chinese – Tertiary

Samantha: Where I Belong

Samantha was born and raised in Hong Kong, where she attended international secondary school. She studied her undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, and now works with Friends International in Scotland to support international students.

Ethnically I am Chinese. But in terms of national identity, I have never felt a strong tie to my Chinese heritage. The reason for this may be due to growing up in a multicultural environment.

I lived in Hong Kong, but grew up listening to and watching American pop culture. At home, I spoke Cantonese with my parents, while at school I spoke English with my peers. I studied in an international school under the UK education system, where my classmates were the children of expats and immigrants from all over the world.

In class, our teachers referenced things from the UK which I had never seen in Hong Kong: Jaffa Cakes and scones among other things. They also shared stories about themselves from their childhood years, waiting eagerly in the mornings for the milkman to deliver glass bottles of unhomogenised milk, and how they would then fight with their siblings to be the one to sip the cream on top. They were experiences which I had never encountered and can only imagine.

Since most of my education was in English, it became my dominant language. I remember once my Chinese tutor said to me: “you are not Chinese”, because of my poor ability to communicate in the Chinese language. It stung. I held back tears, determined not to cry in front of her. Looking back now, I do know why that hurt me.

As humans, we deeply desire to belong. Our sense of belonging impacts our identity.

Living in Hong Kong, I struggled to fit in with the local Chinese people no matter where I went. I always thought it was because of my poor Chinese, but after going to the UK for university studies, I found that I could not fit in with the local British people either. Although I had the language, I did not have the culture.

We International school kids are a community of our own. We have our own culture – a product of the east meeting the west. There is nothing else quite like it.

Though quite at home in our own little circles, we were very much foreigners to the locals. So then where did I belong? And what determined this? My ethnicity? The language I spoke? The place I spent the most time in? My culture?

One summer during university break, I joined an international student outreach. It was run by Friends International, a Christian Ministry organisation that aims to reach international students in the UK with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

On our team that year, we had nine members from eight different countries. We were all from different places, with very different upbringings, and all spoke English as a second language. But as I listened to the stories of these people and shared with them mine, we connected in a way closer than I have ever felt to any community. This was very interesting to me, and as I probed at it in my mind, I slowly began to realise that it was because we are united in something bigger, something that transcends language and culture, place and time.

You see, when we believed in Jesus and gave our lives to Him, we began to share life with Him and with others in Him. We became united in His family, in wondrous fellowship with brothers and sisters of every race and age around the world, and this is a bond profoundly deeper than anything else!

I found where I belong: in God’s family.

Eleanor: Fluently

“But inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.”
Anthony Marra , A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

My name is Eleanor Chin. I was raised in the United States, in the Bay Area in California. Best known for its veritable traffic jams, increasingly bizarre tech unicorns, the astronomical cost of living, and extremely liberal political bent, it is also home to a significant Asian-American population.

My father is Chinese-American, my mother is Caucasian. Adopted from China at six months, I grew up speaking only English, and mostly spending time with other purely Caucasian families.

From a young age, I had a natural inclination toward foreign languages and mythology traditions from other lands. I was very good at Spanish, I taught myself French, and I played around with a few other languages. I was a hopeless dunce at mathematics and sciences, however – a trend that would continue into my later schooling.

At age eleven, I began attending a Chinese school with many Taiwanese immigrant families. I was wildly in love from day one – the tones, the script, and of course, the miniature toys the teachers would bring us as homework motivators. For the first time, I began to be conscious of my Chinese heritage, noticing that my family’s values, priorities, and habits were significantly different from other kids in school. I used to hang out with a bunch of white girls, but I started seeking the company of other Asian-Americans.

I took my first trip out of the United States at age fourteen, to Vietnam. It was a significant experience, and I came home with a renewed love for Asia and its languages. I got more serious about Chinese, finding a private language tutor, reading more books about Chinese history, and actively pursuing friendships with people from China and Taiwan. I also began to read memoirs about Chinese-American experiences. Outstanding: Growing Up Asian, by Cynthia Meng, and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua brought into striking relief a sneaking suspicion that I wasn’t an “authentic” Asian American.

As I observed my family and community, I found myself to be at odds with myself in multiple directions, enhancing this belief. First it was the academics. There is typically a lot of pressure in an Asian-American homes to bring home excellent marks in school, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) related subjects. I never experienced this kind of pressure, and as I was a complete dunce in maths and sciences anyway, I was extremely grateful. But still, I felt that I was cheating somehow, that I should experience that kind of pain to legitimize my experience as “truly” Asian-American.

Then there was the violin. I started playing of my own accord. My parents never made me practice, and I never partook in any violin competitions, let alone win any of them. This bothered me a lot. A common theme in the “real” Asian-American world is the prevalence of developing inner discipline through a musical instrument. I played the violin, like a “regular” Chinese kid, but I wasn’t very good, because I didn’t practice enough—to me, it was worse than if I didn’t play at all. I was really ashamed of myself, as if my credibility in being Chinese-American hinged on how many violin competitions I won.

Finally, there was Chinese. I was very, very good at learning Chinese. I had more fun in Chinese school learning words than I had in youth group throwing water balloons. It might have been the drug of being so spectacularly good at something so effortlessly, but I was totally, completely in love. I think I poured so much into learning Chinese because I desperately wanted to have a meaningful relationship with my Chinese self. A relationship that wasn’t at odds with the cultural norms, and that would also be understandable to my non-Asian friends.

I went off and lived in Taiwan and China, one year in each place. In both places, I found that I was more culturally American than I thought. Despite my significant language abilities, and sometimes in light of them, I found myself once again estranged. Now, I was not only a bad Asian-American, but also a bad Asian.

Why did I ever learn Chinese? I asked myself. The last ten years have been an extreme waste of time.

Jhumpa Laheri, author of In Altre Parole, once wrote of missing the Italian language, “that emotional distance is always more pronounced, more piercing, when, in spite of proximity, there remains an abyss.”

My Chinese had already hit a glass ceiling years ago, so I subsequently tried to define myself more fully as a linguist by pursuing Japanese and Korean, which are close cousins. Fluency evades me though; my emotional connection to these languages is just not as deep. Or maybe it’s because I’m still burned out from a decade-long linguistic journey that brought me right back to where I started.

Language shapes existence, and so despite being thankless, onerous, and insanely demanding, I remain in awe of and inspired by foreign tongues. The word I cannot pronounce may not be in Chinese, or for that matter, in any language I know.

I trust that someday though, I’ll speak it fluently.

Language-Learning Blunders To Make You Feel Better About Your Own

Language learning is hard. It’s slow and frustrating and really embarrassing! I was sure I couldn’t be the only one who was making humiliating language slip-ups, so I turned to Twitter for a little back up.

You can follow my Twitter here: @DaniAtSea

We don’t usually wake up fluent in a new language, so be patient with yourself, and know that when you inevitably do make this kind of blunder…you’re not alone!

Love, Dani

What are your language-learning mishaps?