April 12th, 2011 by Dawn Becker

I recently read an article by Jan Wong in the April 2011 issue of Toronto Life magazine, entitled "Not Asian enough: Jan Wong on the phenomenon of ‘Tiger Mom’ parenting”. While I usually don’t agree with Jan Wong’s often contentious opinions in her articles, I did find this month’s column intriguing.

Some of my Canadian friends don’t understand how cultural duality plays into my Chinese-Canadian life. Most of the time it seemingly doesn’t. While I agree that as a Canadian-born Chinese I have all the benefits of every other Canadian born in this country, visibly I could still be identified as Asian, and therefore have experienced my share of discrimination (in my youth) and objectification (when I was a budding adult). Admittedly, growing up in the 80s, in the quiet suburban town we know as Pickering, in an elementary school with only five other Asian kids, one of whom was my sister, things were very different from today.

Culturally speaking there are definitely distinctions. For example, at the end of my Mandarin class – yes I am finally taking Mandarin lessons to add to my food/shopping Cantonese, proving that it’s never too late to learn a new language – my teacher sent me away shouting "Work hard!", while I simultaneously shouted back at her “Don’t work too hard.” We both had a laugh as we realized this was a perfect example of Western versus Eastern work philosophies.

When I find myself in an all-Chinese scenario, say a family reunion or wedding, there’s always the comment that “it’s such a shame that I don’t read or write Chinese”. It’s true. I do have language envy. My cousin, Casey, was brought up in a family where Cantonese was spoken daily, where the culture was instilled unconsciously, in an environment where you were proud to be Chinese. So I struggle to find myself not being Chinese enough and being Chinese in a Western society. I was delighted to read Jane Leung’s article Tired of not being ‘Chinese enough’ where she shares similar opinions to my own. And better yet, she refers to herself as being a banana too where some of my critics raised an eyebrow as to whether that was derogatory or not. I commented about that in my first post.

Today, I couldn’t be prouder to be both Chinese and Canadian. And when the opportunity presents itself, I dive right into learning what I can about other cultures attempting to see what their lives look like through their unique cultural lens.