Tag: cultural identity

Posted on

Chinese or Canadian?

I’d rather be called a ‘banana’ without the laughter and mocking of my pronunciation

Creator:
Hailey Leung 梁嘉怡 (she/her)

People used to assume that one’s cultural identity is extremely simple: For bicultural individuals, their two cultural identities change like a hydraulic system – the stronger that one identity is, the weaker the other identity becomes. More recent work recognizes that cultural identity is complex, and numerous things contribute to one’s cultural identity – comfort with particular cultural values, preferences for cultural foods, proficiency with various languages, and others. It’s no surprise, then, that bicultural individuals, including Hong Kong Canadians, often find themselves to be at the crossroads of two cultural worlds – kind of fitting in both, but not really fully embodying either. Hailey’s comic does a great job of depicting her personal struggles with her bicultural identity – whether it was because of her accent, her family’s perception of her, or the discrimination that she faced. What other factors do you think can also impact someone’s cultural identity?


Posted on

Cantonese Through TikTok

“Proud of you girly. Cantonese is hard!”

Creator:
Deborah Wong (She/her)

Anyone who learns Cantonese as an adult will tell you how difficult it Cantonese is to learn. Just figuring out the different tones is enough to confuse even the most motivated of learners. This can get even more frustrating for heritage diasporic learners because they may feel the pressure to learn it, some shame in not knowing it, and numerous other feelings. Traditionally, learners have had to learn Cantonese either formally through classes (which have historically been difficult to come by due to the lack of offerings), or informally through friends and family. As Deborah details in this piece, TikTok has emerged as a key platform to provide relatable resources to help diasporic individuals learn and improve on Cantonese, replete with a comments section that, for better or for worse, connects millions of users together. In what ways do you think TikTok content differs from other types of content to help learners pick up Cantonese?

Posted on

Food is Life

Food physically represents beliefs and values that would otherwise be intangible and difficult to maintain morale with.

Creator:
Mandie Leung (She/her)

When one thinks of a diasporic community, it takes very little for us to get to the question of “What foods do they eat?” Afterall, food is one of humanity’s basic needs, and food varies dramatically across different cultural groups. This variation indexes the different geographical, geological, and climatic conditions from which these cultures emerged; the interplay with other political entities; and individual ingenuity. In this piece, Mandie traces how foodways for Hong Kong diaspora persist, and help Hong Kong diaspora preserve and maintain their connections to a distant home – real and imagined – whether it’s through Hong Kong style cafés, or dim sum restaurants. When you think of Hong Kong food, what other offerings can you think of?

Posted on

Endless Waiting

I’ll see you all underneath the pot, in another life.

Creator:
Andie Lloyd 李安安 (Any pronouns)

Being “diapsora” means navigating complex feelings of maintaining one’s original identity and a sense of “foreignness” in a foreign land. For Hong Kongers who have either self-exiled or simply moved abroad in search of bigger and brighter futures, whether in Taiwan, the UK, Canada, or elsewhere, the search for familiarity and “being settled” is often an endless search. In Vancouver, this constant straddling of the two motivations has led to the proliferation of Hong Kong cultural amenities across the Lower Mainland, allowing fellow Hong Kongers to gather, reminisce, and complain how something doesn’t compare to what they’re like in Hong Kong. In this work, Andie highlights real-life experiences of Hong Kong diaspora both from their own perspective as well as others, accompanied by a playlist of quintessential Cantonese music. In what ways do you think diasporic individuals try to strike a balance between familiarity and settling in – or is there something wrong with this question in the first place?

(Note: There is a playlist that accompanies the following piece: Access playlist here

Posted on

A plea to Cantonese parents

beg of you to try your best to pass down the language to your kids.

Creator:
Tim (he/him)

Regardless of how people perceive the current and future status of Cantonese in Hong Kong, it has always been an important goal for Hong Kong diasporic parents to ensure that their children will be able to maintain some level of proficiency in terms of Cantonese. Despite this ideal, many diasporic children end up growing up losing the ability to communicate in Cantonese, potentially leading to an inability to connect with older members in the family who do not speak English, and also an inability to participate in relevant cultural experiences. Sometimes this is a response to experiences of racism, sometimes this is because of pragmatic concerns of not wanting to go to Cantonese school, and sometimes parents simply lack the time to teach their children Cantonese properly themselves. Timothy’s impassioned plea for Cantonese-speaking parents to pass on their language to their children based on his personal experience is worth considering. What are some effective methods for Cantonese-speaking parents to pass down their language?

