Pre-Summer Thoughts

I have to admit that, getting the Light Fellowship, I've been feeling a bit out of place. Most other students are undergraduates, some of whom are going overseas for the first time or at least haven't spent a considerable amount of time living abroad. In general, they seem more optimistic and a lot more excited.

With that said, perhaps it isn't obvious, so I'd like to say that I am quite happy to be spending another summer outside of the U.S. While some of my fellow Ph.D. students in the dept. would rather stay in New Haven and read, I'm planning on spending the majority of my summers in East Asia. I need to visit my parents anyway, and I like being in East Asia. Tokyo--and Taipei, to some extent--feel like home to me just the way the East Coast does. Since I'm always worrying about my language abilities, refreshing them in the right country is a plus.

But spending several months in China for the first time, I feel more like I'm gearing myself for battle than setting out bright-eyed in search of adventure. For me, going to a foreign country means once again putting on some sort of protective mental armor. I need to prepare myself to field questions about who I am, shift into a different language, and struggle with deciding who I will be. I'm thinking about--body image issues in countries populated by skinny girls; lack of comprehension concerning what "Asian American" means; people talking about me/over me since I apparently don't understand; commentary about my facial structure, that inescapable question - "Are you mixed?"*; being asked whether or not I'm friends with any real black people; etc, etc.

My background overseas: I threw myself into an immersion program in Holland when I was 17--the experience shook me out of my shyness but only as a beginning. A summer at ICU's Summer Courses in Japanese (highly recommended), a summer interning at the TV station TBS, a year at IUC in Yokohama (also recommended) + another year (more or less) working at a major Japanese corporation--it took all of this for me to start feeling okay about my Japanese, and work out some of my issues with living in Japan. Going to Taiwan over & over for brief visits has left me with a constant vague irritation about my poor Chinese, and resignation concerning how even my relatives will always have confused & irrational assumptions about my language skills, as well as discuss my nose and how I look Southeast Asian or Middle Eastern.

Beijing will be interesting because as a Taiwanese Chinese American**, I have a very different accent and most likely quite different political views. Japanese politeness and indirectness resonate more with me than Chinese directness, and I'm easily irritated by mainland Chinese who come off as oblivious (KY--or 空気読めない in Japanese) and rude. I really don't think that the Beijing accent is the best thing on earth. ...I need to learn simplified characters. IUP will be my first serious attempt at improving my Chinese although I've been speaking and using it all my life, and I'll have to work on turning any frustration & impatience I have into productivity. It's always a struggle to find my way out of my reserve to be willing to engage with people more fully.



*Footnote: I do most likely have some Western blood on my mom's side, but it's only enough that I ended up looking "mixed" while my sister & brother look thoroughly Chinese, whatever that means.
**Footnote 2: My parents are from Nationalist Chinese stock in Fujian but were raised in Taiwan.