I groggily awoke to the Korean flight attendant apologizing about the situation and thanking me for my understanding. She pointed a Chinese man to the empty seat next to me, and soon his young son skipped down the aisle to sit with him and play games. Between the lack of sleep and language barrier, I didn’t understand the situation, but it was no bother to me.
The two spoke Cantonese, and I listened as the father instructed his son to press this button, then the other one. He reminded me of my own father; the boy, a mirror image of me. I could almost hear my father’s voice explaining a computer game, guiding my hand with loving patience as I sat in his lap.
I attempted to doze off again, but within minutes I had to get up so the father could leave his seat and join the rest of his family several rows ahead. The little boy stayed behind, but hopped over me time after time between his father and his game. The rest of the cabin began to wake, and chatter filled the air. I heard it all around me—my mother tongue.
Do you remember it? The words your mother whispered to soothe your fiery outbursts? The words your father lovingly spoke to show you the world? How could you forget your mother tongue and father love? The language that taught you life and spoke this world into existence?
The cabin lights turned on, and we began our descent. Tray tables up, seats forward, the plane glided on the runway and taxied to our gate.
I arrived in Hong Kong.
A-B-C. Do you understand, Kevin? You are an ABC: American Born Chinese.
It was an indelible lesson to learn as a Chinese-American kid growing up in Michigan: This is who I am; these are the terms to describe who I am. I would speak with Chinese adults who immediately knew I was “ABC ” when they heard my American English. My language gave me away. That acronym said it all.
I played with the meaning of this identifier as a young child: American first, Chinese second? Chinese trapped in an American-birthed body? Whereas the hyphen in “Chinese-American” implies the merging of two cultural identities into one ethnic tag of a vast nationality, “ABC” iterates two extant and parallel origins. Am I American and Chinese?; or rather, am I American but also Chinese?
That term has lost its popularity, fading with each new generation birthed on American soil since the initial waves of immigration. Americans born with Chinese blood, like me, are increasingly common. Yet that label still lingers.
It packed more weight than I could carry as a young child; more shame than I wanted to wear. I feared being lumped with people who look like me; to be seen as anything less than a “pure” American. I loved my culture, but I didn’t love it in public. I wished to be a little boy just like all the other little American boys, which I fallaciously understood as being monolingual and having family with deeper roots in this country.
Shame is a powerful motivator that led me to compartmentalize and reject my entirety for so much of my life. I wanted to blend in, even though I was as soluble as oil in water. I wanted to be invisibly visible: to be seen on my own terms. Code switching became second-nature, and I lost part of me along the way, including my mother tongue.
What would 12-year-old me think about traveling to Hong Kong alone? About immersing myself in an urban megacity of people who look like me; talk like me; eat like me? Where for once, people will see me as Chinese first—like one of them—as I had feared being viewed as for so much of my life?
Hong Kong (and China) was not always on my travel list. The long distance made it less competitive of a destination, and I assumed travel to Asia would happen with family. But professional and personal experiences began to bridge that distance, and I saw it more and more as a compelling and feasible travel destination. My interest in urbanism and globalization matured, and Hong Kong is a fascinating modicum of all of that.
And what an interesting thought, to have never before traveled somewhere where I would be the majority, no longer a minority—something I have never felt at that scale. I was curious to travel somewhere foreign yet familiar. To connect, in a way, with a region in which the generations that precede my life in the U.S. once inhabited. (The “motherland” in a broad sense, if you will). I felt it was time for me to see Asia.
There’s a uniquely rewarding aspect of traveling alone that I don’t find when traveling with others. It’s not because I’m anti-social or without eligible travel companions, but because it provides a level of fluidity and autonomy. Going alone, I set the pace of my trip and pursue what interests me. Admittedly it can feel lonely at times, but I engage with strangers in a way that isn’t possible when traveling with others. It feels greatly empowering and satisfying.
