British | Hong Kong Chinese
During the pandemic I’ve managed my mental health by trying to manage it less. I suffer with problems with food so I've been using this time to really try to work on that. I've finally got to a point where I think I'm following hunger cues for the first time since I can remember. That's huge for me. I've been meditating a lot, a useful habit I've picked up from the Buddhist side of the family and doing yoga every morning. Of course, the turmoil in Hong Kong has been a big factor for my mental health. Having to watch the news and see your home be stripped of so much of what made it so special and see how physically dangerous it is, knowing you're half a world away from it and your family is heart-breaking. The meditation really pulled its weight some weeks.
I feel privileged that I am White passing to many people. Then again, I've always felt this way because I've been forced to be conscious to race. The big change for me was the world catching up to the rest of us who have had to be conscious our entire lives. I see a lot of light in the fact that race is a consideration now. I've noticed that people are so much quicker to consider how things might affect me differently as a woman of colour, where it was never a thought that crossed minds before. We used to nail how things worked for White people and then let everyone else figure out how they work around it. It doesn't feel like that anymore.
My Mum is from Hong Kong and my Dad is from Hackney. The alliteration of the Hs is very satisfying to I tend to go for Hackney over London or England! My Dad moved to Hong Kong, thinking it would be a great experience for a few years and met my Mum at work. Long story short, they ended up getting married four years later, the year of the British handover, and I was born a year after that. We spent the first five years of my life in Hong Kong, before moving to the UK in time with me starting primary school. My parents wanted me to avoid the rather harsh Hong Kong schooling system (which I'm very thankful for!) and to get to do some growing up with my British family too. As a staple, we went back to Hong Kong at least every other year during my childhood and teenage years, each time staying with my Aunt for the whole six-week summer holiday. As plane ticket prices went up due to my age, visits decreased until now we go more rarely and for less time but it is still a really important thing for us to do. Mum has a huge family over there so it's important she gets to see them, and for me it is definitely still home. Food-wise, we eat a mixture of things at home. Food in Britain is so varied and influenced by other cultures that I think even the Chinese dishes we have are probably commonplace in households now. I am bilingual and it's probably the thing which keeps me most tied to my heritage. I'm honestly nowhere near native-fluent anymore, especially when I haven't been back to HK in a while, but being able to talk to my Mum easily, go to a Cantonese restaurant and have a chat with the waiters, or watch HK Youtubers makes me feel at home.
I would need to be able to see my partner being patient with my Mum when she's struggling to articulate herself in English. I want them to be excited about learning about my culture, trying our food, and hearing my language. I'm known for being quite brutal in terms of standards and knowing almost immediately if someone is worth pursuing or not. Having these cultural considerations only helps me with filtering out people who wouldn't fit into that part of my life.
When people ask where I'm from, I almost always say Essex and sometimes you can see that's clearly not the answer they were looking for but they don't push it any further. Even though that's definitely more out of wanting to irritate them because their question backfired, some part of it is also just to avoid the conversation. Sometimes I don't want to tell Dave in The Kings Arms about my heritage, sometimes I just want to have a good night. I don't owe anyone that information. However, there are situations in which it will be asked in a very polite way and I'm in a mood where I do want to engage in a conversation about race. Then, I'll be happy and proud to say I'm from Hong Kong.
I suppose the biggest change that has happened recently is that I've decided to start using my Mum's maiden name, Lee, in my surname. I've always felt uncomfortable to some degree having a name which didn't reflect my how I see myself. I wanted to have my name represent me as I am and honour an entire culture which I felt was erased from my public identity. It's changed a lot for me in terms of mindset; a lot is in a name!
I think that my parents' situation was not that uncommon at the time, but certainly in my Grandparents generation I can imagine things were very different. I personally think that interracial relationships and families are a real source of light in this ridiculously divisive world. There's something about honouring and integrating cultures within relationships and families which actually strengthens them rather than causes them to be lost, which is something which I think is a misconception from previous generations. The positives are endless. I feel incredibly lucky to have one foot on each side of the world and to have experienced things that many people my age would never have. I'm grateful to have another language, which is always useful. There are of course some challenges. I think it has taken me many more years to gain a sense of identity than those who are not of mixed heritage.
More material challenges have definitely been noticed in the world of theatre, the industry in which I currently work and would like to stay in. UK theatre has a huge diversity problem, not so much in casting anymore (although if you really look at original casts and leading roles it's a real sea of White faces), but behind the scenes in directing, writing, producing and administration it is a bleak looking prospect.
There's so much pressure to be able to describe yourself and want to know exactly who you are when you're younger. The quickest way to do that is to choose a side. Due to, put simply, internalised racism that side was the British side for me. It made sense: I looked White, I spoke English, I lived in England. I stopped speaking Cantonese at home, started wearing makeup to change my eye shape and avoided getting a tan.
When I got older and started to embrace more elements of being mixed-race, I was accused of cultural appropriation a couple of times. That was really odd for me and in every instance I really had no clue how to navigate it. Even now, I've considered wearing a cheongsam to fancy events and never have done so for fear, not of what people might say to me if they misread my race, but more fearful if they don't say anything and I don't get a chance to explain. Someday I've told myself I'll do it. So now it's flipped, I have more of a fear of appearing White than Chinese. I wear little to no makeup now, or makeup done in a way that accentuates an East Asian eye shape which helps me feel much more myself. I suspect and hope that as I get older more things will iron themselves out and slot into what I would call my own identity, but I'm happy knowing that it will be something that I'm figuring out for a long time. It's quite a fun process to go through once you learn to sit in a little uneasiness.
I feel privileged that I am White passing to many people. Then again, I've always felt this way because I've been forced to be conscious to race. The big change for me was the world catching up to the rest of us who have had to be conscious our entire lives. I see a lot of light in the fact that race is a consideration now. I've noticed that people are so much quicker to consider how things might affect me differently as a woman of colour, where it was never a thought that crossed minds before. We used to nail how things worked for White people and then let everyone else figure out how they work around it. It doesn't feel like that anymore.
I think Cambridge is a pretty good place to be for someone like me. I don't feel I've been disadvantaged because of my identity, except for in the theatre space which is a slightly different issue. The same cannot be said for Black students, whom Cambridge has and continues to let down. This only highlights the need for distinctions to be made between the experiences of different people of colour. It's not enough for the racial equality stats to be good, it doesn't correlate to individual experience at Cambridge and that is painfully clear. Having said this, the only time I've felt singled out is by the ridiculous racial bias of porters. I've never met a White student who has been stopped by a porter and asked for identification. I've never met a non-White student who hasn't. It's a little inconvenience that just reinforces the whiney voice everyone has in their heads that says, 'you don't belong at Cambridge'. It's also just really embarrassing, but nothing compared to the institutionalised racism that Black students face. Getting my ID out every time I need to go into King's isn't going to set me back in life.
During the pandemic I’ve managed my mental health by trying to manage it less. I suffer with problems with food so I've been using this time to really try to work on that. I've finally got to a point where I think I'm following hunger cues for the first time since I can remember. That's huge for me. I've been meditating a lot, a useful habit I've picked up from the Buddhist side of the family and doing yoga every morning. Of course, the turmoil in Hong Kong has been a big factor for my mental health. Having to watch the news and see your home be stripped of so much of what made it so special and see how physically dangerous it is, knowing you're half a world away from it and your family is heart-breaking. The meditation really pulled its weight some weeks.
If I had the opportunity to be reborn I would love to return as a tree. I've had a lifetime of going to places and people, I'd like one where I just sit and observe whatever comes my way instead.