Friday, August 9, 2013

Identity Crisis

I was watching some Don Lemon's news clicps on YouTube, and the phrase cultural identity caught me. After a quick thought, I found that I'm in some serious identity crisis, or not.
My college major was history, and I plan to further pursue it. I watch NBA and College Football, even played basketball. I'm a huge political junkie. I listen to country. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I'm not a big fan of rice. All these things, though sound like jokes, are not Chinese at all.
A "practical" major, not caring too much about sports and politics, K-pop or J-pop, atheist/Buddhist/Chinese Protestant church, and rice, on top of that, marrying a Chinese wife. These are the expected Chinese things to do.
I can still pull some stereotypical Chinese thing out. I have an accent. I'm good at math, tested out 200 level math before starting college in the States. I'm good at physics, probably can still go get a physics degree anytime in my life. Nevertheless, do these things really matter?
I understand Chinese history and culture better than 98% of Chinese people, if not more. I also know far more Chinese characters than almost all college graduates who ain't experts of the field in China. Though haven't been writing for a long time, I'm still an upscale writer in Chinese by professional standard. I can probably still read Old and Classical Chinese without using dictionaries, which most Chinese major collage graduates in China can't even dream of.
So while I don't seem to be a Chinese, I'm indeed more Chinese than not only the Chinese in the U.S., but mass majority of Chinese in China. But people don't really care about that. Indeed I've been called banana, meaning yellow skin outside but white inside, many times. Here comes up the question of what determines my Chinese-ness.
This is just absurd, because if I were living China right now and still acted the same way - of course I'd be using Chinese a lot more than English but I only use the appropriate language to the audience - the term banana would never come across people's mind. Thus the conclusion comes, it's really not I'm having an identity crisis but the people who label me are having one. They are afraid of losing their cultural uniqueness because they don't understand the culture therefore they can't hold it other than voluntarily or/and involuntarily fit into the stereotypes. Sad? Yes.

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