The story of how I thought a tiny jade pendant would solve my racial identity crisis.
In Chinese culture, jade symbolises a number of virtues, including wisdom, sincerity, truth, nobility, and power. This isn’t knowledge that was passed down to me from generation to generation; this is just information I found by Googling the terms ‘jade + symbolism + Chinese’. And that’s the extent of the research I did before markedly deciding it was the only symbol I’d need to carry around to prove my heritage.
Being mixed-race has always been a complex facet of my identity. Simply distilled, the best way to describe myself is half-British, half-Cantonese, but solely Canadian. My mom is ethnically Cantonese, a fact I sometimes forget due to how little this played into my upbringing, and was born and raised in Sudbury – a small mining city in rural Ontario whose biggest claim to fame is having a giant 30ft nickel – and my po po and gong gong came over to Canada around three quarters of a century ago, fighting tooth and nail to survive and make ends meet. Meanwhile, the earliest descendants of the British side of my family arrived several generations back, with the closest being four generations ago. This leaves me somewhere between three and who-knows-how-many generations down the line confused and left to reconcile with my cultural identity, with a full name that makes me look and sound like a pale colonial relic, and thin, jet black hair that can only be styled a select few ways to avoid resembling Gollum.
Growing up, exposure to my Cantonese side was minimal. Twice a year, I’d be whisked away to visit my grandparents in Ottawa, turning my nose up at congee for breakfast, making half-hearted attempts at deciphering broken English, and eating nothing but fried rice and the occasional splash of broccoli from plates stacked with steamed vegetables – a negligible fraction of all the dishes my po po would prepare for us. We’d laugh at how she incessantly said ‘eat first, eat first’ (eat foos), how she’d try to teach tai chi she’d learnt through instructional VHS tapes, and how she’d recount the prices she saw at the dollar store with the same enthusiasm as a White backpacker recounting their life-changing trip to Thailand (very ch-ip! very ch-ip!). These were the fundamental tenets of po po: food, exercise, and a good bargain.
Because of how infrequently I saw them, it never seemed odd to me that I had grandparents I referred to as po po and gong gong, that I was given red envelopes every late January to early February for Lunar New Year, or that I barely looked like my mom’s side of the family. It wasn’t until I truly started noticing how uncommon it was for everyone else I knew to navigate between races that I began to feel alienated.
My search for jade came from a yearning to find a subtle way to represent my Cantonese heritage that didn’t involve infusing my cologne with soy sauce. After a series of condescending remarks at a cultural event for work, with people assuming I was just another pale White guy who couldn’t handle spice (in truth, anything above Siracha is a bit far), I became incensed with people’s preconceptions, and decided to take matters into my own hands.
Possessed by a desire to find some way to represent my culture other than tattooing ‘’I’m also Asian!’’ onto my forehead, my Singaporean friend suggested I start wearing jade, a visible and sensible nod to my Cantonese half. Within minutes, I’d ordered a jade pendant off the internet, naively thinking that, once it arrived, all my racial identity issues would dissipate. I envisioned racial acceptance and recognition, thinking if I had the gall to express my heritage, it would at least command some respect – or, at the very least, spark conversation. What I got was quite the opposite.
Since September, the jade pendant I wear on a daily basis has elicited a variety of responses, including ‘‘you look like a hippy’’, ‘‘I didn’t even notice’’, and a look of unadulterated disdain from an old Asian man on a bus, a look that implied I was appropriating a culture I had no right to lay claim to. The only positive responses it’s procured have required lengthy explanation, defeating the objective of hinting at my heritage discreetly.
Things, clearly, have not gone to plan.
***
‘‘Do you speak Ca-’’ – ‘No.’’, ‘Do you have any family in-’’ – ‘No.’’
Whenever other mixed-race people in my life describe their backgrounds, they paint a rich cultural tapestry, describing mother tongues, sacred traditions, and demonstrating a firm knowledge of their cultures. They’re fluent in languages I couldn’t even dream of being able to speak and recall summers visiting family in countries halfway across the world, recounting culinary experiences and sights unfathomable to Western tastebuds and eyes. They’ve mastered their differences and crystallised them into a clear, inalienable sense of cultural self. My mother – and only – tongue is English. And every single one of my family members lives within the parameters of a single province.
Oftentimes, trying to develop any semblance of cultural identity feels like trying to piece together an ethnic jigsaw puzzle with my hands drenched in sesame oil. Every time I try to play into a culture I feel at least genetically entitled to partake in, a piece slips out of my hand and gets lost, buying mooncakes out of season or stabbing my chopsticks in rice without realising it’s bad luck, rendering the puzzle one I can never truly complete.
‘‘I don’t know why you use those – they’re so hard to eat with.’’
