Tag: diasporic guilt

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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?

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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

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Reflecting on Migration

The strum of cascading xylophones are my parents FaceTiming us 7pm our time, 10am their time.

Creators:
Agatha Chiu 趙倩怡 (She/her)

Migration is often seen as a pathway to a better life – a chance to leave behind troubles at home, difficulties in one’s current circumstance, and burdens from one’s family. Unfortunately, the realities of migration are often very different from those that people imagine. Loneliness. Homesickness. Missing family. Missing food. Acculturation. Many things. People engage in all kinds of artistic pursuits to express their migration experiences. In this series of poems, Agatha details her own experiences of migration – whether it’s about trying to connect with family back home, or finding her place in this new culture by navigating a lot of self-doubt and lack of belongingness. Do her experiences resonate with you as well if you have a migration history?

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“Ten Years” Later…

Seeing all this unfold, I feel guilty that I can’t fully participate in the protests.

Creators:
Amber Lee 李瑋翹 (she/her)
Stephy Tsang

One of the most memorable and monumental moments in Hong Kong in recent history were the Anti-Extraditional Law Amendment Bill protests in 2019-2020; but that is only the latest installment of a history of protests and demonstrations in what had been a healthy democratic society in Hong Kong. The previous protests in Hong Kong were in 2014, more popularly referred to as the Umbrella Movement, which pushed for more democratic electoral reforms in Hong Kong, which went against that which was decided by the Mainland Chinese government. Much like in the 2019 protests, the 2014 protests saw violence against protestors perpetrated by the police and other pro-Establishment (i.e. pro-Beijing) groups. All of this has been seen as the quiet encroachment of China’s political influence on Hong Kong’s politics and civics, leading to the film called Ten Years. In their piece, Amber and Stephy co-wrote a series of fictional diary entries of two youngsters who went through the 2019 protests, watched Ten Years, and are reflecting on how accurate the movie was in depicting the backward slide of Hong Kong’s political landscape over the ten years since the 2014 protests. If you’ve watched the film as well, how prescient do you feel the film to be? (Note: The video plays very rapidly. When watching it, please pause with each screen to fully read and appreciatge this work).

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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?

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