| Jan102008 | Race Relations |
So, every Asian I meet seems to play this little game. Ok, so not so much a game as a conversational ritual. When you meet someone new: you find out about their name, how they know so-and-so, the neighbourhood they live in, job, hobbies, etc. It’s getting-to-know-you stuff. And every Asian I meet brings up the topic of exactly which part of Asia we all come from.
It’s harmless, right? Everyone I’ve met kind of shrugs it off but it bugs me no end. I know there’s nothing but good intentions behind it but I feel like I’m being stereotyped based on faulty information. I’m Chinese. My parents grew up in Vietnam and inherited a lot of the culture and food from there. I was born and raised in Australia. I’ve never had much of a Chinese streak to me. I resisted learning the language, I’ve never been to China and I felt like the ethnicity made me an outcast in my white-as-white Catholic schools.
Hui-Ai and Fay; a smoky and humid Chinese New Year in 2005.
My heritage may be Chinese but there’s no connection there and I sympathise with Australians because they had all this European heritage that was conveniently forgotten. There’s a healthy respect for their roots but they don’t huddle in little communities of ex-pats, they don’t suffer from identity crises they don’t identify as Scottish, Irish or whatever. In short, they’re second (if not third) generation immigrants and they’re a world removed from their ancestors.
Moving to Seattle and being lost in Japan has shown me the other side of the coin. In these places, I’m an Australian ex-pat and I glimpsed at the mentality; the need for the familiar and that sense of belonging. At a very basic level, I understand these feelings but I simply don’t belong in a Chinese-centric environment. I don’t like being pigeon-holed as Chinese because I think there’s more to being a certain nationality than blood alone. I feel like a fraud amongst genuine Chinese ex-pats trying to re-create their own little slice of home; a distant relative that may as well be a complete stranger.
A few years ago, we had a distant relative from London visit. He brought with him an 8-year-old son, Sebastian, and I just didn’t understand the little guy. He wanted cheese pizza, McDonald’s and Xbox and everything was in a cockney accent and god forbid any vegetables end up on his plate. It’s the same disconnect I feel now, the tables have turned and I’m the young guy with the convict accent asking for chain food when you’re offering me the traditional stuff that has nourished people for centuries.
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