Yue (Ivy) Blog #2: "Where are you from/from from?"

“Where are you from?” and “Where are you from from?” are actually two different questions. The boarderline between the two is ambiguous; but generally one is asking about residence as opposed to region of ‘real’ origin. Residence is something related to the environment in which one grew up in and what was given to them by said environment, such as the language, name and education.  Ethnicity is on the other hand something genetic that one was born with and in essence beyond our control. In Roots, Kunta Kinte is forced to give away his name under physical torture; in Triumph of the Will, Nazis manipulate people to focus only on their German ethnicity. In my opinion, residence and ethnicity are two inseparable yet independent identities of a person.

It is arguable that sometimes one could own several citizenships or several environments one grew up in, thus it is harder to answer the first question; however, since globalization has been taking place since hundreds years ago, the “Where are you from from?” question as well became hard to answer. During last week’s class activity, we divided ourselves by race. And it was surprising for me to find almost all of my classmates are sort of mixed ethnicity. And even though I told the class I’m Chinese, I have doubts that anyone is purely “Chinese,” or any other race.

It is said that there is a 6-type gene that is present in all human beings and that can be traced back to 6 original women (as the gene is sex-linked). These original mothers are postulated to have lived in Africa a few million years ago but how does this elucidate our understanding of ourselves? If who we are subject to something as ever changing as time, how are we to ever have a consistent self-portrait in our mind’s eye?

Today I had several friends over for dinner, a potpourri of all kinds of Asians. As we ate, the group decided to watch something pertinent to all- so we chose My Way, a movie about a rivalry between a Japanese and a Korean character who are involved in the Russo-Japanese war. The film was graphic to say the least, but it also expressed a very raw form of racial hatred, war and groupthink; cues that we the viewers, were surprisingly sensitive to. At certain points in the movie I felt very aware that the 3 Chinese girls were of my “group” and that the Koreans and the Japanese, were ‘others.’ This is startling to me because Jeff, my Japanese and Chinese mixed friend who was raised in Shanghai, seemed to be one of my “group” while Bruno, one of the Koreans, who was born in and spent most of his life in Brazil, and who can barely speak Korean, instinctively subscribed to the Korean character’s point of view. In a sense therefore, identity is also situational and often signaled by cues that we may have little conscious awareness of.

Therefore, I start to feel like identity is something that is quite fluid and plastic. One’s whole identity consists of identities like residence and ethnicity. Identity is something subject to change, depending on whom you are with or what you are doing or feeling. On this note, I think it is especially important to be aware of when one’s identity is manipulated.