What does my Asian heritage mean to me?

My name is Ivana. To many of my Chinese relatives I am seen as not Asian enough because of my birthplace – Canada – and to many people who are not Asian, am categorized as the typical quiet Chinese girl.

 

I am a Chinese Canadian.

 

I hesitated to speak about Asian Heritage Month because I felt undeserving of representing parts of the Asian community in Shawnigan, because maybe I was not Asian enough to speak on behalf of an Asian community.

 

But then I realized that there were people like me – stuck in the ambiguity of ethnicity and nationality. Where you struggle to answer the question “Where are you from?” knowing that the answer people want to hear is China, and not Vancouver. So today, I speak for the second-generation immigrants: people who are stuck in the middle of two communities.

 

To begin, I would like to address that Asian Heritage Month does not look to undermine other groups of individuals. It is an opportunity to understand and celebrate the histories and growth in the Asian community. When I discuss Asian Heritage Month, it is never meant to criticize and antagonize white people for their privileges; rather, it is ultimately intended to encourage discussion of helping the people facing hardships to create a safe and kind world, while celebrating Asian heritage.

 

So, what does my Asian heritage mean to me?

 

It means being an ingredient household at home. It means being banned from cold water by my grandmother, loving spicy hotpot, and having to make a toast every 20 minutes at the family dinner table. Speaking timidly with my mother tongue, Mandarin, in a Chinese restaurant. Burning incense in a Buddhist temple. Awaiting my pocket money on the midnight of Lunar New Year. Or watching the flames of paper offerings to my great grandparents every year.

 

It means eating an egg for my birthday.

 

I always try to remember my roots and traditions. The beauty of my culture, my identity. I try my best, and my best should be enough – but it feels like it is not.

 

It feels like it is not enough when I feel shamefully different in a group with people who are not “like me.” When people mock me for my mother tongue, creating a hateful likeness of the Chinese language. When a stranger comes up to me on the streets with vicious nicknames, their goal is to shame me for my ethnicity. Discounted for my good academics simply because of my Asian look, and not my hard work. When my culture is exotified, and seen as cringe. When I myself desire to peel off the skin of my “Asianness” to feel like I belong.

 

Some Asians have coped with this feeling of not feeling enough by finding humor through poking fun at stereotypes to make something cruel, lighthearted for us – kind of like laughing at ourselves. Yet on the other hand there is this implication: that maybe we are feeding into the microaggressions of discrimination by making them lighthearted. To be honest, I don’t know the right answer to this.

 

But maybe my speech today on Asian heritage month is meant to be a wave towards people from East, South, Central, and Pacific Asia as human beings reaching out. Because sometimes we forget that we were all babies once, all crying once, heartbroken once, fighting once, hopeless once. Experiencing the same things, yet feeling so isolated from the world.

 

There is this word, “sonder,” meaning the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Look around. There are over 400 people in the Chapel living their own lives, with their own families, and their own dreams. I hope that during Asian Heritage Month we consider this word with a bit more reflection – sonder: every passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Everyone has a story, so why can't we create a little more love rather than hate?