What is your name?

I accidentally pressed Enter after just writing the blog title the last time, and had no chance to edit the entry till now...sorry to those who checked in the last 2 days and then saw a blog title with no entry!

The reason of the title is: I saw a Nooma video entitled "What is your name?" - which is what the angel asked Jacob after struggling with him all night. During those times, your name meant everything - it was your identity and destiny. And by acknowledging that he was Jacob (meaning to grasp the foot, which was something like being deceitful) and not flinching from his past (when he pretended to be Esau), Jacob was blessed to be the father of the nations.

What is your name?

Everything you are, everything you are not...accepting our past, our mistakes, our achievements. Our weaknesses, our faults, our embarrassments. What we would gladly display. What we would rather hide.

But if we cannot accept ourselves, if we cannot stop comparing ourselves to others, if we do not stop envying others....

what will we say when others ask, "who are you?"

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Chinese? Malaysian?

Tonight was Chinese Cultural Evening.It it was pretty good except for a fire which was a bit toooo strong and needed to be extinguished with a fire extinguisher. Pretty exciting, that, but the organisers are going to have to answer for it.

Throughout the whole CCE process which began last November after the last cultural evening, people have been confused about my identity.

"But you're Malaysian! How can you be involved in CCE?"

"You mean YOU'RE Chinese?"

"So did your parents come from China? Are both your parents Chinese, then?"

"You're 100% Malaysian, and 100% Chinese as well? That can't be right."

The most idiotic:

"You're Chi-laysian."

And some people become quite adamant about it:

"But you're MALAYSIAN! So you can't be Chinese!"

Who says I can't? Does a 4th generation emigrant have no right to identify herself with the country that her ancestors originated from? Just because my great-great grandparents moved to a faraway land, risking their lives in order to seek a better life; means we have divorced our roots entirely?

I contradict myself.

Back home, I hate it when people (Chinese people) say, "I'm not Malaysian. I don't feel like I belong in this country. I'm just Chinese, and that's it." I strongly believe that you may not be able to control where you were born or who you were born to, but all of that fit into a larger plan, a bigger picture than what we can see. There is a reason I was born and raised in Malaysia and not Hong Kong, or China, or Indonesia or any of the other 173 countries Chinese people live in.

And here, I get tired of people denying I'm Chinese just because I have a Malaysian passport; just because I represent that country in this college (and there are only 3 of us). Of course, those who do make a fuss, do it jokingly; and most people get the concept after 2 or 3 explanations.

If I hadn't come to UWC, I would never have guessed people would have such a hard time getting the idea - Malaysian by nationality, Chinese by race.

Or is it me, and all of us who define ourselves this way, who have it wrong?

As my teacher was arguing, you don't call a South African of European descent a white South African. You don't call someone an Italian American. It's just American. So why do we feel the need to categorise ourselves by race? Why do we say "I'm Indian" or "I'm Chinese", when all that matters is that we're Malaysian?

Then...

I remember the countless, numerous forms that I've filled in ever since primary school. The race boxes where you mark "Melayu", "Cina", "India" or vague "lain-lain". That our identity cards either have Warganegara Islam or not.

And then I remember why in my mind it matters that I'm both Malaysian, and Chinese. Because the people who rule my country are not secure enough to let go off their power, of their bigotry, of their herd mentality and their selfishness; and are afraid of any change to the status quo.

Being both is not a crime - the crime is only when we let that second descriptor of ethnicity separate us instead of having the first descriptor of nationality unite us.