Hey guys!
It's Jennifer and welcome back to the channel!
Happy lunar new year! Yesterday was lunar new year. It was a work day for me
Happy year of the ox!
This is actually my mum's like little cheong sam
that I'm turning into a shirt for now
and then in the evening, it'll be a dress.
in the evening I went out to dinner with friends at a restaurant
that was doing Chinese New Year dinner that night
And tonight, me and my friends who are part of this Chinese Cayman Islands Association Committee
are going to be hosting this Chinese New Year party
and the chef will be cooking like proper Chinese - Chinese food
So, in light of lunar new year
I thought I'd start a mini-part series on the channel, talking about.. Asian identity
It is something that I obviously grew up with and considered and contemplated over the many-many years
So for this inaugural episode, I wanted to explain my background
To summarise, I am a Westernised Thai-Chinese.
I was born in Thailand and I am a second generation Thai.
Thailand is actually one of the very few places with a very high percentage of Chinese immigrants from way back
And, um, most of these immigrants came from a region in Canton and they spoke a dialect of Tae Cheow
Chinese immigrants have immigrated to Thailand and have really gelled into Thai society
So my grandparents on my Dad's side were Tae Cheow Chinese people and they came from the Canton region
Specifically a place called San Tou is where my grandad came from. My grandma, I'm a little bit hazy as to where exactly she was from in China.
And on my mum's side, she is Malaysian Chinese and her family come from that Canton region as well
A lot of Thai Chinese people such as myself would consider themselves Thai.
There is a lot of pride in being Thai. Um.. that might just be propaganda of nationalism and things like that.
So for the longest time, I saw myself as completely Thai.
And it was only until I left Thailand, met other Asians, that I also realised that there was this aspect of me being Thai that was also.. Chinese.
My grandparents were pretty traditional, we had a lot of Chinese traditions built into our lives and our gatherings with our families.
We.. you know, celebrated lunar new year, celebrated moon festival, we had all of these, like, superstitions and beliefs of a person with a Chinese background.
My grandparents spoke a mix of Thai and Teochew Chinese so I actually understand quite a little bit of Teochew Chinese
We would go to Chinese restaurants when it's a big big family gathering. All my cousins who've gotten married married in a Chinese traditional way
as well as incorporating the Western receptions and things like that. Some of them have also incorporated like the Thai-style reception as well.
To add into the mix of that, dad had a part of his education in Malaysian in Penang. As well as in, London in the UK. So, he was quite Westernised
And my mum is Malaysian Chinese and grew up in an era where there was a lot of English influence in Malaysia
And she also used to be a flight attendant for Saudi Arabia airlines.
She was exposed to a lot of different cultures, different ideas as she was growing up
The fact that they exposed me to different cultures and different ways of thinking, I really personally really appreciate that. BUT
When I was much younger, it was definitely a certain point of frustration that I had to explain why I might know about certain things.
People kind of like usually see you as in a box - like, oh you're from Thailand, you're Thai, like, you know nothing else about other Asian cultures
that used to be quite frustrating when I was younger. It is still slightly frustrating now... but... much less so
So all of that definitely influenced the way I was brought up in both Thailand as well as in New Zealand
I moved to New Zealand when I was about 9 years old and grew up in New Zealand. So a lot of my way of thinking is also very much influenced by New Zealand Westernised ideals.
I had a lot of asian friends.
Kiwi Asian friends - either born in New Zealand or moved to New Zealand when we were really really young
and so we were kind of in this weird in between of being Asian and being Western. Not being accepted for a while and now we're accepted, so it's okay..
Like when you're already going through so much teenage changes ..
you just want to feel like you belong. It kind of made sense that we just kind of all like grouped together.
I didn't use to be super proud of my identities or anything like that
Think about all the stereotypes that each of those identities have. And - that's what I wasn't proud about.
Because I think, like, when people saw me - like, oh - you're Asian, you're Thai, so I'm going to judge you on that basis.
My parents wanted me to learn Mandarin Chinese and sent me to like Saturday schools and private tutors and stuff like that.
And - the first sentence that I strung together when I was learning Chinese, was: "Wo hen Zhong Gou laoshi"
which translates to: I hate my Chinese teacher.
My parents eventually allowed me to withdraw from these classes and not go anymore
Obviously, now I regret it. ' Cause now I'm like, damnit! It's just useful to know different languages in general
But at the time I just like didn't want anything to do with being Chinese or knowing Chinese at all
And then with my Thai aspect of myself, I wasn't proud of it for a while because..
of all the negative stereotyping about Thai women or Thailand
I have an English name as well as a Thai name. And because, highschoolers are horrible, they would be making fun of my name
I also wasn't proud of being like Kiwi either
Because other Asians who had experiences with New Zealanders or came to New Zealand would have these like negative experiences.
about like - oh like, New Zealand is like really racist and we speak weird and things like that
I didn't want to be associated with all of that either.
So it's like.. where do I belong?
After all these years, and I guess all these reflections and meeting new people and different people, I am much more comfortable with all aspects of my identity.
That's not to say that I still don't get frustrated when people are being slightly stereotypical or racist
Because... like... it's tiring
So that's it for this episode. Hopefully it was interesting and hopefully you found something that you can relate to
Please let me know in the comments section down below - in a summary how would you describe your Asian identity.
I think in the next episode I'll be talking about Asian beauty standards.. soo.. stick around for that one! Bye!!