud, confident, and wrong.

Someone made a sweeping statement, a whole theory built on facts that weren’t facts at all. The logic was cracked, the worldview worse. I remember thinking: No. That’s not how it works. Even then, I had a library in my head. And I knew how badly their words veered off course—not just in content but in consequence. The way they saw the world shaped how they moved through it, how they raised their sons, how they dismissed their daughters.

I opened my mouth to correct them.

Then I closed it again.

Because I already knew my place.

In my family—and in much of Chinese culture—there’s an old but enduring belief:

重男轻女 (zhòng nán qīng nǚ).

Value men, belittle women.

Not in slogans or speeches, but in daily decisions. The boy gets the better piece of meat. The boy stands in the center of the family photo. He learns how to make money. The girl learns how to dance and serve tea.

It wasn’t personal. It was just the air we breathed.

And I wasn’t just a girl—I was a quiet one, a clever one, and worst of all, a non-earner. I didn’t bring home money. I didn’t bring honor. I didn’t bring status. In that restaurant, my presence was ornamental, not functional. And in this family, where business acumen was the highest form of love, I had no leverage.

I learned early that voices have a currency.

Words can be as loud as your bank account.

And mine, at six years old, was worth less than zero.

Being “good” was our unspoken religion. It meant following the hierarchy, even when it hurt. It meant obeying your parents because they worked—and money was sacred. It meant not embarrassing your uncle, even when he was smug and wrong. In my house, goodness wasn’t measured by kindness or character. It was measured by obedience. By silence.

To speak out would have been rude.

Irresponsible.

Ungrateful.

Unfeminine.

And very, very un-Chinese.

How dare I betray billions of people and my own ancestors?

So I stayed quiet.

I stayed quiet at twelve, when they didn’t bring me to a party because I wasn’t “the pride of the house.”

I stayed quiet at twenty-five, when my manager said I left work too early, when I was already doing unpaid overtime, covering for his poor planning.

I stayed quiet at twenty-nine, reheating food for a boyfriend who was still playing video games when dinner was ready.

I stayed quiet again and again, hoping someone would notice that I was still here. Still working. Still, for God’s sake, good.

But silence collects interest.

And after years of deferring, dimming, and disappearing, the debt came due.

One night, standing in my kitchen, holding a bowl of cold noodles I had reheated for the third time, I realized:

I had made myself so small I had disappeared.

And the woman I buried to be loved?

She was clawing her way back up.