Where is home? Where are you really from?
I'm back from the long absent to talk about my (lack of) place to call home.
Where are you from?
Where is home?
These are complicated questions to ask someone like me, and likely many readers of this newsletter. To answer this question, a flow chart kicks off in my head:
Is it the right kind of person, occasion, and timing to tell them my life story?
Are they the kind of people who will follow up with, “Where are you originally from”. If I answer: I’m from here.
Would they be determined to put an Asian country label on me, despite already answering them for the first time:
I’m from here.
If the above is true, I will tell them that I am from *Insert a city in England*, and go through the process of them awkwardly trying to communicate that they are not interested in that answer, because I don’t look like I would be from here. After all, it seems to matter a lot to them being able to add a foreign Asian country label to me. I guess because it makes it easier to understand, put into a box, to make sense of the person standing in front of them. Some do not even bother with the tact, they just ask “Are you Chinese?”1
I am not offended by these interactions, and I was probably been on the other side many times, puzzling over someone who is difficult to put a label on. I have no doubt, with migration and globalisation, the question of: “Where are you from, where is home?” is going to be increasingly challenging to answer. Being fluent in Vietnamese, I am still not Vietnamese enough, and even if I behave like an English country girl, I certainly don’t look it. I know some of my confused friends call themselves Third Culture Kids (TCKs)—a term coined by sociologist Ruth Hill Useem in the 1950s. The label helps create a sense of belonging to the otherwise rootless because if I have to answer the above question truthfully, it would be: “I don’t know”.
Home and where someone’s from are not necessarily the same place, and maybe that is the case for me. Last month when I travelled back to Vietnam for my grandmother’s funeral, despite being fluent in Vietnamese, I felt so foreign. I fumbled through the funeral rituals and prayers and was unable to be very helpful. I have no idea what to do! Despite all of this, I was reminded again and again that I have family here, unlike being in the UK, where my familial support network is very little. My uncle picked me up at the airport, my uncle dropped me off at the airport, my aunties cooked my favourite food, and my grandfather made me his signature dripped coffee in the morning. I felt taken care of and cared for. I have been away from my family for so long that it was a strange feeling to have people unconditionally look after me. I miss them, and I miss my city. I reminiscence the time my commute was sitting on the back of a moped, bánh mì in one hand, my school work in the other. The scent of Milkwood trees lined the streets of central Hanoi. Hanoi over 10 years ago is undoubtedly home for me, but that place does not exist anymore. The city changed, the people moved on, and my Hanoi was a beautiful place in the past.
New home
London is the place where I’m happy to take the familiar tube back home from the airport. A route I’m so familiar with that I don’t need Google Maps. I like the independence and individualistic culture here. It is freeing. Slowly, I have grown to be comfortable with relying on myself. Being back in East London after a month in Vietnam reminds me how much I feel relaxed here. The same route, the same coffee shop, the park where I always go to. I know who I am in this place. Where I will be on a Monday to Sunday. I’m a creature of habits. The sun was out when I landed at Heathrow Airport. I immediately left my friend a voice note for a reservation at a local restaurant I always wanted to try. I know I will be in good company, where I can just be myself. There is nothing foreign about this city to me, and the city also doesn’t see me as an outsider. I was with my friend talking about something silly, like…shoes. There is an apparent lack of pressure and responsibility for the “me” in London, the only person depending on me is me, and to be frank, I am not hard to take care of.
Me, me and only me.
Vietnam was not like that. Being part of a big family means you will have others to rely on, in a way, it is their duty to look after you, and in return, you look after them. My mother financially provided for her siblings to go to University, helped them buy a house and looked after her parent until their old age. My grandmother’s funeral highlighted the accomplishments that my mother and her siblings have achieved. They have been filial and good, they looked after their parents, went to University and have good jobs. The bar is both low and high. Getting a good job is not difficult, as long as it is stable and nothing creative, but support your siblings, then parents, then who else? Where do you draw the line? I have no doubt that our close-knit family is the product of tradition, a sense of duty, and just a bunch of nice people who happened to be related and enjoy spending time with each other. However, as I grew older, I looked at both of my parents, who are the eldest in the family, the responsibility they were born into and I can’t help but wonder, they looked after other people their whole life, but who will look after them? As the only child between my parent, and the eldest amongst all my cousins, I am unsure about my own responsibility. Do my family expect me to look after my half-siblings? Do I support my cousins financially? I don’t live near either of my parents, do I pick and choose who I should live with later on in life? Should I be ashamed of buying and thinking about shoes instead of building an emergency fund for my family?
I hope these words do not come across as a rant, but rather a universal thought process for the Third Culture Kids out there. It is not easy to navigate relationships when your parent and your family come from different cultures, and you are an East London meme2. It is almost like living a dual life, there is me in London, me outside of London, and me back in Vietnam. I have become so comfortable being a chameleon that I dislike having to commit to one. If I had to choose, then I would still choose to be a little bit confused like this, rather than having to pick either/or. I understand it is a privilege to experience my culture which is only reserved for those who belong here, and the strong bond my family have, even only for a small amount of time in a year. I finally found a home in a place where there are many confused people like me, so we can share each other’s culture, bond over the similarities and celebrate the differences. Maybe that is why I love London so much, not for the city itself, but for the people that live here. So, this is home, for now. In the meantime, I need to sell some shoes to build a second emergency fund, just in case my cousins want some pocket money.
If you are Chinese, how do you feel that someone managed to guess where you are from? Joy? Offended? Neutral?
Organic wine drinking, AllBirds shoe wearing, al fresco dining, slutty small plates lover. You can find me click-clacking in the local cafe or WeWork writing this. Chuckling to myself. I’m an East London cliche and I know it.