The truth of the matter is that I barely grew up with any sense of Cantonese culture. My mom used to judge my use of chopsticks, despite the fact they’re the most versatile utensil to ever exist, imploring me to use forks or other forms of cutlery instead. I can’t stylise my name in characters without looking like a prick. I had to search up how to use a rice cooker before the first time I used one and I can’t even store tofu – the one vegetarian staple in Cantonese cooking – properly. I signed up for Cantonese lessons only to find myself struggling to wrap my head around all the tonal variances and giving up after half a term, and only to find out my grandparent’s mother tongue is a mutually unintelligible dialect called Taishanese (to date, the only Cantonese I know is po po, gong gong, and kung hei fat choi). And when I go to dim sum with my Asian family, the only thing I can eat is steamed rice and broccoli, because my vegetarianism precludes me from indulging in anything more. The best thing I can do is buy a domain using a double-barrel surname I don’t yet legally have and air my crisis on the internet, co-opting it before some other mixed-race Asian guy with racial identity issues and the same name decides to do the same.
***
Even when I am recognised as being half-Asian, it’s always in the context of feeling like an anomaly, and a spectacle for people to observe rather than a legitimate identity.
‘‘Excuse me – are you half-Korean?’’
These are the first words a new, temporary White co-worker asked me one day. No greeting, no introduction, just racial speculation. Begrudgingly, I explained I’m half Cantonese, not Korean, though my mom’s maiden name, Lee, is spelt the Korean way.
‘Ha! I knew it!’, she said, as if the two discernibly distinctive ethnicities were the same, before walking away with a smug grin plastered across her face.
While it was just a question, part of me felt like my very existence had been turned into a game show question on ‘Guess That Race!’ rather than one that could be explained with nuance and sensitivity. My blood boiled, my face turned red, and I was livid.
It took every bone into my body to not go up to her and say:
‘‘Excuse me – are you conceited and basic? I knew it!’’
The better, and more morally attuned, part of me resisted, though only by the skin of my teeth.
***
When you look different and unrecognisable to nearly everyone around you, culture no longer feels intrinsic – it feels adversarial. Every attempt you make to try and take part in a culture you feel you ought to belong to feels like sitting in the witness stand in court, waiting for a grand jury to deny the claim you made to your own ethnicity. Every pointed question about tradition from a cross-examiner who’s purer or more knowledgeable feels like a dismantling of your own identity, hitting harder and harder as you know fewer and fewer answers, ultimately eradicating any sense of authority you have to talk about your own culture – to claim a part of yourself.
The thing about being mixed race and ostracised from your own culture in a country with no discernible sense of cultural identity on stolen land is that you have nothing to fall back on. Every failure to not live up to your culture isn’t just a deficiency of heritage; it feels like a deficiency of self. Trying to piece together a cultural narrative in a nation that broadly and erroneously, even if subtly, equates being Canadian with being White makes it feel like some sort of personal racial explanation is necessary to feel you belong in a land where nearly everyone is from somewhere else.
‘‘Matthew always used to say he was half-Asian; he thought it was the biggest flex.’’
Even among Asians, not looking Asian enough has always led to a compulsive need to try and crowbar my heritage into every interaction with new people so as to avoid my references being construed as the remarks of a white fetishist – a demographic I’m unfortunately all too familiar with. Without doing so, references to steamed bao, baked goods, and being born in the year of the dragon are lost on people thinking you’re trying embed yourself in their culture, despite having a personal stake in it. Every experience recounted necessitates a feeling of self-justification and every tradition referenced feels like it requires a defence.
***
Nearly two dozen Lunar New Years later, I still lack a clear sense of cultural and racial identity. The optimist in me sees my culture as something I can create and develop on my own volition, deriving influence from the relatively acultural and irreligious upbringing I had. The realist in me acknowledges that the overwhelming majority of the world still conceptualises race in monolithic terms and tends not to take lightly to the idea of culture being seen as a Pick’n’mix rather than a set of linear traditions.
Perhaps I’ll be the catalyst that makes people realise prescriptive and exclusionary cultural narratives eradicate the realities of people who feel like they’re from everywhere all at once – or nowhere at all. Perhaps I’ll be the spanner in the works that demonstrates you can be more than one thing without needing to absolve yourself of your own culture. Wishful thinking for some, and especially wishful thinking for me. Unfortunately, I am not the mixed-race messiah.
I’m not from a distant land, nor will I ever be. Even having been born and raised in the most culturally diverse city in the world, I still feel out of place. My culture is combining things that most wouldn’t think to combine, synthesising experiences and traditions to create my own, and acknowledging that, while it may be nice, living with meaning doesn’t have to be predicated on having a distinct sense of culture. Culture can be informative, but it shouldn’t mandate how you live your life. Not everyone has to be a bastion of their respective background(s); being human is already hard enough.
So, for now, as tacky as it may seem to others, I’ll continue wearing the pendant – if not out of pride, then at least out of spite. Red envelope in hand, I can’t just be half and half, an incomplete splattering of converging cultures. All I can ever really be is fully me.
Matthew Lee-Ferguson, 22/01/2023 – LNY
Matthew Lee-Ferguson 