KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU知己知彼

IT’S A COUNTRY

park somewhere in California. A guy starts hitting on a woman while they’re out running. He’s fair-haired and Caucasian. She’s dark-haired and Asian.

‘So… where are you from?’ he asks.

‘San Diego,’ she answers. ‘I mean, before that.’ He’s getting cross; she just doesn’t get it. ‘ Where are your people

from?’ he says, speaking very slowly and deliberately.

Cue a delicious and painful two-minute skit where our (literally) unthinking fairhaired guy gets the tables spectacularly turned on him.

That short film, Ken Tanaka’s What Kind of Asian Are You?,

has racked up nearly 10 million views on YouTube. There’s comedy – and educational value – to be had from the cultural cringe that starts when someone asks that seemingly innocent question, ‘ Where are you from?’

This month we profile people who struggle to answer that same question: the so- called third culture kids. These are kids – and adults – whose lives are spent crossing continents, cities and cultures. ‘ Their people’ may well be from two countries other than the one they are living in, they may have been born in a fourth, educated in a fifth… and so it goes on. A student I met (born in Japan, American mother, Indian father, currently living in Singapore) said she couldn’t say where she was ‘from’ but she identified with the Tuscan village where we happened to be. Why? Because they have a holiday home there, and she reckoned she’s spent longer there than anywhere else. This wasn’t boasting, but a plain statement of fact.

Why are we writing about these citizens of nowhere in this issue? There are now more than 244 million people living in a country other than the one where they were born. If you got them together in one place, it’d be the fifth most populous nation in the world. Many are ‘expats’. But an increasing number are, shall we say, ‘post-pats’ – they’ve gone beyond nationality.

So that’s why. You’re reading this onboard an airline going to or from TCKs’ capital city: Hong Kong. You are either one or, very likely, sitting next to one. It’s about understanding ourselves and our neighbours a little better.

Mark Jones Editorial director 故事發生在在美國加州某個郊野公園內，一男一女正在跑步，男的向女的搭訕，圖吸引注意。他是個長有淺色頭髮的白種人，而她是留著深色頭髮的亞洲人。他問：「你是哪裡人?」她答：「聖地牙哥。」他有點懊惱：「我指在你到聖地牙哥前。」她露出滿腹疑問的神情，他故意說得很慢：「你的同胞是哪裡人？」

在這兩分鐘的趣劇裡，那個沒頭沒腦的淺髮男人，結果遭亞裔女子反唇相譏。

以上是Ken Tanaka的短片《What Kind of Asian Are You?》(你是哪種亞洲人？ )的情節，該片已在YouTube累積近1,000萬點擊率。當有人提出「你是哪裡人？」這個看似毫無惡意的問題時，出現的卻是文化上的難堪，當中不單充滿喜劇色彩，同時也深具教育意義。

本月，我們把焦點放在一群因同樣問題而感到困惑的人身上，他們被稱為「第三文化孩子」( Third Culture Kids，簡稱TCK)。這些人括小孩和成人，命運橫跨不同的土地、城巿和文化。「他們的同胞」在棲身之處以外，或許還與兩個不同的國家一脈相連，更甚者或在第四個國 家出生，在第五個國家求學……然後再去更多不同的地方。我認識一個學生，她在日本出生，母親是美國人，父親是印度人，現在居於新加坡，她表示很難說自己是哪裡的人，但她反而對我們當時同處的托斯卡尼村莊有歸屬感。原因何在？因為他們在這裡有一所度假屋，而她認為在這裡居住的時間比在任何地方都要長。她不是故意炫耀，只是陳述一個事實。

為何本期我們要以這些無所歸屬的公民為主題？目前有逾2.44億人並非在他們出生的國土上居住，如果你將這些人都聚集在一個地方，就會成為全球第五個人口最多的國家。這些人當中有不少是「僑民」，但是，有愈來愈多人已經超越國籍的界限，我們姑且稱他們為「後僑民」。

這就是原因了。當你在航機上閱讀這篇文章時，你可能正前往或離開TCK之都香港。你本人，或者你身旁坐著的人，可能就是TCK的一份子。因此，今期主題也讓我們對自己和身邊的人有更深的了解。 Mark Jones編輯總監