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jcbanana-blog · 5 years

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A Child in China

I was born on the 9th of November 1996 from the south of China in the Guangdong province a city-town named Tai-Shan. Tai-Shan is a miniature city not big enough to be called a city but slowly developing into one also they are becoming more and more modern. My parents were not from a rich family, they were very poor. They had to sell fruits and many little snacks on the street to make a living. Before they decided to live in the city, they were living in a small village called JiShui it’s in the area of Shuinan just south of Tai-Shan. The reason why they decided to move into the city is that they had their first child and that was my sister. They want a better life for her and did not want her to be trap in the village where there was no future, therefore, they left to the city to make a better life and opportunity for her and for themselves. Six years later I was born, I didn’t have much memory when I was a child in China as I was too young to understand a thing. I didn’t remember the times I lived in China; they were not clear memories but I can pick up little by little of each piece of the puzzle. With the help of my grandma, I was able to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together, didn’t know if it’s true but it was better not knowing anything at all. So apparently on the day that I was born my father was not there, when my mother gave birth to me, it was my grandmother and her younger brother that stood beside her. As my father has already left to New Zealand working as a chef in a Chinese restaurant, he accepted the offer or should I say he had no choice but to go as we needed money. So yea the day I arrived in this world my father was not there, but this is considered to be quite common in China during those times as when you are from a poor family, the first priority was to earn money to support the family. According to ‘Academy for cultural Diplomacy the first set of Chinese Diaspora happened between 1850 to 1950, many Chinese workers left their homeland in search for employment in Southeast Asia and they were mostly male peasants from the coastal province’. During the 1950s to the 1980s, there were widespread violence and instability in the region so the Chinese migrants shift to more industrialized areas such as North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia’.

“Chinese Diaspora.” Academy for Cultural Diplomacy. Accessed May 26, 2019. http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/index.php?chinese-diaspora.

(Ding,2010) Ding, S. (2010, July), “Sons of the Yellow Emperor Go Online: The State of the Chinese Digital Diaspora”, Global Migration and Transnational Politics, Working Paper No. 13, Available at:http://gmtp.gmu.edu/publications/gmtpwp/gmtp_wp_13.pdf

After my grandmother told me about this, I was not mad of my father I was grateful because without my dad’s decision I won’t have come to New Zealand and met so many great people.

During the time I lived in China, my family faced a very serious problem, and that problem was me. As the one-child policy still exists during my time of birth, therefore they had to pay a fee so that I could get an identity to live in this world. This was one of the hardest times for my family as they had no money to pay for the fee and they couldn’t ask for help either as other members of the family were also poor. But I got lucky my mum’s aunty from America was coming back to China for a visit and heard about my family’s situation so she decides to help us to pay for the fee. What I got told was not a small lump of money, the fee was about 24,000 yuan and this considers being a lot of money during that time. I was happy when my grandma told me about this, I was very thankful towards her and I’m still is, saving my family and my life from this terrible occurrence. I felt like I owe my mum’s aunt a great deal as she was the one who gave me a second life in this world.

A few years later my dad came back to Tai-Shan to visit the family and also this was the first time I met my dad and it did not end well. I feel like this was where the conflict between me and my dad all started. The first time I encountered with my dad was that he picked me up as soon as he entered the house and I gave him a hard slap on the face as I did not know he was my dad. Honestly, I don’t remember this happening at all, I have got this information out from my grandmother. He put me down straight away and the whole family was in shock. This was the first time I ever hit my dad and it also will be the last. After he stayed for a week, he went back to New Zealand as he was working on getting the rest of the family over. Once my dad got it sorted, my mum, sister and I moved over to New Zealand shortly after. Apparently, I did not want to leave at the start as I was scared of what was going on so I hanged on to my uncle’s leg and wouldn’t let go but at the end, they tricked me with candy so I let go and then we were on the plane to New Zealand.

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jcbanana-blog · 5 years

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Growing up in New Zealand

It was 23rd of September 2002, the day we arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, the first city we stopped at and straight after on our second flight to Christchurch, the city that my dad was waiting for us in. We stayed in Christchurch for half a year before moving down to Invercargill, the city where my dad was actually working in. I started primary school in Christchurch for a bit so I can learn about my surrounds as this is going to be home for a very long time.

