“Where are you from?”
That’s one question that should command a simple answer, because it’s a simple question, right? Where are you from? Where is home for you?
Simple, wasn’t it? My Chinese immigrant parents moved to Toronto, where I was born, in the district of Scarborough. I could have grown up there, attended school in the suburbs, perhaps gone into French immersion, graduated and attended university in the area. Born and raised there.
My Dad then got a job offer in Bothell, a small town in Washington State. We flew to the United States and settled there for four years. I went to elementary school there, and as my social awkwardness was a roadblock in my quest to find friends, my Mom often invited her girlfriends over who brought their children as playmates. While the mothers were talking about boring, grown-up stuff, I was shooting Nerf guns into people’s faces and screaming like Tarzan. I was happy.
Then when I was ten years old, my Mom walked into my room while I was playing on my Nintendo DS, and said something that made me drop it.
“Dear, we’re moving.”
Huh?
Clack.
“Your Dad’s company said he would be a really good fit in China.”
What?
“We’re moving to Shanghai next month.”
I couldn’t quite take the news at the time, and I burst into tears, thinking that I could pity my Mom into letting us stay. I saw my world being taken away from me: my friends, the hill in our neighborhood I loved to go down at full speed on my bike, the playground where I would climb on top of the monkey bars and call for Jane.
It was all gone, and I couldn’t quite comprehend just how far away Shanghai was, in a country I had visited a few times when I was younger, but it was always temporary. I would always go back home.
I went to an international school in Shanghai, so I mostly spoke English, apart from our daily Chinese lesson. I was placed in the lowest level class, where I was the only Chinese person there — my Mandarin was that bad. But it wasn’t until later that I got questions about why I was Chinese but couldn’t speak Mandarin. I never knew how to answer that. Saying that I grew up in North America seemed embarrassing, as if I wasn’t a real Chinese.
Whenever people asked me where I was from, I would say Canada. Despite not remembering much of my supposed home at all, that was always my go to answer. No, but where are your parents from? China, I would say begrudgingly. I began searching up Canadian idioms and traditions in an attempt to self-acculturate. I would take it personally whenever somebody brought up my heritage, even and especially when they said I looked Chinese. My Mom called it an identity crisis and she was completely right. I sought after an identity as I couldn’t quite reconcile the fact that I was Asian but also didn’t fit the description of a typical Asian who spoke the language.
I eventually grew out of that phase, and didn’t start to have these questions and thoughts again until I graduated from high school in Shanghai, and moved to Vancouver to attend UBC. During orientation, the one question that was near guaranteed to go with every handshake and introduction was:
“Where are you from?”
This time, my answer varied from, “Oh, I was born in Toronto, but grew up in Shanghai,” to simply, “I’m from Shanghai,” to the complete story, “Born in Toronto, lived in Seattle for a few years, and then lived in Shanghai.” I felt like I was telling people a little piece of the puzzle every time, as before, in Shanghai, I could only say the places I had lived in before — Canada and if I felt like it, America. I now could say out loud all these different places, each so different from each other, yet each had a piece of my cultural identity.
In Introduction to Sociology, one of the assignments was to write about one aspect of yourself, and connect that with a broader theme in society. As I thought over my own experiences moving around and living in these different countries, I came across the term, “Third Culture Kid,” TCK for short. A concept I heard of before, but never really looked into. People who were born in one country but spent a significant amount of their childhood in another. As I explored further into several articles about TCK’s and seeing all the personal accounts, their hardships in fitting into either culture, and how they developed a greater sense of culture and their worldview, my jaw dropped many times.
These people were so much like me! I was seeing my own experiences, and how I truly, truly was not alone in them. It felt like a canopy that had been covering my eyes was now lifted.
I still remember the boy who wanted to be just Canadian, who couldn’t fit those puzzle pieces of where he was from together. I’d tell him to relax, and enjoy the process of wrestling with his cultural identity.
But I’m no longer as confused. If people ask me where I’m from, I don’t think I can give a simple answer, but that’s okay. Who knows, if I move to another city, will I let others know about my chapter in Vancouver as well? Would it be a continuous cycles of the places I’ve put not only my culture in, but also bits of my heart? I’m starting to think there’s something beautifully complex about that.
Near the start of university, before I looked into TCKs and my Sociology assignment, I shared a slam poem in front of a crowd during orientation. I wrote about trying to fit into two shells, that each represented a side of me—the North American self and the Chinese self.
“I was embracing an empty shell, one where it looked North American on the outside, but where there should have been a beating heart, there wasn’t. I looked behind me at the Chinese shell, and saw no life there either.”
When I left Shanghai, my home for eight years, I began thinking how much I treasured my time there. How it didn’t take away from an identity I had, but only added layers upon layers of knowledge about the world, my classmates, and myself. I still sometimes think about what if I hadn’t moved from Toronto. I could really have grown up in one place, and how different that would be.
But I’m done with giving simple responses. I’m done with thinking one place was your home — just that one place for life. The world is so much bigger than that.
As I neared the end of my slam poem, I looked into the audience, at all the different faces, from a mosaic of backgrounds, each with their own stories to tell. I took in the fullness of the room, sucked in a deep breath, and gestured to the room around me.
“This…is my home.”