Identity Crisis

I recently paid a brief visit to the homeland to take part in a wedding. No, not Canada (which, unfortunately, looks like it won't happen in the near future due to my family being scattered across the world), but China. China had never been at the top of my list of travel destinations. It seemed too vast, too congested, too intimidating, with too many people. But when my friend Yuanyuan told me she needed me to be in her wedding party, I jumped at the opportunity. When else would I get to take part in a Chinese traditional wedding?

Despite the fact that both of my parents were the first in their families to emigrate from Hong Kong, and enrolled me in Chinese school for 8 years, I know embarassingly little about Chinese history and culture. This played a large factor in my hesitation in seriously considering visiting the country. I guess what I was really afraid of was the frustration and humiliation of not being able to navigate in my own home country. My Cantonese is conversational at best, and my spoken and comprehension of Mandarin is nonexistent. My Chinese writing is atrocious. For some reason, both of my sisters are much more fluent than I am. Although I find written Chinese characters are beautiful, the language is awkward and difficult to learn. The subtle inflections of each syllable means that one word can have five different meanings. I think my difficulties began when I was four years old, my grandma asked me to fetch her oranges for her and her friends. I misunderstood and instead brought her a dust pan, and the image of her and her friends bent over with laughter still haunts me.

Determined not to let it happen again, I tried to teach myself Mandarin and learn as much about Chinese culture as possible in the weeks leading up to my China trip. However, starting a new masters program this year with a 40 hour work week made it difficult. In the end, I thought I had learned enough phrases to get by, and boarded by flight from Sydney to Beijing filled with confidence. The air hostess examined my boarding pass and asked me a question containing three words in Mandarin. I gave her a blank stare, and it felt like admitting defeat when I told her I didn't speak Mandarin. This was the first of a thousand similar interactions throughout the duration of my trip. The following posts will be about my observations of what it feels like to be a foreigner of Chinese descent traveling through China.

Air China's mystery lunch. Top 3 worst airplane meals ever.