Growing up in New Zealand was a challenge for me at the start as I do not know the English language, so many things I had to learn and adapted to. School in Christchurch was the first step of life in New Zealand and that was when I obtained the English name, John. During the life in Christchurch, it seemed to have no difference towards my life in China, the only difference was there were more western people around, However where ever I go there is people from the same city as I, so life was a bit easier in Christchurch. But once we moved down to Invercargill the real challenged started, as there were not many Chinese people around so it was hard to get around places also there were no Chinese district areas like in Christchurch so life became a lot harder. The first day in school was horrible as I did not understand what was going around in class. Because during my half year in Christchurch I did not learn much English as everyone around me was speaking mostly Chinese. As time goes by, I was able to learn English as everyone around was speaking it and I had no choice but to learn it or else I would not able to talk to anyone in the class. Learning English came naturally for me as I was like a baby learning how to talk for the first time. Another way I learned English is by watching a lot of English movies and shows, I learned this way out of school and once I’m in school I learned by listening to classmates. Growing up in New Zealand was not an easy life, not knowing the language was one aspect but people that discriminate and racist towards Asian was another part. Kids at school used to bully me and called me names such as Chinese chicken, Ching Chong face and also, they would do the facial expression of a Chinese person such as stretching their eyes to make their eyes slimmer. This was part of my life growing up in New Zealand is a Chinese, it carried throughout primary school and all the way to high school. But I tended to have completely got dull of the feeling, as I think of myself is not a Chinese anymore so I decided to joke along with the kiwis which made myself think like a kiwi and speak like one, therefore, I am what people think of like a banana.

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jcbanana-blog · 5 years

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Banana?

So, what is a banana and we are not talking about the tropical fruit, so a banana is an Asian that have Asia blood but educated in a western way. It just like the physical appearance of a banana is yellow on the outside and white on the inside. It is an Asian who lost touch of its roots, losing its Asian cultural identity. Very similar to the term ABC, American Born Chinese. Another way to spot a banana is they are tended to be bad at math.

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jcbanana-blog · 5 years

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Life of a Banana

I have been a banana for my entitled life and nearly lost my Chinese identity as the only thing that still makes me a Chinese is that I can still able to speak a little bit of the language and also my physical apparel, apart from these two aspects, I’m pretty much a kiwi.

What made me today is the environment I grew up from as my body and speech trained to become a kiwi and learn its accent. Being a kiwi feels normal to me as I consider that New Zealand is now my home also some of my friends called me fake Asian as I have lost my Asian touch. One interesting aspect of a banana is that when people don’t know who you are on the inside they tend to just judge you from the outside so usually they think that I know Kungfu, they just assume that I know martial arts but realistically I don’t but I want to keep it this way as when I was a kid I always get into fights but there was no actual punching involved it was mostly verbal but once I take a step forward they just ran away. Sometimes I consider this to be useful as you can win a fight without physically hurting someone.

Being a banana in New Zealand is not an easy task even if my mine has become a kiwi but my physical appearance has not so wherever you go there is still racism following me around. An experience that I had was people came up to me and tell me to go back to where I come from also there was one time when I needed to ask for directions and the answer, I got back is ‘Ching Chong land is not this way it’s that way’ and they point towards the airport. According to Washington Post, Jennifer Richeson explains what causes people to be racist and he said “People learn to be whatever their society and culture teach them. We often assume that it takes parents actively teaching their kids, for them to be racist. The truth is that unless parents actively teach kids not to be racists, they will be”, “This is not the product of some deep-seated, evil heart that is cultivated. It comes from the environment, the air all around us.”(Richeson, 2017) Everyone preferer to be the same and not want to be different, therefore if they see others do it, they tend to follow as well. Being a banana, I start to not care as much as I don’t think of myself a Chinese anymore but if I was a true Chinese, I think this will hurt deep in the heart.

Wan, William, and Sarah Kaplan. “Why Are People Still Racist? What Science Says about America’s Race Problem.” The Washington Post. August 14, 2017. Accessed May 26, 2019.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/08/14/why-are-people-still-racist-what-science-says-about-americas-race-problem/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2e8a1cf89538).