Many people have called me brave for traveling alone—for exploring new and foreign places without someone to experience it with or to guide me. But my “bravery” is calculated: I travel to developed places where my language skills enable me to navigate with relative ease, I remain connected to the world via my phone, and I don’t go anywhere explicitly dangerous. Underlying all of this is the fact that I am a man, and while I am not physically intimidating in stature, society unjustly bolsters my ability to participate in the world with a lesser degree of concern. Traveling alone is daring, sure, but it’s done with foresight. I am mindful, not fearless.
Logistics aside, perhaps there is a notable and distinguished character needed for solo travel abroad. It requires an ability to find comfort in discomfort and being alone: feeling alienated, feeling foreign, feeling like an outsider with no one to confide in—no one with whom to share your experience. There’s a certain skill and mindset to be able to blend into new surroundings—not to lose yourself, but to mindfully assimilate and avoid drawing unnecessary attention to yourself (especially as a blatant and boisterous American). It requires understanding your context and how to navigate and exist within it.
And that is all what I have learned growing up as an ABC. I never felt that I belonged growing up: not your normal American, not fully Chinese. I didn’t feel reflected in my home country. Years of shame, code switching, and assimilation have adversely given me the ability to navigate different cultures and places. To find comfort in being an outsider. To learn to assimilate to the best of my ability without losing a sense of self. To understand people unlike me. To figure out what to do based on what others do. To be alone but make connections despite differences; through differences.
“So…you are from the U.S.?” Born and raised. “Ahh. Okay. But you are ethnically Chinese. You been to Hong Kong before? Your family is here?” No, it’s my first time here. It’s actually my first time in Asia. I don’t have family here: they’ve all immigrated to the U.S., aside from some distant relatives that I do not know. “Your family: they speak Chinese?” Yeah, they speak Cantonese. “And you can’t speak Cantonese?” No. I grew up in the States and couldn’t juggle both languages as a kid, so I kinda lost it. I can understand and still speak a little bit though.
Listening to myself talk sounded so discordant. I could hear my pungent Midwestern accent scrape against the frays of his broken English. I checked myself to minimize my fast American slang-ridden speech.
He wasn’t the first to ask these questions, and I’ve learned to anticipate them when traveling abroad. However, unlike prior travel, my presence in Hong Kong was uniquely befuddling to some people, including him. I was told I looked like a Hong Konger (not a Mainlander), which explains why people approached me in Cantonese instead of Mandarin. And while I have basic conversation skills, I gave a stupefied face when asked more complicated questions, revealing myself as a fraud: Ah, sorry, I don’t understand, I would say in English before switching back to Cantonese, I only know how to speak a little Cantonese.
The fact that I had never been to Asia was even more befuddling to many. I’ve been to Europe several times and can speak French, yet I hadn’t gone to what seems a rational destination for me. There I was, appearing as a Hong Konger, but so disconnected from being Chinese. Just so… American-ish.
My limited language skills and Chinese identity did allow me to experience Hong Kong differently than a non-Chinese speaking/looking person would have. I could ask for directions, order the foods I grew up with, and understand public announcements. It also enabled me to avoid the targeting of tourists: the shoved advertisement handouts in your face or the shopkeepers trying to call your attention.
But my language skills didn’t unlock the whole city to me, and my inability to read inhibited me from exploring so much more. I at once felt so part of this city, so connected to the people, yet so removed, held at a distance.
I had thought that I would feel more Chinese here, but I felt more American than ever.
Hong Kong felt so right—so familiar. The sights, the smells, the language. It held almost all the fragments of my compartmentalized life growing up in Michigan, stitched together in this international powerhouse. I found myself ten times over, sprawling amidst the towering landscape of Cantonese dreams. I saw the little boy I never quite was. The hangout spots I never quite had. A life that was never quite mine.
