Floating (2018). Michelle Wong.

If I asked my mother to define our family’s nationality, she would say that we are
CBC’s: Canadian-born Chinese. She never refers to herself as Chinese-Canadian,
but prefers “Canadian” as a descriptor to “Chinese,” the noun. Regarding my
specific heritage, I am a second-generation Taishanese-Canadian, with four
generations and three degrees of familial relations across North America. In
the generations leading to my own, my family redefined home to account for
fundamental vacancies in their birthplaces. However, the intent evolved with
each generation, influenced by dominant cultures in North America and shifting
cultural majority and minorities in the Chinese community. Although my older
relatives found acceptance within the pockets of Chinese communities in their
localities, I jump to defensiveness when assessing the imbalance between the descriptor and noun of my cultural identity.

Noting the temporality of social otherness in the article Some Thoughts on Haunting
and Futurity, Avery Gordon coins the term “haunting” as an encompassing
term for conflicting or stagnant present identity dictated by past experiences.
Gordon attributes signs of haunting to moments “when home becomes unfamiliar,
when your bearings on the world lose direction” (2011, p.2). The article
touches upon cultural identity though the resolution of African-American heritage,
stemming largely from the slave trade between the African continent and the
Americas. When identifying haunting within the Chinese diaspora, however, the
periods of immigration waves fracture the Chinese-Canadian experience based
upon generation and originating geography. The Chinese residing in Canada prior
to the legislative implementation of multiculturalism did not hold the same
lingual and travel opportunities as the immigrants settling after, splitting
the household incentives and experiences of the successive generations of
either period. Recontextualizing the facets of haunting within the Chinese
diaspora disrupts the something-to-be-done when defining home for future
generations, based upon flattening inherent to multiculturalism, otherness
within a diaspora, and connection activated by glocalization.

The generalizations attributed to present Canadian identity contribute to the future divergence of Chinese-Canadian identity. Since the enactment of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act in 1988, the
country supports cultural pluralism at its surface form. Canada as a cultural
mosaic promotes coexistence and inclusion across the present population. This
entails the free expression of culture, joining individuals from similar
cultural backgrounds to form communities. The utopian Canadian cultural mosaic
eradicates otherness pertaining to the isolated citizen. When applied to
Chinese diasporic communities, if one is of Chinese ethnicity, they will be
welcomed into the Chinese community. If one has historical ties to Canton
region, they are part the Cantonese community. In an ideal multicultural
society, the experiences of community members align to achieve a sense of unity
and belonging. However, Gordon discusses Derrida’s renouncement of Utopia,
highlighting the ideology’s disregard for the complexity and variety of human
experiences both in the present and past (1999, p. 253). In practice, the
unification of the Chinese-Canadian community falters when accounting for periods
of immigration, displaying the temporality of evolving culture.

To those outside the diaspora, the Chinese-Canadian community appears historically homogenous, springing to notoriety during the Information Age as Hong Kong immigrants expanded ethnic
enclaves from urban pockets to the suburban majority in the Greater Toronto
area. This rapid expansion affirms the existence of cultural majority and minority
within the Chinese diaspora. While the experiences of the current
majority speak for the overall Chinese-Canadian experience within the cultural
mosaic, the experiences of the minorities harbour perspective of the previous
majority alongside the relatively newer subcommunities. Collective memory and
commemoration lose validity as the Chinese-Canadian experience vary across
originating and residing geographies and generational extensions. Based in differing
histories, haunting occurs within the minorities of the diaspora. The
misalignment of experiences dictated by the cultural majority draw questions of
authenticity from diasporic anomalies, craving belonging in a seemingly homogenous
community.

Prior to Hong Kong immigration, the cultural majority of the Chinese diaspora was
Taishanese. While most Hong Kong-Canadians immigrated in the 1990s to preserve
their freedoms lost in Hong Kong’s transfer to China, Taishanese-Canadians
arrived sporadically, pursuing of job opportunities unavailable in China. Taishanese
workers sent money back overseas until their families could pay for safe travel
and permanent residence in North America. The last considerable group of
Taishanese immigration occurred at the advent of the Communist Revolution in
mainland China. My grandparents immigrated with their families right before the
borders closed in the mid-1950s. While my grandparents’ intentions for
emigration fall similar to the Hong Kong mass emigration, their experiences in
Canada diverge as they settled in rural towns in Saskatchewan and Ontario. Looking
two generations ahead, I was born in 1998, at the close of the Hong Kong
immigration waves. As I passed childhood, I became increasingly aware of the
otherness, growing up second-generation amongst first-generation peers in an
expanding Chinese community.

