Eva at a Chinese restaurant in Mexico City, the capital. “We were actually in a Chinese restaurant celebrating \u4e2d\u79cb\u8282 (Mid-Autumn Festival). This one is located in Mexico City’s Chinatown, so their food is catered to suit Mexican tastes,” Eva said. “I just later found out that, had I asked, they would have prepared original Chinese food”<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nNot going back to China<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Chinese people who have grown up as a minority probably heard the good ol’ trite catchphrase of the unwashed racist, “Go back to China!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Chinese people born in the United States, it would seem a bit rude and out of place, since it assumes that someone who has lived all their life in one place has a greater stake in another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It always blows my mind that Southeast Asian Chinese people born in the 1950s in Indonesia, Singapore or Malaya can carry these attitudes, even though they have never stepped foot in China. My mother often tells me about how a portion of people of that generation sees China as a “motherland” and would be the first apologists when they hear a slight towards China. So, I wanted to know how Eva felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a person who grew up in Mexico, Eva said she has no connection to China or Hong Kong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has toyed with the idea of living in mainland China or Hong Kong, but she concluded that she would probably not fit in based on what she heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also told me that her Cantonese isn’t really up to scratch. She said she might feel lost in Hong Kong and would not be able to give a lecture in Cantonese either. Eva has a masters in public health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said she would like to visit China as a tourist to fulfill a curiosity in the same way she would get that fulfilled by travelling to China. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Certainly, Eva also mentioned that she noticed a bit of a cultural difference between the more recent Chinese immigrants, mostly from mainland China, and herself. She mentioned that being raised in a culture from Hong Kong does create a bit of a gap in understanding these newer immigrants, even though everyone still fell under the umbrella of “Chinese.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There we have it. That’s the first of the many stories I will collect. If you have any interesting people that I could follow up with, please email me.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four generations of Chinese migration to Mexico’s north, within which lies a story of familial separation, racial persecution and belonging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}