Third Culture Kid(s)

I’ve been worried that this weblog is devolving into some kind of All Asiaphilia All The Time kind of creepy blog. Maybe I’m turning into what M. describes as “those guys who study kanji on the train in Tokyo” - next thing you know, I’ll be enrolling for Kung Fu (which I’ll annoyingly call “Jeet Kun Do”) classes, whipping up some of my mouth-watering red bean-shiso dumplings, putting some soothing shakuhachi tunes on the stereo, and lighting up a little incense.

Oh, and red Chinese character tapestries. Must get me some of those.

But, see, the fact of the matter is I do know what “Jeet Kun Do” is (okay, I don’t know what it is, but I do know that it’s Bruce Lee’s martial arts methodology). I know what red bean & shiso dumplings are (kind of…I know that there’s one Japanese sweet that involves anko and shiso leaves and that I don’t like it…I can’t remember if it involves mochi or not, but I think it does? Maybe?). I don’t particularly care for shakuhachi tunes (because, oh my God, shakuhachi is musical Valium), but I’ve been known to throw on a little Cantonese opera (courtesy of the show “Something in Chinese that I Can Kind of Read” at the RTHK website) and rock out. And incense…well…I just like it - cho beri natsukashii.

I haven’t gone completely over to the dark side and decked the whole house out in red, though. I have my pride.

Seriously, though, this really, really bugs me. To be honest, it always has - it is, if you will, a quintessential TCK kind of feeling. On the one hand, I really, really do not fit in in my “home” culture. Yeah, I was born here, and, yeah, I was raised by Texans, and that leaves a mark on a personality. I’m all about the saccharined iced tea (although I went cosmopolitan and added lemon juice about a decade back), the mashed potatoes, the fried chicken. I love “King of the Hill” because it captures West Texas life so perfectly - at least, the Texas life that my family seems to lead. I lived in Connecticut for years, too, and I love old rambling mansions by the shore, seagulls flying over cool summer water, and seeing the NYC skyline on the horizon on car trips. I lived in the Midwest for…um (gotta think about this one)…11 years, and even THAT grew on me…eventually.

But I also went to the beach and lit candles inside of plastic lanterns for the Moon Festival. I got dragged off to enough Buddhist temples as a kid to know I never need to see another one again. I ate GOOD dim-sum as a kid - not the over-cooked and bean sprout/celery laden stuff that passes for dim-sum in the Costco freezer section. I knew who Sammo Hung Kam-bo was before he starred on TV with Arsenio Hall. I got laisee (hongbao) for Chinese New Year, and otoshidama for New Year in Japan.* My musical tastes were formed by listening to Commercial Radio and visiting a Chinese commune in 1978**, and I’d never even heard of Nirvana until I found out that bit of music I liked in Moulin Rouge was actually “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (my husband told me).

In other words, I can’t help the things I like or know. I sometimes feel like I should apologize for being white and yet being this way inside. I’m always on the lookout for indications that it’s really just a wannabe kind of thing; that it’s all essentially inauthentic because I’m inauthentic. I don’t look the part of the person I am inside (which obviously isn’t “Asian,” but more of a hybrid), and I don’t really act the part of the person I look like (which is white. Very, very white).

Most of the time, I’m okay with the liminality of the whole thing. Being neither one nor the other, neither here nor there, has its freedoms. But its potential inauthenticity - as much as I think that “authenticity” is a limited, and limiting, term - bugs me sometimes.

*funny story that, involving me grossing about $200 in otoshidama from my host family’s relatives the first year I spent in Japan, and then not noting who gave me what so that I never wrote thank you notes. I still feel stupid.

**Yes, I like Chinese revolutionary music. A LOT. “The East is Red” gives me chills every time. Seriously. I’m a Communist dictator’s dream come true.

ETA: I fixed the “East is Red” link so that it actually takes you to a site with the song.  Oops.