Alright now, I find my identity of being a “banana” rather fascinating. This amusement unraveled pretty recent, beginning from introducing myself to my host family and people I’ve met during my exchange, and next in college.
When you explain yourself to people of a different culture, we usually begin with…
“Malaysia has 3 main races, and I’m a Chinese, but I don’t speak Chinese, so I’m a banana – yellow outside, white inside.”
Heh, well they do get confused, because calling yourself a Chinese, could well similarly mean you’re made in China ;)
Okay, I know I am a rather hardcore banana, but thankfully, Chinese in KL speak Cantonese, hence explains my survival rate when maneuvering around KL (including going to the wet market near my home to get breakfast). And thanks to all the TVB dramas on TV3 at 6pm, and TV2 at 7pm, they filled me with rather good basics, sufficient for me to survive in KL.
But but but… I guess being a banana is defined by how well you speak Mandarin, and my school cliques have always been just like me (birds of the same feather, flock together eh). So I’ve never put much thought into this identity of mine, until recently.
You see, in college, I’m apparently one of the very few banana’s lying around, and hence, I realized I should be speaking some Chinese. To learn, and you know, remember your roots, and keep your culture. Okay, perhaps my accent makes me sound and look awkwardly adventurously silly, but it makes me happy for some reason. It makes me feel as if I’m learning something new, though in a rather eccentric manner, I’m learning something I should be!
Plus, living with two housemates that are non-banana’s, has been an incredibly amusing experience. You know how each person has a world of their own, and each of our worlds are composed of a huge myriad of fragments, and the communication between two is to search for common grounds where they become platforms of progression for the relationship, and then intertwining two different worlds together, expanding one another’s, opening up each minds, and thereby create a mutual understanding about everything that matters to them. Everything that makes them who they are.
Well, this identity of mine has been a fairly great bridge between me and them, and we could crack up and laugh so hard because of this. The way they try to improve their English, and me, Chinese, has done all of us good for this 1.5 years of college life. Hence, though it’s perhaps a bit shameful when I meet Indians who speak great Chinese (oh my, it’s embarassing), this process of learning up mine, and picking it up bit by bit, has its wonderful sunshines as well. Oh and another one of those silly humiliations, when I speak my wonderful broken Chinese among a group of non-bananas. Hehe, but well, it amuses me to a certain level, that learning can indeed be fun =)
Leaving college soon makes me think a lot. I know I like to think. Sometimes my thoughts run so deep, I become oblivious to all around me. I just become so soaked up within (in which an intimate worship always leaves with me this stigma for some time). College life had a lot of unexpectations for me. I found myself exploring more of myself, and unfortunately rather recluse (yes, I indeed discovered the very shy part of me) as I encounter people, things, matters, and whatever life in KTT has left with me. Sometimes the smallest of things mean so big to me. Like how a conversation left a ‘thing’ with me for a week, things around you impact you. Both positively and negatively. But it’s how you take and interpret it, to use it as something useful to build yourself to be someone better.
Today someone was telling me about how crazy he was in high school, and two hours worth of stories reminded me of my crazy moments. Singing in the middle of the pool on a stack of 7 pool-beds, in a hotel, by a restaurant where people were having dinner, and I didn’t care a thing about how people thought about me. Okay, you definitely need people of similar energy levels to do this. But, these things are instant laugh-jerkers. It has been a while since I’ve touched the crazy side of me, but I would love to pour it out someday, sometime. When I get the moment.
But yeah, as I live everyday, experiences make you find more pieces of yourself, that you’ve never discovered. A journey with God definitely unravels things of you, as He knows us better than ourselves. He knows you. The you that no one else does. Something I read while reading ODJ the other day, it says that even if you run away from Him for 40 years, He can still find you. The true, utmost depths of your heart’s you. Reminds me of one of my favourite passages of the Bible, Psalms 139. It helps me come to my humblest, deepest, most broken and fragile self, when I come to Him, because as a matter of fact, we can hide nothing from Him. He knows our deepest thoughts, and we can never runaway. God is an amazingly patient and slow-surprising (to me, at least). He shows you things, one by one. Well, He has your whole life mapped out before Him. His time is always perfect (though we always doubt that, being as impatient as we are).
Back to my chronicles of being a banana, it’s one part of me I discovered just 2 years ago, and it has served me well, and hoping it will serve me better in the future! Gotta learn up more Mandarin, and unpeel myself, so I’ll be a somewhat better Chinese =)
Credits to Xiu Jing
I was pushed into taking this picture (the half closed eyes explains it, I believe) , as the little small yellow banana is a mascot of my identity.
If you’re a banana just like me, it’s never too late to learn.
Life is a learning process. You can learn anything, at any day, as long as you always try to be a better person,
to make a difference in this world.
I want to learn how. How to be a better person, how to change people, how to be an influence, how to make a difference.
I’m as naive and inexperienced as any average Joe could be, but indeed,
it’s never too late to learn something new.
Of all your blog posts. I have to say this one is the most interesting one (:
Banana or not, I’m glad you’re not a typical Chinese or I’d find it hard to communicate with you.
Haha you’ve yet to discover more of me =) Perhaps it’s the whole idea of “A-Levels-is-ending-and-so-does-the-pressure-and-study-stress-that-KTT-life-gives” has opened up more of my creative side all over again :)
Would you believe it, I’m actually speaking more Mandarin here! lolol.
Kudos to that! Unpeeling… doesn’t that make you more white? :P
Never too late to learn?? O.o Maybe I don’t have the desire to take up mandarin then (although its important).. haha… Anyway, hi 5. Cz I am a banana as well although the environment here is mandarin. ^^ *not proud*
P.S: Quite thankful that some friends are willing to speak in english here though. :)