EPTDear diary or whoever or myself in the future… I don’t know why I'm writing this but it’s a great summer day and I've got some free time and it cant be bad, and I haven’t written like this by hand in a long while so here goes martins thoughts and feelings:
Identity crisis.
I don’t know when it occurred to me so I guess its more of a progressive thing that came to me slowly over time, but I have a difficult time finding myself, in the sense “where am I from?”
I was born in Hebei china and lived with my grandparents for the first two years of my life. Then I moved to Sweden where I stayed for five years. I learned Swedish and mandarin Chinese to some extent – sufficient for everyday use. The family then moved to Hong Kong – a truly alien place for me, it was hot, damp, smelly, crowded and the two languages I understood were suddenly obsolete. Due to my lack of scholastic mandarin I had no choice but to go to the international section to study because English is easier than Chinese. It’s true. Hands down.
So I go to school there and learn English and soon I've picked up English and soon after Cantonese. English was still my second language but that changed when I got into CIS (high school). Actually, a little before CIS was my English already surpassing my Chinese but CIS cemented that in my life. From this point onwards it was a perpetual game of catch up for me on Chinese. I think deep down I knew and felt as a Chinese person that I had to improve my Chinese, but that is seriously easier said than done. I worked my ass off and got a 6 (out of 7 so I got an A) in Chinese A2 high IB level and also getting a bilingual diploma. Later in Malmö I did the HSK test in advanced level Chinese (the highest) and passed, to my utter amazement. This was also the year I was to take Swedish a and b for university and I passed that. Oh yea after high school in Hong Kong I went to Sweden to study uni, and my family moved from Hong Kong to Shanghai.
So here I am! A Chinese 19 year old boy fluent in Mandarin, English and Swedish speech (and some Canto) to the point of a native speaker, but herein lies my dilemma. Well not really a dilemma but a bother, like the cut on the roof of your mouth or an itch in your toes but the shoes you’re wearing are too solid to comfortably readjust in.
I don’t know who I am.
I don’t know if I’m Chinese that’s good at eng and swe, or a Swede that’s good at chi and eng, or an international student that’s good at chi and swe!
Living and studying in Sweden now, I feel like a Swedish person, but then again I feel like I’m on a very long visit, as if in the back of my mind I know that this is all temporary and I cannot convince myself to truly integrate, whether it’s the people, the culture, the news – whatever. As if I’m wearing a mask that makes me Swedish looking, with a Swedish passport and Swedish knowledge but still, not Swedish.
I would say that the same thing applies to my Chinese heritage now. I was born in Hebei and lived there for two years, but my memory of that time is very muddy. My father is from Hebei and my mother from Dalian, yet I grew up in Sweden and then Hong Kong. For me, I would say that Hong Kong is the city I feel the most at home with, but then, I'm not from Hong Kong. Sadly I do not live there anymore but in Shanghai. Don’t get me wrong shanghai is an awesome city but I just don’t feel like I’m at home but like I’m on a really nice holiday where my parents all live in a very nice hotel that looks like a house apartment with all our furniture but it just doesn’t feel like home.
argh maybe in the futre I'll figure this one out a little bit further, it's not like I'm losing a lot of sleep or anything over this and it isn't really bothering me -that- much but it's just something that I would be glad with if I could decide on something then move along.
anyone else have a multicultural background with similar experiences?
second question: When does a non native person become a person from the country that they are staying in. In other words: When does a Chinese person staying in Sweden become a real Swede? Is it the level of Swedish he knows? Is it how long he has lived there? Is it his citizenship?
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