Tag: identity formation

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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?

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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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Astronaut Monsters

I am Taiwanese Canadian; the order of those words does not matter, and I get to pick and choose the best of both worlds.

Creator:
Carolyn Wang 王郁庭 (she/her)

A common experience among Hong Kong diaspora (but also other diasporic groups) is to be part of an astronaut family: a type of family configuration in which a parent move back to their place of origin while the rest of the family remains in the new home. The goal is for the parent who moved back to earn more money than they would if they had stayed in the new environment, allowing the family to have more money and purchasing power. Despite such advantages, this is an immensely stressful arrangement for everyone involved: The parent who went “home” becomes isolated from the rest of the family for an extended period of time; the parent who stays is forced to play multiple roles as the sole parent in the home, and the child(ren) end(s) up experiencing a significant lack of parental support from one parent. Altogether, these dynamics often lead to fraught relationships between family members, leading to conflict and even marital dissolution. Carolyn’s poem is an emotionally powerful account of her experience within an astronaut family and lots of other diasporic experiences that many other migrants have also had. What might allow for greater psychological and relational resilience between and within family members in astronaut families?

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“You’re too white to be Chinese!”

I have my own voice and that voice is very, very, very unique.

Creator:
Peggy Chau 周柏蕙 (she/her)

Imagine that you are simply a human trying to authentically identify with your cultural heritage; but for various reasons, the environment around you places barriers that prevent you from exercising agency and authentically accepting and acting out that identity. This is a common experience for biracial/multiracial people who are often gatekept from identifying with any combination of their cultural identities. They are always too much of one, and not enough of the other…and which one they are too much or not enough of changes constantly depending on which cultural group they talk to. This severely impacts biracial/multiracial folks’ self-confidence, preventing them from finding a cultural voice with which they are most comfortable. Peggy speaks with someone who has dealt with these identity issues throughout her life, and we get a glimpse into how she navigated her identity quandary to be the culturally confident individual that she is today.

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Click on the following to reveal the podcast’s transcript (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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Recon”Net”ting

These forms…not only bridge geographical distance…but [act] as archival sites for deeper historical education.

Creator:
Tiffany Yau 丘苑婷 (she/her)

When considering diasporic studies, it isn’t enough that we consider first generation diaspora – second generation+ diaspora are a significant and oft-overlooked part of the population (both in terms of media representation consideration, and in academic interest). While cultural identity formation and maintenance is (relatively more) straightforward for first generation diaspora, second generation+ diaspora tend to have more trouble and confusion in this arena. By having their existence and experiences ignored by mainstream media, they feel that the mainstream culture has invisibilized them, affecting their self-regard and feelings of belonging. At the same time, they might also have trouble connecting with their heritage culture due to lack of access to heritage cultural products (e.g. pop culture, heritage media). Tiffany breaks down how improving cultural representation and diversity in mainstream media has helped bridge some gaps between multigenerational diaspora and the mainstream culture, and how the internet (replete with its convenient access of heritage cultural media from “back home”) has been a boon for these same diaspora trying to connect with their heritage culture. What avenues do you go through to connect with your culture?

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Reimagined: Chinese Weekend School

How can we restructure weekend Chinese school so that it will allow the students to develop, gain, and maintain Cantonese proficiency?

Creator:
Emily Huynh 黄愛怡 (she/her)

For those who had to give up 3 hours of their Saturdays as children so they can be sent over to school and learn a Sinitic language (likely Cantonese, Mandarin, or both), the vast majority will report how much they hated it because they were stuck in a classroom while their friends were sleeping, playing, watching movies, hanging out, doing anything other than being in school after already having spent 5 days at school earlier in the week. It also doesn’t help that these schools follow a highly rigid educational format based heavily on memorization and dictation, with little concern for learners’ experience and whether or not those traditional educational styles are suitable for diasporic children. At the same time, many diasporic adults also report that they either are thankful for having retained their heritage language, or wish that they had been better able to retain their heritage language. This highlights the importance of heritage language proficiency retention among diasporic speakers, and the need to reconcile this need with the pragmatic challenges of diasporic childhood language education. Emily presents a series of learning plans, supported by academic sources, to try to make the Cantonese-learning experience much more enjoyable than the current traditional approach. If you were a child learning Cantonese, would you have found this helpful?

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