It is so close to perfect, more than I have ever felt, but it isn’t mine. Every shopping plaza I turned to—every tram I rode, every noodle shop I visited, every tower I saw—didn’t alleviate the fact that I am undoubtedly American, no matter how many adjectives I use to describe it. I am a kid that grew up in Michigan; a kid who went to Old Country Buffets and watched SpongeBob and had chicken nugget public school lunches and played kickball with other kids who didn’t look like me.
And that’s just who I am: I’m fucking American. Hyphenated, ethnic, and cultured with values and expectations and ideas of romance and autonomy that are indisputably informed by my American upbringing.
I can dream of an idyllic life in an idyllic place. But I know better. Perfection doesn’t exist. Perfection at best, for me, is here in America. It’s riddled with theatrical politics and systemic inequalities rooted in a deep violent history. It is no mecca of Chinese culture—especially where I grew up. And sure, there are people in this country who might try to tell me and my family that we don’t belong. But this is the country I belong to; the country I want to see and work to make better. The country where my history begins. This is my home—back in Michigan, here in Seattle, and wherever else my life might take me in this expansive country. And if there’s anywhere for this ABC to try and make it work, I think here will do just fine.
On travelling alone…in 1967, days after signing my army enlistment papers , I flew to Quito with a backpack that contained a jungle hammock and tightly rolled bundles of clothing for a 4 month solo adventure that I hoped would include a boat down the Amazon. I never did get to the Amazon, but I will always cherish the awareness I developed of an enhanced consciousness of other people and of other places that I now attribute to traveling on my own. Sleeping wherever I could find space for the sleeping bag(I rolled out of the hammock on the first try-rendering the mosquito netting useless) I crisscrossed Ecuador and then Peru, hitchhiking when it worked or by bus or train when it didn’t. And I found pleasure engaging with fellow travelers (these were the 60’s and there were packs of us wandering the world) and sharing the Experience. Discussions that went everywhere and that went nowhere, meals partagés, information on what direction to take to find some ‘groovy’ ruins-I met up with people, separated, and met up again. Enough already! And enjoyable travel !
Should you ever publish memoirs of your eclectic stories, I would LOVE to read them. That sounds like a tremendous experience, and in places I have yet to see for myself. Cheers, M. Lennington!
What a beautiful and thought provoking piece. Thank you for sharing such intimate and private feelings. Our stories are very different and although I did not grew up as a minority, (my past is vastly different, I grew up in apartheid South Africa, privileged by my language and skin colour) I now at times also feel at a loss, as my identity and culture was flawed for so many generations. Even today so many of my fellow Afrikaners still cling to their misguided ideologies of racism and it makes me almost daily bow my head in shame. But perhaps this loss of identity as opened me up to other cultures and beliefs and like you I have began to discover the joys of solo traveling. Your story of self discovery is also very inspirational and it will probably linger in the back of my mind as I continue my solo travels around the globe, especially when I visit Asia in August (also for the first time). Keep it up mister.
Thank you, Charl, I truly appreciate your kind words and feedback, and hearing your experiences so different than mine. I always enjoy seeing your travels–I can’t wait to see where you’ll go in Asia!
I’m surprised and yet, not surprised by your experiences with this trip.
I am an American-born Caucasian man. I do not have the same experiences in America as someone with a different ethnicity. I already knew it, but now it was here in black and white. Then reading about your expectations of being in a place as the majority, not minority—of course you’d wonder about it. All of this, as well as your ending realization, opened my eyes a little more. That was the unexpected realization for me. Intellectually, I know others have different experiences. But now I could see it with practically tangible views. And each small experience you shared, brought these views into focus. But here’s the thing: even with the ahas I was having, I kept thinking, of course—of course it’s like that.
To your final point, I find that identity is an evolving creature, for all of us. I keep learning new aspects about myself as well.
Thank you Kevin, and keep unpacking those compartments.
Thank you, Chris! I appreciate your response and feedback. It certainly is an evolving creature, whose shape we can only fathom years down the road. The only thing I know is how much more I will be learning and understanding.