When I was young, I believed being Chinese was a birthright: my Chinese features, my
Chinese family name, my additional Chinese name given by my maa maa.1 
I spent my first twenty years in Mississauga, the GTA suburb boasting fewer
pieces, yet the same variety of tiles to Toronto’s cultural mosaic. As a child,
I accompanied my parents’ journeys of acceptance: visiting my cousins in
Markham weekly, attending service at the Chinese churches, practicing tai chi
in the basement, eating bao during weekly dim sum and Hong Kong bakery
stops.  However, when I grew adolescent,I took up softball and archery. My family church-hopped to a local congregation with annual multi-cultural potlucks. Inter-sibling drama halted the regular
family visits. Only Cantonese food stayed in our weekly routine.

I was homeschooled from age 8 to 14, forming my cultural identity in the vacuum of my
childhood home. In those years, my goal was to belong, to “fitting in,” to assimilate to the experiences of the kids around me. I never doubted that I was
Chinese. My parents were Chinese. Their parents were Chinese. I wore qipaos to
formal occasions, and I could order for myself at Cantonese restaurants. Categorizing
my experiences against Harry Collins’ categories of tacit knowledge, my understanding
of Chinese culture initially grew from both relational and collective tacit
knowledge. However, as I grew older, changes in routine drew heavy reliance
upon relational tacit knowledge, developing my sense of cultural identity from
a closed community: my immediate household.

At fourteen, I enrolled at my local public high school. The student body boasted
multiculturalism, with few ethnicities topping the majority. As such, the
Chinese population was visible but spread out among different school cliques.
My friend groups typically included a couple other Asians besides myself. When
I was fourteen, my dad and I ran into one of my Chinese school friends at Tim
Hortons. My dad said hello, and my friend commented with surprise that my dad
had no accent. After the interaction, my dad observed that my friend’s parents
were likely from Hong Kong, based upon her age and dampened accent.

Since that moment, I associated my otherness to the scarcity of second-generation
Canadian-born Chinese in Ontario. I noticed that most of my Chinese peers at
school, at church, spoke with a lighter accent: a softness of intonation that
executed perfect English among friends, with the potential to switch to
Cantonese or Mandarin among family. I analyzed how my parents spoke. My dad
spoke with mid-western accent, occasionally muffled and approximating when
encountering unfamiliar multisyllabic terms. My mother retained a clearer
mid-western accent that often fell into the roundness of the Saskatchewan
accent shared by her siblings back in Saskatoon. I spoke with my mother’s
clarity and confidence, with the emotional emphasis attributed to my theatrical
tendencies.

When I was 17, my archery coach, Ms. Han mentioned she was from the Canton region. I
found this specification interesting: Canton, but not Hong Kong, as those I had
encountered forthright identified. Wanting to impress a fellow Cantonese, I spoke
cha sui bao2 into the conversation. Ms. Han, confused, repeated the word with a different inflection. Embarrassed, I confirmed the word,
chalking up my different pronunciation to my family’s dialect.3  I avoided speaking Cantonese around Ms. Han for the rest of the season.

When learning English and Taishanese words, I held tightly to words describing food.
Tau fu fa4  has been my favorite dessert since I was a toddler. I never called the dish “tofu pudding,” but tau fu fa, as dim
sum ladies would call out from their steaming carts. However, from what I
learned in phonetics in preschool, the spelling of tofu led me to pronounce the
dish as “tao foo fah,” rather than the proper Cantonese, “daw foo fah.” This
approximation leaked into my English pronunciation of tofu: “tao foo,” rather
than “toe foo.” My parents did not correct my pronunciation until I regularly
ordered my own meals at restaurants.

In high school, I regularly went to dim sum with my dad, who primarily ordered our
dishes verbally, conversing with waiters or flagging down the hot carts. My dad
learned Taishanese from my grandmother until he was 6. When he entered grade
school, his teacher implored my grandmother to stop teaching my dad Chinese, as
it allegedly interfered with his verbal grasp of English. Since conversing with
my archery coach, I could not discern whether my dad’s inflections were
authentically Taishanese or approximated Cantonese. 