One of the Kiwi elements that I have adopted is to have polite manners while you are eating your food. An experience that I have encountered was when eating at a restaurant while my neighbor table was a young Chinese couple chewing their food very loudly and talking with their mouth full, that is one thing I cannot stand as I find this quite disgusting and annoying.

Another element that I notice after I became a banana is that Asian people tend to be least independent than kiwis and they always do things together. Also, they do not like to hang out with people that are different towards them for example back in high school there were a few international students enrolled into the school they always stay in their group even in class they sat together and not talk to others, apart from their own group. Even if the teacher told us to encourage and engage with them, they would not talk or get along with you as like they don’t even try to speak with you. They just like to stick with each other and not move. Therefore, when I was in primary school and all the way to high school, I did not have any Asian friends, as I do not understand them. But once I arrived at University, I made a lot of Asian friends but the only difference was they are the same as me they are all bananas.

The hardest part of being a banana is not getting accepted by other kiwis but it’s getting along with your family. Whatever made me a banana today did not work well with my family as it causes many problems with my family especially my father. My father is the typical traditional Chinese father, ever since I moved over to New Zealand my father and I did not quite get alone as we both raised from different background environments, that causes conflicts so we tend to argue a lot.

My father wished for a traditional Chinese boy who will carry out the family name and get excellent grades for its education but instead he got a rebellious son who always goes opposite of what he thinks. For example, good Chinese children always think their own father is always right they should not have their own thinking but I tend to think differently. A child should always have their own way of thinking as they need to decide or judge on things on their own and cannot always rely on their father like this will not help you to learn and also your father can never be by your side all the time. Chinese children relying too much on their parents can cause them to harm as once they entered the real world, they would not know how to think for themselves and they would not have their parents always protecting them. My father is a true southern Chinese person, as he has a saying ‘any living creature’s back is facing towards the sky is eatable’ literally, every living creature apart from humans and he makes me eat foods that are not common in the kiwi culture such as chicken feet and pig ears. I find this truly disgusting but he finds it truly delicious.

Another hard part of being a banana is being one in China. As people assume that I can understand Chinese but I couldn’t as this puzzles the people around me, as I look Chinese but couldn’t understand it. After living in NZ for so long I have lost most of my Chinese self and going back to Tai-Shan was a completely new experience for me as my brain and body have adapted to the kiwi life even my friends don’t consider me as an Asian, they categories me as one of them. Once I arrived back to Tai-Shan I was happy to see my grandma again and when we had dinner together, she was surprised that I was still able to use the chopstick, she is the one who told me how to use chopsticks and she thinks able to use chopsticks mean you are still a Chinese. Chopstick was a symbol of a Chinese person. I did not understand what she meant at the time but I understood now as she meant was no matter what you become or what you learn, never forget who you truly are.

It’s not easy being a banana in China as there many things I need to look out for, for example of food, my home town is famous for its dog meat and the first time I got back to Tai-Shan, I got tricked to eat some dog meat as they told me it was beef, after that event, I did not try any red meat in China, I have to only eat chicken meat to avoid the same thing happen again. Another aspect that I could not get used to in China was the toilets. The toilets in China especially the ones in the village they are on the ground literally it’s just a hole on the ground while there is a bucket of water beside you for flushing the toilet and you would be lucky if there were some toilet paper beside it and usually they don’t have any, you had to bring your own. My first reaction towards this was how can you use this where do you sit as I could not squat to take a number two, ones were easy but twos oh my goodness I really struggled. But luckily not all toilets were like this, the toilets that are in the hotel that we stayed in were normal toilets with seats and thank god they came with toilet papers. So, every time I needed to go, I had to go back to the hotel, if not I think I might be constipated soon. My grandma finds me weird as she said you can do it back when you were a kid why couldn’t you do it now, afterward my grandma had second thoughts if I was still her grandson.

A banana in China really confuses the people as you look Chinese but don’t speak the language. In the article ‘On not speaking Chinese, living between Asia and the West writing my Ien Ang she said, “In the hybrid cultural predicament, as McLennan (1995: 90) puts it, we have to learn ‘how to live awkwardly (but also wisely and critically)’ in a world in which we no longer have the secure capacity to draw the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’”, got to accept who you are and what you have become.

Ang, Ien. “On Not Speaking Chinese.” On Not Speaking Chinese, 2005. Accessed May 26, 2019. doi:10.4324/9780203996492.

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