Low on the Go!

on being Chinese.
part 1.
(this will be a series on being Chinese in a Western world, which will include memories and perspectives on being culturally Chinese while clinging to an identity that is not of this world)

Chinese New Year has come and gone (for those of you who didn't know, Chinese New Year was this past Sunday). i love Chinese New Year, one of the reasons being that it offers a new opportunity to commit to resolutions that have been reneged on since January 1st. Chinese New Year also comes accompanied with little red envelopes, embossed with gold, which contain some sort of goody, in the form of cotton with the head of a queen or a former prime minister on it (by this, i mean money).

i have few memories of "feeling Chinese" whilst i was growing up. Sure, because of genetics, my skin colour, my last name, and the fact that i was extremely proficient at math, everyone knew i was Chinese; this was simply the default norm. Even so, i rarely felt Chinese. i wasn't the traditional Chinese kid; my parents had studied in London, and spoke English to me at home. They did not have the typical "flied lice" Hong Kong accent and my mum held (and still holds) disdain for speaking Cantonese (even though she can speak this, Mandarin and Hokkien fluently). Everyone else's parents (or so it seemed) spoke Cantonese. When i was three, i started to attend preschool. My parents did not enroll me in an English preschool, nor did i attend a Chinese preschool. Instead, they enrolled me in a francophone preschool because they felt that if i was going to live in Canada, then i ought to be truly Canadian and learn the two national languages of Canada.

One Sunday, during Sunday school at church, i ended up in the wrong class and everything was conducted in Cantonese. We were sitting in a circle. i must have been four years old at the time. i had no clue what was going on, but i didn't know how to tell the teachers that i was in the wrong class. So i sat in the circle, quiet and still, like a deer caught in the glare of headlights from an oncoming car. Suddenly, we were going around the circle, each child taking a turn to say something. When my turn arrived, i didn't know what to say, so i didn't say anything. The teacher kept saying something to me, but i didn't understand. Everything she said seemed like a mouthful of cotton. Finally, the pastor's son, Benjamin, piped up, "She doesn't speak Chinese!"
Everyone laughed. Even the Sunday school teachers.
That was the end of me liking Sunday school.

Most of my memories of "Chineseness" were from Chinese school after Church on Sundays. Every Sunday, after church, my daddy and i would drop off my mum at home, and he would drive me 45 minutes to the south end of town so that i could attend Chinese school. i would eat my sandwich in the car (cheese with the crusts cut off), nap, and wake up in time to enter the dreaded halls of Chinese school. The building i had Chinese class in was actually a high school, which had been designed in the 1960s as an experiment to test whether students would be less distracted if the building had no windows. It constantly felt suffocating. The concrete slab of monotony--this is what Chinese school was like for me. i felt awkward around the other Chinese kids.

One day, i was sitting in class. It was the first class of the school year. The teacher called me up to the chalkboard and asked me to write my name on it. i wrote it down, full of confidence.
When i was done, the teacher clucked, and told the class that i was so old and yet didn't even know how to write my name. They laughed.
She told me that i was writing my name the "baby" way, with simplified characters. i ought to grow up and write my name with traditional chinese characters. Everyone laughed again, and from that day until the end of the year, i had no friends in class. i would eat my snacks alone, sit alone, and feel alone.

i remember feeling very "white", as though i were peering in on the lives of other Chinese kids, who were better at being Chinese than i was. Though i caught glimpses, i never felt as though i wanted to be a part of this Chinese world. Perhaps though, it wasn't that i did not want to be a part of this world, it was that i just couldn't be a part of this world. It wasn't only the building that lacked windows. i always felt as though i lacked a window which would allow me to fully see what it meant to be Chinese.

i used to hate Sundays. For a long time, i thought Jesus must only love Chinese speaking people. i also thought that not knowing how to write my name in traditional Chinese characters instead of simplified characters made me stupid. Only on Sundays, did i ever have to write my name in Chinese on chalkboards.