Forgive me, it’s been three weeks since my last newsletter, a year since I’ve been in Hong Kong, seventeen years since I’ve lived with my parents and twenty-eight years since I was forced to only speak English at home, because, “If you don’t start now, everyone will think you’re retarded.”
To be fair, I was about to start prep and my sister was being threatened with repeating a grade because she refused to speak English at school. This made my parents very anxious because it implied that my sister was an idiot, and no Asian parent wants a dumb kid. Plus, we grew up in Taylors Lakes and education standards were not very high back then. If she got held back in a dumb-fuck school, she was definitely going to be seen as dumber than all the other dumb fucks and that would just bring shame upon our dynasty.
I remember rewiring my brain to speak English when I previously just grunted at my kindergarten teachers and was very comfortable being Jess No Friends painting the brick walls with water outside. Everything I said was very slow and deliberate and if I didn’t know the word for it, I’d ask my parents. (Cut to when I’m nine years old and translating bills for my dad.) When I finally made it to prep, the other kids made fun of me for being Asian and speaking with an English accent. Yes, yes, racism. We’ve covered that in previous newsletters. Now, let’s talk about the English accent thing. My parents grew up in British Hong Kong so of course, they learned British English. And they taught me English, so really, we’re circling back to Taylors Lakes not having high education standards because clearly no one was taught about colonisation. Either way, when you’re a child and you get rocks thrown at you for looking different (can’t change that) and speaking funny (something I could control), you cope with it by not speaking at all.
I didn’t speak to anyone for a concerningly long time, so the school referred me to a specialist to test my hearing (yes, it must be that!). I was put in dark rooms with spotlights, whispered things behind closed doors and asked to pick up corresponding objects to what had been whispered to me, asked to listen to several audio tracks being played at once and to pick out particular bits of information. My hearing was fine. More than fine. The specialists just determined that I was just antisocial. Five years old, covered in bruises and antisocial. Makes sense.
As I spoke more and more English, I stopped thinking in Cantonese. There was a period in primary school where I would speak in English and try to translate what I said in my head in Cantonese to make sure I would still be able to speak it. My parents would continue to speak to me in Cantonese and I would respond in English. It would confuse a lot of my friends when they came over, but it worked. It still happens to this day unless we’re speaking Chinglish to each other and asking if we dinged the thing in the microwave or some shit. Eventually, I assimilated. My English marks were as high as my maths marks and I even excelled in writing. Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Ho, your daughter is not a dumbass. You know, except when you have big family gatherings and she talks like a child in Cantonese to the rest of her family and is made fun of being a gwai moi (white girl). There is no winning.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t Zoom socially. I am a Millennial, so I hate phone calls. So, after coming back from Hong Kong, I literally did not speak a word of Cantonese to anyone for the rest of the year. I also couldn’t watch anything in Cantonese because it is all dubbed over in Mandarin for Australian release (on streaming services, anyways).
And then I was asked to pick up my grandmother for family dinner. As I went to her apartment and walked her to the car, I realised, I was scared to speak to her. It didn’t matter that I had cooked traditional dishes that I was going to finish off at my parent’s place that were sitting in an Esky in the back of the car. It didn’t matter that I understood everything that she was saying. I had the anxiety of being chastised for being too white, not Chinese enough, forgetting my culture, being a dumbass. Call me anything but a dumbass. I said as little as I possibly could until we got to my parent’s house, and then I realised she was just glad to see me. She also requested all the leftovers of the dishes I made, so I can die happy because that’s the only compliment I need in life.
I shut out a lot of people in my life by choosing not to speak. I didn’t really make friends until I was a teenager and I almost saw my grandmother without talking to her. It’s not because kids are cruel or parents cause trauma, it’s because when you’re an immigrant kid, the country you’re growing up in keeps telling you it doesn’t want you, while your family tells you that you’ll never be enough. You’ll always be too much of something and not enough of the other. Due to the fact that you’re literally growing into your brain, you don’t realise that you don’t need to give a fuck what anyone thinks until you’re too old. But it’s funny how your body and brain’s defence mechanisms kick in as if you didn’t just spend the last thirty-ish years growing as a person (I mean this figuratively, because you know, I’m short).
So, fuck everyone who has ever tried to make me feel like being a stereotype of my culture is a bad thing. Fuck the members of my family for holding me back for trying to occupy space in a new world. And sorry, grandma, for not talking to you and acting like a real fucking dumbass.
What I’m reading:
Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, which is an effortlessly written story about intersecting lives, revolving around a record company executive spanning thirty-ish years. I’ve only read a third of it, but I suspect I’ll finish it within twenty-four hours. In case you’re not picking up what I’m putting down, it is very, very good.
What I’m watching:
If you asked me what I did with my days between Christmas and New Years, I would respond by saying I binged Bridgerton, watched Vice, and started The Newsroom. Yes, I am trash.
What I’m eating:
I am eating what everyone else is eating right now and that’s leftovers from Christmas repurposed into a million other things and a lot of herbal soups to wash it all down. It cancels each other out, right? The leftovers cannot win.
Want to tell your friends how you’re also filled with unnecessary shame?
Want to see how I am going to beat myself up next week?
sounds like me speaking! can totally relate and thanks for the rant. It was good!