In honor of #AAPI #heritage month, I was invited to share my story with the #AsianAmerican audiences living in NY + LA. But perhaps, this story will resonate with you as well :)

One of the first books my father gave me was Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. I was 5 at the time, going to school in England, and identifying very much with Alice’s adventures and quest to know herself, who am I?

The culture gap is like this rabbit hole that drops you down a crazy chasm to a battlefield of identities and values that are often in conflict with one another. This has been, and remains where I live my life.

我爸爸給我的第一本故事書是《愛麗絲漫遊奇境記》。我當時5歲, 在英國上學, 我對愛麗絲掉進了兔子洞之後不斷地探險，同時又不斷地追問“我是誰”，這種心情非常理解。文化鴻溝 - The culture gap - 就像這個兔子洞，掉進去了才意識到這不僅僅是一個 gap，這是一個非常瘋狂的一個深淵，然後他會把你 drop 到一個身份和價值觀會經常互相衝突的這麼一個戰場。 This is where I grew up. 這是我長大的地方。

The first time I was asked to write my story was a Grade 5 writing competition. I was handpicked by our Chinese language teacher to enter the competition as the class representative, which came as a shock, because up until that point, Mandarin was my weakest subject. Out of all the given options, the only topic I could comfortably write about - without being wrong - was “My Story”.

我第一次分享我的故事是在小學五年級的時候, 當時是作文比賽。我是被語文老師點名去的, 這對我來說就已經是個很大的big deal，因為當時語文課是我最弱的一門課，所以在所有列出來的題目當中，我唯一能夠寫的主題是“我的故事”。因為無論我寫的是什麼, 應該都錯不了。

What kind of a story would an 11 year old have? You might ask. I was the only Chinese student (out of almost 2000) who had joined the school from being abroad - I had failed the entrance exams (math and Chinese), so I was placed into second grade instead of third, where I had come from. Where I was from, I was just beginning to study French and the violin, subjects which did not exist in the Chinese school. Everyone thought I was weird - from my clothes to my (non-metal) pencil case. There were those who were curious about me - and they welcomed me, surrounding my desk (to look at my foreign objects and… me, the foreign object), whenever there was a class break. Then, there are the ones who called me, “traitor”, because I had come from England.

或許你會感覺，一個11歲的孩子會有什麼樣的故事？ Fair enough.

My mother told me that my teacher told her that I spoke incredibly slowly and read Chinese like a foreigner. I couldn’t tell, but what I do remember is that for a long time, I pronounced music as “yin le” instead of “yin yue”, because my dance teacher’s name was “le le”, the same characters, and I had no idea that characters could look the same but be pronounced differently - this concept was non-existent in the English world that conditioned my past years.

當時老師跟我家長說，我讀課文跟外國人一樣，然後我的語速也非常慢。我是沒有感覺到，我自己沒有意識到，但是我記得我一直都非常肯定地把音樂讀成音 LE，因為我小時候有一個跳舞老師，我管她叫 “樂樂姐姐”，她的樂字就是音樂的樂字。因為我認識，我就覺得這是念 LE，因為在英文裡，多音字這個概念是不存在的。

Even as an 11 year old, I noticed sharp differences between the cultures, expectations, expressions, and therefore difficulties, misunderstandings, and moments of unintended humor, in communications. All of which I recorded on the pages of the writing competition. When the bell rang, I was beyond relieved. I was completely stunned when my laundry list of cultural misadventures ended up winning first prize. I was asked to read the piece out loud over the school PA system. That was the first moment I was made aware that by simply sharing my experiences - what I saw, what I heard, I was already translating culture and showing people - even, or rather, especially Chinese adults, “the big people”, the very real things they couldn’t have understood, fathomed, or imagined to be possible before.

儘管我當時只有11 歲，我已經開始察覺和體驗到了文化與文化之間的這種巨大的差別， 在溝通上造成的種種障礙、困難、鬧出的笑話、和誤解，我把一切都寫在了作文競賽的紙上。響鈴的時候, 如釋重負。萬萬沒有想到我寫的作文會得一等獎。在獲獎之後，學校要求我通過學校的廣播系統來根全校來分享這篇作文。那是我第一次意識到，就是從非常簡單的分享一些非常真實的所見所聞，我已經在 translate culture, 翻譯文化, 而且更重要的就是讓我意識到我的這些故事能夠讓大人們看到一些他們之前設想不到，想像不出來，或者是覺得不可能的一些事情。但是這都是非常真的、另外一種生活方式。

#西方生活 #西方文化 #ThirdCultureKid #文化鸿沟 #第三文化