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culture and pride
written: 12:18 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 26, 2003

I wrote a piece in Chinese last night, entitled "Traffic Lights" (in Chinese, it would be "Hong Lu Deng"). I tried to make it eloquent, like how I would write if I were to do it in English. I searched for the beautiful words in my mind in all the right places, only to uncover more and more stepping stones in all the wrong places.

I have drifted from this heritage, culture, for far too long, until I'm no longer familiar with it. Instead, I don a foregin outfit, alter it until it becomes my own.

You don't need to have been to China to call yourself a Chinese. A Chinese in modern-day concept is someone disturbingly close to the state I'm stuck in now. It's like quicksand. No matter how much you try to struggle, kick, get yourself out, you continue to sink. Slowly, but surely.

And what's there when you're completely smothered? Nothing but empty troughs of hot, suffocating sand, bearing down on you, until it's all dark and you can no longer see the light.

That's how I feel about my struggle between my culture and the English culture. On the one hand, I'm fucking proud of being Chinese, but on the other, I can't even write a piece in the language with maturity and poise.

I feel like a foreigner amongst my own people. Whenever I return to Taiwan I feel the stark contrast between the Taiwanese and myself, nevermind that I was this close to becoming a Taiwanese once, many years ago. It's the language factor. The only factor. Zhou Jielun sings words I can't even understand without the aid of a dictionary.

It doesn't matter how much pride you have for a culture that you've been subconsciously alienating yourself from for a long, long time. Ultimately, you're at the losing end. And that's all that counts.

Because such damage cannot be reversed. The time lost with which you could've used to connect with the language cannot be retrieved.

I just feel cheated by myself out of a possible superior bilingualism that I know I could have right now. I don't know. It's bothering me. Last night I realised how little I really know about my own language, and how ludicrous it is that I speak a foreign one as if it were mine.

Make no mistake; it is mine, because I have made it so. But by default, it's just not the same.

As a Chinese, I am a complete failure.

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010