Thursday, 29th December 2022.
Weather: blue skies and sunshine but deceptively cold. 9 degrees Celsius.
Hi there. It’s been a while. 2 years to be more precise. I decided unconsciously, or if I can be honest, maybe consciously, to put this blog to sleep in the hope that, perhaps, if I let it lay dormant, then there was a chance that I would wake it up again. Putting the blog to death by deleting the account would be too final an act and you know how I am with giving things a chance, even if the chance is 0.0001%.
It is with gladness that I can pluck this blog out of sleep mode and resuscitate it to the 'now'.
You are reading before you the reawakening of my heart. I cannot promise that that will be done and dusted in one blog, it may be in 10 or 100 but we will see as time goes on and as God leads me. I may reveal much or withhold if I feel some things should remain locked and go no further than the confines of my heart. But I will seek to write from a place of authenticity as uncomfortable and foreign and raw as it feels. It is one thing to share with friends but quite another to post to cyberspace, risking the misinterpretation of the online crowd however it is a chance I am willing to take if my story might help someone out there, even if it is just the one.
Let’s begin.
This blog post was started by a series of promptings from my Spirit that I chose to ignore over the course of...oh, I don’t know...3 years? 4? 5? It was then suggested by my home group leader Rene Uys about 1 month ago (I might explain what a home group leader is/does in another post but let’s park that for now) so I could not, I choose not to shrug off this blog. Not because someone told me to but because this was a good opportunity to drive traffic to my proverbial future website, which I have yet to build. Or get someone to build. With what money I have yet to dig, uncover and/or make. My heart sinking already but I choose to un-sink it and keep it afloat. What is the alternative?
So, let’s begin. Again.
I wonder when I started stopping my heart. Was it when my mother told me that as the first-born daughter that I am to set an example to my younger siblings? That was certainly the point at which I felt a heavy cloak of responsibility fall upon my shoulders. I think I was 5, or maybe 6 years old but cannot 100% pinpoint when this conversation was had. Let’s just say the cloak fell prematurely and that I felt too young to carry this responsibility, and its weight fell on non-broad shoulders.
I loved my parents and wanted to please them. I don’t know the extent of your knowledge about Chinese culture so I will have you know that in order to be a first-born child, one must demonstrate the behaviour be-fitting of the eldest sibling. It is imperative that one puts aside his/her childish ways and shows his/her sister and brother how to behave. In Chinese Cantonese we would say, ‘how way do person’ [direct word structure].
To do the right thing.
Therein lied my lifelong thorn. My eternal fight.
It was there that I went with said instruction, to choose the Chinese way.
And in doing so, I stopped my heart.
I could feel the soreness in my heart as I type this.
To do the right thing looked a certain way in my ethnic Chinese culture.
To do the right thing looked a certain way in my national British culture.
I still found myself pulled in two directions, torn between opposing teams. Isn’t it ironic that my name, the Hang in Ching-Hang, means ‘balance’? I could not have felt more unbalanced.
How can I do what is right by both my nationality and ethnicity? Which one takes dominance? How do you even pick one over the other?
Choosing one would betray the other.
If I were endocentric I would please my mother and father’s wishes of turning me into an obedient Chinese daughter, who knows her roots, knows the colour of her skin, and knows the way of the orient.
If I were exocentric I would fit in with my friends in school and socialise with ease. Imagine being free from social anxiety and on high alert! To ‘proudly British’; fully acclimatised to my national culture with my head held high. But, and this is a big ‘but’, choosing British over Chinese would hurt my parents and bring shame to my family, and even to myself. I would be labelled a ‘banana’; yellow on the outside, white on the inside, a derogatory term used by the Chinese to shame people like myself who, as someone pointed out, have adopted the ways of the West.
Sad is it not when others cut us with their words so that we may fit into their controlled containers.
I resented being branded a ‘banana’. I felt hurt by that statement even though perhaps there was some truth in it. I should feel ashamed, the voice tells me, due to my betrayal to my culture and family name. Grandad did not sacrifice his happiness to immigrate to England in search of better opportunities, for me to turn away from my Chinese roots. The pressure to retain my heritage and keep myself from Western viewpoints or behaviours was huge.
I did not understand why the West was perceived to be so wrong and malicious.
To what avail would this perception serve?
Has it helped my family? Would it help me?
Still, I was young so I hushed my heart and spoke as little as possible on the matter. “Just comply, Ching, and do what your parents tell you. They know best. Plus, why would they want to harm you? Trust what they say” I told myself.
-----------------------------------------
When I turned 11 and started secondary school,
At the age of 12, my parents moved us from our council flat in London to their takeaway shop in Essex. I went from being in a progressive state comprehensive all-girls school in Camden, London to a more traditional all-girls grammar school in Romford, Essex.
That was traumatic.
It did not work out for us 3 siblings so we uprooted and moved back to London.
The re-relocation worked and my depression started to lift. I did not know that was what it was called, all I understood as a 12-year-old was that it was not normal to feel heaviness even after sleep. I was not myself. So what a relief it was to be back in the city in my natural surroundings. I was home. Yes to cultural diversity!
It was great for a while. Until it wasn't.
My primary caregivers did not permit me to go shopping with friends, go to sleepovers, essentially experience life as a normal British teenager.
Slowly but surely passive anger and anger encroached upon my heart as I fought for normal British teenage hood but was repeatedly told ‘no’.
What is the point of getting straight A’s and being a good girl if I were not to be rewarded? It was boring to stay home all the time. I was either in school or numbing with TV at home or at Chinese school on Sundays.
Was every day to be the same as any day?
I felt more and more alien, foreign in this land that I am supposed to call home. I spent most of my day in this council flat, longing to play outdoors with kids on the estate. The loneliness crept in. I did not have the vocabulary to call it loneliness, all I knew was that my heart was sore and losing energy. I felt tired by the energy drain. Why could I not play with the other kids? Were they really so bad and naughty. Why was mum so against me being outdoors? I longed to experience freedom and flex my wings, yet my reality was trapped inside a dull and non-gilded cage. I could not breathe. Squashed, pushed down, repressed. How is this doing the right thing, being the right person?
I stopped my heart again.
Am I to stay like this forever?
When will I be a grown-up and make my own decisions?
Where could you go from here?
Where will you go from here?
I decided I could either go with the wishes of my parents or I could speak up. One was easier, one was harder but, as I came to discover, both choices had similar consequences. Inevitably either I would feel disappointed or they would. There was no ‘easy’ and there was certainly no ‘black’ and ‘white’.
It did not take much longer for me to listen to my heart and try to fight.
Fight for me.
I had to advance.
To what avail? I was not entirely sure at the time but felt that I had to at least try.
It did not come to my realisation that I would fight this fight for the next 20 years of my life.
To be continued.
To be continued.
