It has never occurred to me that coming to Hong Kong would put me in a place where I look like everyone else. Back in SGV/626, yes I am a majority and I acknowledge that fact but I still see a diversity of cultures that exists in the area...just look at our food options especially evidenced through the births of fusion food trucks. And it's also interesting, that even though I am racially profiled as "Asian" people back home are still able to tell that I'm Chinese but not from China, but an ABC (American Born Chinese) and the same goes for most other people's ethnical background. We all know each others cultures to the extent that we can identify one another (not sure if that' necessarily a good thing to make assumptions though)...but it has come as a shock to me that while I am here in Hong Kong...even when people hear my English (which I think is quite fluent...if I say so myself) their first impression is never that I'm an American. They don't even comment that my English is quite fluent heh. They automatically associate me as a local or an international student from some other Asian country and they guess all over the map.
Side note on termiology:
- Local: A Hong Kong local, born and raised here
- International student: A full-time student from a foreign country, including China that is completing a degree at HKU
- Exchange student: Any student studying abroad for 1-2 semesters
And it's funny because I would say more than 90% of the students here all have an accent when they speak English from my point of view. All I heard growing up were the slightly different variations of American English...like SoCal to Norcal to East Coast to Southern, etc. And those were the norm and equally understandable. But here there's just a motley of accents. The variations are due to English being a second language but it almost seems to me that because people don't even associate American English accent as the right way to speak English. The English they hear all the time is with the same accent they speak it with in their country so it brings up the question of "What is the proper way of speaking English?" or "Is there a proper way to speak English?" I guess that will be up for grabs.
Are accents now becoming dialects? Take Chinese for example...there seems to be a general way to pronounce Mandarin Chinese but there's so many different variations. I guess because they can't all be understood across the board that's why they're referred to as dialects. Accents are still at a stage where we can figure out what each other is trying to say but I would say I've had to ask people to repeat things multiple times heh.
Another funny thing...I asked how do they understand American English so easily when it's so hard for me to understand their English...it's because everyone outside of the US all watch American TV shows since their home countries don't have good shows. <-- Quoting that. Haha it's pretty funny. They don't like the dubbed version either...so I guess that's the same way I feel about watching dubbed Anime.
But to answer the title question of my blog post: Where am I from?
I'm from America, California, Southern California, generally speaking the Los Angeles region, but you ask even more specifically well I would say SGV or 626 but you wouldn't really know where that's at exactly, but if I keep with LA...you'll make sudden impressions that I live the Hollywood life and Justin Bieber is my next door neighbor...Hey did you know Justin Bieber is Canadian? If I could describe where I grew up, it's pretty much like Asia town but we're all pretty American too. The food is adapted from the cultures that we immigrated from so I'm not phased out by pig's blood, the internal intestines of animals, the feet of animals, frog legs, the heads and eyes of fish, the full birds head staring at me in the face, even those chewy little black things called boba/pearl/bubble, nope, that's all deliciousness to me. But what AM I? Well I'm an American that happens to have a Chinese heritage. You ask where my parents are from? Well my Dad's from Hong Kong and my mum's from somewhere in China (I can never get the province right...hubei or hebei heh...something "h_bei"). Oh and why I can't speak Cantonese or Mandarin fluently even though I look it? Well my parents speak pretty good English since they've been in America for quite awhile. As a child, I neglected my heritage because I strongly believed I was American, to avoid the negative connotations of "Chinese" or a "Chink" therefore I only speak English, not "Ching-chong-ding-a-long." But after high school, I've come to realize that I should have pride in my heritage and retain the mother language because it's so easy to take for granted the simple things such as communication with our grandparents...which I am therefore now paying the price of consequently I've found myself half way across the world back to where my dad grew up. The village has changed into a city. Things are different now but there's remnants of what used to be but there are things that haven't changed either, the language that makes up the culture. So that's who I am and I'm here to learn Chinese (even though I look Chinese), just like you (even though you don't look Chinese). 加油!
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While searching for a relevant cover photo for this post I came upon this comic series...haha it has some truth to it! Source: http://geneyang.com/american-born-chinese
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