How we belong

The story of a child who grew up across oceans and mountains

For children who grew up in between transient spans of cultures, we hold our experiences in suspension, in wonderment of pure nostalgia. However, only having been exposed to bits and pieces of them, we are left scrapping for reconnections that would tie us back to what we’ve known and imagined. To anchor us in a deeply moving ocean. Despite my dismissals for such overindulgences of nonsense and spectacles of childhood experiences, I have still come to the end, having returned to my earlier recollections.

I am an Immigrant. Even though the whole parent-child generation gap idea set me apart from them, classifying me as a second generation, my dreams and memories are still lucid enough to consider a life lived outside Canada. I was never able to accept being part of what some may call the ‘New World.’

My Story:

I am Chinese. Born in Nanjing, China. However, I moved away right after I was legal to board a plane. My new home was Singapore, but this place didn’t feel much like home. During those five years, especially the later years, my mind was fixed on one specific moment: a toddler stumbling around the streets of my hometown. This felt was a moment of distress. A crying out to be reunited with my grandmother who played a peek-a-boo play amongst the busy streets. Since then, what must have been a memory that any typical one-year- old would have forgotten, stayed with me ever since: the dirt and the dusty road, chickens, loud salespeople yelling across an open market, the scents of the cooking I pictured when I thought of my hometown. It was a memory buried deep inside.

This memory resurfaced when my parents told my sister and I that we were returning home. Having lived in Canada for a few years by then, I was ecstatic, and mentally prepared for the event. However, the more I anticipated this visit, the more I was set up for another unfortunate round of peek- a- boo. While I was leading this relatively peaceful life in Canada, things were rapidly shifting in China. For everything that I missed living the slow- paced lifestyle of Canada, I got to experience in full shellshock when I went back to my hometown.

It was midnight when our family finally arrived by car. Weary and sleep- deprived from the long flight, I was awakened by my mother. What hit me was an unrecognizable scene that still felt familiar in a sentimental, yet eerie, way. What used to be a dusty road was now smooth, and the dust I remembered was replaced by a blackened paste blanketing the entire road. The markets that used to be here were replaced by cars and machines. Silence. Nothing was left of the home I remembered. Distress called and abandonment set in, again – this time, a whole culture seemed to have left me behind.

The more I searched, the less I found. And as time created distance between my childhood and I, the more the memories felt disconnected: cut away from the Canadian life that had been handed down to me. I made attempts to connect with my Chinese peers. They, however, seemed to have moved on, morphed and reshaped by a different reality – one that I was unable to follow, nor understand. What I tried to draw upon were only bits and pieces of memory, of yearned connections, barely coherent enough to be pieced together as a whole. Have I become an outsider to my own people, culture? It wasn’t until just a few weeks ago that I was caught off guard by a mere miracle.

I watched this movie called “Lion.” It was a native Indian boy’s journey to find home after having lost it for 25 years whilst living an adopted life in Australia. To so many, this was indeed an experience, filled with heartaches. To me, it was one that reopened an old wound.

The chickens, the cows and the livestock treading along a dusted road filling the streets of an open, smoky marketplace. Then there, my own imagery came flooding back to me in excruciating livid details.

After more than twenty years spent, deprived, I knew right then, what my life meant to me. “Lion” showed me this old, living, breathing life in India. And I was bridged to my past. Shakened up, this thought that had never crossed my mind. What I saw in the end, was absolutely stunning. Such a drastically different culture. And yet, I felt this connection. The idea of ‘belonging,’ so central to an immigrant’s life yet so universally touching, transcends even the logical of human conception, and of bounds bordering our own culture. It is an unsolvable mystery.

Thus, I’ve come to understand a part of how it feels to be selfidentified as a multinational citizen by heart, for it’s a mindset that becomes more and more a part of my own Canadian heritage. And I know for a fact, from the innermost depths, that my new citizenship and I will never part. That this new citizenry will never leave me behind, nor will it ever abandon me unjustly.

While the rest of the world is all chaos and turmoil, our local communities can be a source of comfort and inspiration. Student strikes took centre stage in What the Fuck Am I Doing Here? – An Anti-folk Opera, co-produced by Fishbowl collective and Tuesday Night Cafe Theatre (“Songs to smash the state,” Saima Desai, November 22). In an emotionally striking on-campus performance, local artist Kama La Mackerel put her own body on the line in protest against institutional disempowerment (“Crawling through wires,” Sabrine Maaz, November 28). Kai Cheng Thom spoke about the need to love and fight for our communities in an interview with The Daily (“Trans girl dangerous,” Coco Zhou, November 28), elaborating on the resilience and success of women of colour in media and art related work.

Internet activism, specifically in the form of memes, was widely discussed and critiqued. Local feminist meme-maker gothshakira spoke to The Daily about having a platform on Instagram, emphasizing the complexities of capitalizing on the viral power of memes (“Married to the game, devoted to the memes,” Coco Zhou and Taylor Mitchell, October 31). Her words were echoed by those of us who participate in meme culture as way to reclaim our identities, as exemplified by the ironic popularity of a certain aesthetic among queer youths (“on edgy,” Arno Pedram, January 16).