on being chinese

after writing the post on my grandfather, I realized how much I enjoy writing about my cultural past and started to sift through some of my writing published on the blog I ran during my time in China. I found a few gems that I thought I would re-publish here. This one is from November 14, 2016:

It happened again today: Wow, your English is so good!

The statement is posed with a surprised yet puzzled look, more of a question requiring some sort of explanation.

I am a bit stunned, not quite sure how to answer (‘well, I have been speaking since I was a baby’ would be too harsh considering the innocence of the question, but a launch into a full explanation of my background might be too overwhelming for this curious acquaintance).

“Thanks,” I reply, smiling warmly.

I remember when that response didn’t come as easy.

In the first few days of immigrating to Canada, it seemed like every receptionist, cashier and guidance counsellor I met was astonished with my ability to speak English, and I hastened to explain that no, Singapore was not in China and that in Singapore, English is our first language.

China conjured up images of rude tourists who cut in line, smoked flagrantly and talked to each other in decibels that would normally indicate an argument.

So, I shied away at all costs from being lumped into “mainland Chinese” category;

if anything, I was a hypenated Chinese, the closest culture I would dare to hypenate to being Canadian (after all, I did have Canadian citizenship).

Living in China for the past year and 2 months, however, has set me on a path of discovering anew the beauty of the Chinese culture.

In the same way that when you say you’re American, the other party blurts “Obama!” (or now, Trump, which may in fact arouse a stronger reaction), I believe that the Chinese people are often two-dimensionalized and pigeon-holed into a perception foreign media has conceived of:

the people of the rising dragon that pollutes the environment, suppresses free speech and bans Facebook (what?!)

Some parts of that perception are true, just like how all stereotypes are based on some slant of truth.

I don’t think I will ever get used to the indiscriminate spitting of phlegm (I have no idea how one could even cough up that much phlegm!) or the babies who wear bottoms that expose their bum so they can defecate in public places with minimal inconvenience.

Facebook, Google and Youtube are banned, although there is really no need for it, given how ubiquitous the likes of Wechat, Baidu (and Baidu Cloud, the Chinese version of Google Drive) and Youku are.

Living in such a bubble, however, does cause people from ‘wai guo’ (literally translated “outside world”) to be treated like celebrities, and food chains like Starbucks and McDonalds are inundated with people wanting a taste of what food is like in the land of America.

“What is it like in ‘wai guo’?” I get asked a lot, or, “Is this what you eat in ‘wai guo’?” as I make myself a mushroom omelette.

I have woken up a couple times to my housemate frying herself an omelette and muttering to herself, “So this is how they do it in ‘wai guo’. I am making ‘wai guo’ food.”

“Wai guo” is great, I want to tell them, but China is too.

I love walking the dusty streets of my village in the dawn hours of the morning; it is here that the culture is tucked away, preserved, from the clutches of the Starbucks or the rushing city life.

It’s 5:30 but already, the “ah yi” is out arraying “you tiao” (a fried doughnut stick commonly eaten for breakfast) on the iron rack, steam rising from her wok of hot oil.

My landlord sits on a wooden stool outside her convenience shop with shelves of lined notebooks, pink rubber gloves and assortment of electrical plugs.

She waves to me and asks me if I have eaten.

Big bamboo baskets laden with sticky rice dumplings stuffed with sweet sesame line the streets. It’s festival time, and the lady who sells the best soybean in the village offers me two to take with me.

“Here, try this. I just made it,” she hands me a little plastic bag of dumplings.

A mother buzzes by on her electric scooter, her child perched behind her fastidiously working out the last of her homework before school starts.

Other children walk to school, wearing the red necktie all school-going children are required to wear. They point and scurry away scared as I pass them with my two dogs. They’re friendly, I assure the children.

I corral the dogs back home, past the chicken coop where they love chasing distressed hens and past the gambling den, now empty in the daylight but at night, full of middle-aged men, smoking and playing mahjong.

Past the drain of stagnant water growing moss and our terraced bamboo roof draped with wilting wintermelon vine, I feel like I belong.

And instead of the desire to separate myself as being a foreigner and thus from a cleaner, more organized and developed place, I want to be a part of this broken authenticity of a place.

I feel proud that the Chinese are known for waking up before the crack of dawn to fry you-tiao, that we make dumplings together and celebrate festivals together, that we do homework on the back of scooters driving to school.

I feel proud of the togetherness, the ethic of hard work, the foundation of family and the importance of education that has formed the basis of Chinese culture and propelled the Chinese from poverty into economic success.

And I feel grateful that no matter what countries I’ve been to or grown up in, I am always welcomed as Chinese.

“You’re ‘hua ren’. We’re Chinese,” they tell me.

There is a ‘we’ – who would have thought I would be a ‘we’ with the mainland Chinese, but I love being ‘we’.

“Yes,” I tell them, “my grandmother is from Guangdong.”

It makes them happy, and I take another bite of the preserved grasshoppers they offer me.

Crunchy, slightly spicy. Hao chi.