Belgian/Hungarian | Taiwanese
I identify as Eurasian, gay and Ietsist, a combination which has fluctuated over the years. My cultural background is however truly that of a Third Culture Kid, a denomination I have strongly related to and now fully adopted. I was born in Japan, raised at the French school in Hong Kong and have been studying in the United Kingdom for 6 years now despite none of these countries being connected to either of my parents’ cultural backgrounds. My Mother is of Taiwanese origin and my Father is mostly Belgian with a hint of Hungarian blood. Both met whilst studying in high school in Belgium during a play in which both of them were acting.
My Mother experienced some racial discrimination against her and her family as one of few Asian immigrants in a strongly colonial country, but my Dad was very open-minded to learn about different cultures and was more keen to travel when compared to his classmates. When they first started dating, my maternal Grandmother made my Dad pass several cultural ‘tests’ including cooking typical Taiwanese delicacies such as chicken feet and the famed ‘century’ eggs, to assess whether my Dad was truly invested in an interracial and intercultural relationship.
The most common problems with being mixed-race arise from the lack of sense of belonging and language barriers. This is particularly visible when people in Hong Kong or Taiwan assume I cannot speak Mandarin Chinese because I look like a White person, some of which explicitly address my friends who look Chinese instead of me to ask a question about me despite my understanding them.
I connect to each of my cultures in the strangest of ways, I seem to connect the most to my country of birth Japan despite me only living there for 2 years and having forgotten most of my Japanese. I exclusively cook Japanese meals and appreciate Japanese aesthetics whether in fashion, architecture, music and interior design more than any other culture I could assimilate with. I have yet to truly visit Belgium, having spent a total of 14 days there in my life, despite me carrying a Belgian passport everywhere and even running for Belgian society committee positions at university level. Travelling back to Hong Kong (where I truly feel ‘at home’), Japan or Taiwan motivates me to research into more cultural activities like visiting niche temples and shrines.
My outlook on mixed-race ethnicity has seldom changed growing up simply because the places I have lived in have all been historically associated with being multi-cultural cities, this is especially true for Hong Kong & London. As I grow up I definitely realise that mixed-race ethnicity is a blessing simply by the enrichment in knowledge of different cultures and being able to relate to more people you meet on the first go.
Being a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford is also ideal for people who can relate to my background seeing as academia fosters international collaborations and a single research group or department typically welcomes people from all different continents. Oxford is also extremely LGBTQ+ friendly and I would dare state that gender-conforming and people with rigid sexuality are in minority at the university, but this stems only from my perspective.