Acknowledging traumatic experiences, Gordon cites dissociative repetition as an indication of haunting (2011, p. 3). Presently, my Taishanese proficiency remains at the
restaurant-conversational level. Language, grasped and developed throughout
childhood, holds ties to cultural perception. However, as my family speaks
English as their first language, I never felt incentive to converse in my native
dialect, separating my experiences from the remaining children of the Chinese
diaspora. Furthermore, no one outside my family spoke conversational
Taishanese. While I have the option to learn more popular Chinese dialects, I
feel little cultural connection to the languages. The presence of haunting brings
urgency without clarity in the something-to-be-done (Gordon, 2011, p. 7). When
assessing the essential qualities of cultural identity, communication and
memory contribute to self-affirmation in the matter. While the role of language
establishes social ties to one’s home, most seek to establish and maintain geographic
ties to their heritage.

Whether digital or physical, aspects of glocalization permeate the lives of immigrants
and successive generations to varying degrees. From the start of the Information Age, the retainment of culture in Chinese diasporic households
revolved around techno-geographic communication. In the Chinese-Canadian
community, maintaining the social and physical ties despite the distance contributes
to the strengthening of culture. The relational and collective tacit knowledge
acquired during the visits strengthen the perception of identity in relation to
home, even when these experiences split across two countries.

Chinese immigrants and expatriates settling in Canada during the information age
benefit from increased access to their homes left behind, whether socially,
enabled by technological advancements, or physically, according to political
shifts. However, my grandparents and successive generations refrained from
visiting Taishan, as by the time my parents were adults, four generations of
the family primarily resided in Canada and the United States. As such, we hold
few social ties to Taishan. When my grandparents recall their childhood, they
remember the war and the revolution, taking up brief residence in Hong Kong
before their overseas move. When they speak of family, they recount moments in
Canada, expanding their businesses and watching my parents and their siblings
grow up.

Born in rural towns near Taishan, my grandparents left for Canada in their teens and
twenties to pursue opportunities unavailable to them in the People’s Republic of
China. They settled in towns a few hours from their recently settled siblings
and cousins. My grandparents never returned to their hometowns in Taishan after
they gained Canadian citizenship. Born and raised with in small rural towns, my
parents left for Toronto in their teens to stay with extended family. My mother
and father never Taishan. Raised in the Greater Toronto Area, I left for
Toronto in my twenties to stay with my cousin. I have never visited Taishan. While
I often feel I lack a physical home, I find solace in the renewed connections
with my extended family upon leaving my immediate household, slowly building
the relational-collective tacit knowledge overlooked in my adolescence.

Connecting my experiences to Gordon’s definition of haunting brought back the insecurities of myself from ten years ago, ten months ago, ten days ago. “…[I’m] haunted… by
the peculiar temporality of the shadowing of lost and better futures that
insinuates itself in the something-to-be-done.” (Gordon, 2011, p. 7) Aligning
with the temporal structure of past, present, and future, I project that my resolution
of cultural identity will shift through three states: security in the family
identity, breaking family identity and questioning self-identity, and secure in
a resolved identity acknowledging the contributions of the family and self.

When considering the futurity of my identity, I understand that my current state in
the in-between will remain with me till the end of my Canadian
citizenship.  However, the potential generations stemming from my experience present considerable unknowns. Connecting haunting to the Chinese diasporic experience, the experiences of the
generations with each specific immigration wave will differ according to time
and place of exit and enter. The experience of linear time segment with each
generations, assuring separate motivations and experiences with each variation
of generation and respective geographies. Likely, future children of the
Chinese diaspora will experience similar displacements to my own, based upon
similar relational upbringing, generational placement, or environmental
conditions. Identifying home as a state of being, the return to one’s roots
will be determined by the one searching, whether on the physical, temporal, or
social level.

Notes

1.     “Paternal grandma” in Cantonese.

2.     “Barbecue pork bun” in Taishanese/Cantonese.

3.     Taishanese is a regional dialect of Cantonese, associated with Taishan and rural counties within the Guandong province)

4.     “Soft tofu pudding” in Taishanese.

References

Collins, H. (2010). Tacit knowledge: You don’t know how much you know. New Scientist, 1-2. Retrieved from http://www.bodymindcentre.com.au/PDFs/Tacit.pdf

Derrida, J (1999). ‘Marx & sons’, in M Sprinkler (ed.). Ghostly demarcations: a symposium on Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx, Verso, London.

Gordon, A. F. (2011, November 21). Some Thoughts on Haunting and Futurity. Borderlands, 10(2), 1-21.