Between two worlds – that’s what it means.
People who know me well will probably know some of my struggles with my ethnicity, heritage and identity – being a 7th generation Asian from a multi-racial country like Malaysia, married to a French and now expecting a bi-racial child. I don’t speak Mandarin (sometimes I suspect my in-laws can’t grasp the concept of that being remotely possible), my Cantonese and Hokkien is passable despite my best efforts to improve it and when it comes to Chinese traditions, I’m nitpicky especially with things like my pregnancy and soon, confinement.
It’s strange when you think about it – did you know that my French (oral, comprehension, etc) is way better than my Mandarin? I can actually understand French movies and such with little to few problems, I can read stuff without any issues and it’s not a problem listening to convos (participating takes a lot more effort but I can still do it if I want to) but change the language to Mandarin and well, I just tune out, and can’t be bothered. What’s worse is that I don’t really see the “need” to learn Mandarin because I’m not Chinese – I’m Malaysian and my Malay is just fine, thank you.
Food-wise, people find it shocking sometimes that I can cook European, Western and Asian food well. On the other end, there are others out there who feel that I should just cook European/non-Asian food because I’m married to an angmoh. Urm, Nil doesn’t dictate what I cook – in fact, I cook what I like to eat and it so happens that he likes what I like.
While I don’t have it as bad as many others who are in the same gigantic ship, I still feel the pressure to be more “Chinese” than I actually care or want to be, especially now with the baby on the way. Throughout the pregnancy, while people were telling me about all those Chinese old wives’ tales, I’ve been dishing out studies and medical reasons to counter them. With the confinement coming up ahead, I’ve come to logging heads with my mum on certain practices like not bathing, not drinking plain water, not being able to go out, not washing one’s hair and etc. Sometimes I think she wishes I were more Chinese and “accepting” of these tales. Then of course, there are the little things like what names to pick for the baby, baby traditions, baby care, and stuff like relating to my in-laws (what a good Asian daughter-in-law and wife ought to do – HUH?) and so forth.
So when I came across an entry by ciderpress, I could, well, related to it greatly. There are times when I feel that people scoff at me and my reluctance to simply embrace everything just because I’m Chinese. Some people word it gently with the whole “better to be safe than sorry” while others resort to emotional blackmail/threads with “when you’re old, you’ll know” and others are just blunt – “how can you call yourself Chinese????”.
I find it sad that I have to be apologetic and guilty for being caught in between two worlds, for having the best of two worlds in me. To a degree, it pains me to have to deny the “angmoh” part of me just to fit in socially, especially back at home. I would be seen as a “banana” – white on the inside, yellow on the outside, and oh-too-modern/complicated like those next generation ipods that will soon go out of style. There are a number of things that make me stand out among my peers – the fact that I’m not very career-minded, and am homey with my hobbies make me the oddball out sometimes. Yet here in Europe, people are rather accepting of my traditional yet modern beliefs although they do wonder why I can’t speak Mandarin at all. Well, you can’t have everything!
I guess I just wish that ethnocentrism weren’t such an attractive thing with most folks back at home.
Trouble is that I’m more worried about how my little one is going to cope with all of this. I know Eva won’t have it easy, growing up as a child caught in between two worlds. I mean if I’m already having problems with the whole cultural thing now, what more her? She will have it tougher than me as I come from a “mono-cultural” family while she is really from two different worlds. The last thing I want for her is to spend her childhood and a good part of her teen years growing up in just one world and not knowing the other side of her (sorry but just learning the language isn’t good enough for me – it’s a start though).
I only hope I’ll do right by her…
