British | Malaysian
It's difficult to hide your identity when you have a Chinese first name. I don't remember ever hiding it. Until I had the opportunity to travel to Malaysia, there was not much opportunity to engage with my Malaysian Chinese side growing up. We would go to a Chinese restaurant for dim sum as an occasional treat. When I was 9 we went to Malaysia for a month, that was an amazing experience. Meeting so many cousins and trying all the delicious food, it all felt very exotic to us. My sister and I were treated like foreigners by our relatives there. I wish my Mum had taught me her language; it's Hokkien, a Chinese spoken dialect that you can't really go and study anywhere, you have to just learn it by immersion.
My Mum is from Penang, Malaysia and my Dad is from Yorkshire, England. They both worked in the same hospital and exchanged glances across the canteen. At the Christmas pub lunch, my Mum wished my Dad Merry Christmas and they sat together and finally started talking. When my Mum returned to Malaysia, my Malaysian Grandfather disapproved of their relationship and wrote to my Dad to tell him to give up writing to her because she would not return to the UK. My Dad wrote back to say he would continue writing to her and then my Mum eventually returned to the UK to work.
I got divorced during the pandemic. It was particularly hard because of not being able to meet friends face to face. I got through it thanks to zoom calls with friends and family, and focusing on art, gardening, cooking, etc. It allowed me time to engage with my interests, especially art. I had dabbled in it before but started drawing portraits with a group that meet on Zoom, and started learning abstract painting.
We need more connections between people of different races and backgrounds. If people haven't got a connection with each other it's easy to discriminate. But if you have some kind of connection you actually see the person, the individual.
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