Posted on

Frozen splinters

“I feel like I’m in the middle between [a HKer] and [a Canadian].”

Creator:
Joshua Liu (he/him)

When we think about any given diasporic group, there is often a tendency to homogenize people’s mental representation of that group, and the Hong Kong diaspora is no exception to this either. In reality, there can be much disagreement (and agreement) amongst the Hong Kong diaspora on various issues, including something as fundamental as cultural identity. Joshua’s interviewees and his analysis clearly point out the varied nature experiences amongst the diaspora, and also point out the intergenerational schisms that exist within the community. This is especially apparent within churches that have been a prominent safe haven for many newcomers from Hong Kong by providing community and spiritual support. The older waves of migrants interact with numerous political issues differently than the younger wave of migrants, and they also adopt different cultural identities as well. Do you think that intergenerational differences are qualitatively different for diasporic populations, or all intergenerational differences the same?

Posted on

Milk tea, pineapple buns, egg tarts, satay beef, BBQ pork rice, baked rice, macaroni soups

“If you’ve ever eaten at a HK cafe in HK, you’ll know what I mean” (Liang, 2023)

Creator:
Michelle Wong 黃嘉敏

Food “from home” is such an effective way for people to connect with their heritage culture because food is not just about the process of eating it. It entails the flavours of home, the smells of home, and even the sounds of home. Eating food “From home” may even transport people back to the very scenes in which they had eaten that food. For folks in the Hong Kong diaspora, they seek various types of cultural assets in Canada so they can still have moments where they feel like they’re home. Nostalgia “hits one right in the feels,” as they say, and it gets triggered by all sorts of things – by food, by people, and by sights and sounds, among others. Michelle focuses on how night markets (夜市) and HK-style cafés (茶餐廳) serve as the trigger point for nostalgia and cultural connection for Hong Kong diaspora in Canada. What other cultural assets serve as similar trigger points for you?

Posted on

Can I call myself a Hong Konger?

[W]hat right do I, as a [Canadian-born Chinese], to say I am also a Hongkonger?

Creator:
Vivian Lee (she/her)

The identity label of “Hong Konger” is fraught with political and ideological implications. For some, access to this identity is simply migration and ancestral history. For others, access to it implies having had certain kinds of experiences. In particular, the idea of “Hong Konger” has become intimately tied to the 2019 Pro-Democracy protests, which has created significant contentions among Hong Kong diaspora due to their absence from the city during the height of the protests. Vivian’s work transports the reader through her mental struggle with this term, and her journey of figuring out whether or not she has the right to call herself a Hong Konger. She also links the label to linguistic and cultural knowledge, which is tied to various intersectional considerations in and of itself. Read through her work to see how she reconciles this conflict for herself – but understand that this may be different for other people. How differently can others reconcile this same identity confusion?

Posted on

Of Confucian women and men

“I embraced my Asian heritage a lot more in elementary school…but in high school — I don’t think…as much.”

Creator:
Sharene Kim

Acculturation can be a difficult and confusing process; but while it might be tempting to give overarching support or advice for people going through the acculturative process, one must also understand the intersectional nature of acculturation. For example, those who have a low socioeconomic status will likely experience acculturation in a very different way compared to someone with a high socioeconomic status. In this podcast, Sharene interviews two people who speak about how they see the gendered and cultural nature of acculturation as well, and how this might even coincide with different forms of cultural identity that they have come to adopt. Based on relevant cultural perspectives and expectations, how do you see people from different cultures and genders differ in how they acculturate?

Posted on

Immigrant parenting practices

“My parents didn’t have the expectation of us studying to become doctors or lawyers, just a non-labour job (斯文工)…”

Creator:
Samantha Ma 馬煒文

Parents are ultimately humans who are trying their best to do something they have never done before, in a time period that they have never experienced before, within cultural forces that they have never had to understand before. Parents often parent based on how they were parented, meaning that they are often mimicking behaviours that were used in a different time, within different cultural forces. And when these parents are diasporic, these differences in time and culture become even more amplified. Samantha interviews her parents to get a sense of how they lived with their parents, and how they perceived culture to have played in how they were parented. In turn, Samantha explores how those experiences may or may not have affected how her parents parented her, particularly from the perspective of considering the impact of culture. How might parents and children reconcile with each other in terms of coming from vastly different cultural perspectives and assumptions?

Spam prevention powered by Akismet