grievances that Lily Kwok has mentioned<\/a>. As a less-than-one-per-cent minority in Trinidad, she gripes about how she’s sometimes seen as foreign despite being born and raised Trinidadian.<\/p>\n\n\n\nShe failed parental expectations<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Georgie spoke about a theme that seems universal to all Chinese families — the idea of expectations placed upon children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Georgie said she’s a “black sheep” because unlike her sister, she did not marry a Chinese man. Georgie also said her parents favoured her brother because he is male and he also came to be a doctor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Faced with racism, keep your head down<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Georgie talked about how her parents reacted when she felt low about racism and shared her troubles with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I don’t know if anybody else can relate this but whenever I felt low about racism I felt they never encourage me to can speak out about it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Then they’re always saying to me like just ignore them and they’ve been brought up wrong and they’re bad … and yeah just got to ignore it,” she said. “I just felt the never really said to me to tell the teacher because I think they just wanted to avoid this confrontation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not a model minority, but still pressured to be one<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Georgie also felt pressured to be a “model minority.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On this note, I should really go find out whether this idea of us Chinese being a model minority is an Anglo idea. Is it only a white, Anglo-Saxon, idea? Does it exist in non-white but English-speaking countries like Jamaica and Trinidad? Does it exist in Spanish speaking countries in the same way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She didn’t want to go to university, but she felt pressured so as not to be the odd one out in her family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also described herself as “bubbly” and that didn’t fit in with people’s construct of what a Chinese person should be. I actually wonder if this has links to her being female and Chinese, where, in Anglo countries, there’s this idea that Chinese women are submissive and low key. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Georgie’s weekly connection to the Chinese in the UK<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
On the topic of going to Chinese school, Georgie mentioned that she didn’t last for long going to Saturday Chinese school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She said she went to school Monday to Friday and then worked at her parents’ restaurants after school. By the time Saturday came, it was the last thing she wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She mentioned her Chinese church, though, which she described as a place of comfort because no one would question her Chinese identity. Her favourite summer period was Teens Camp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I just felt really at home every summer when we would have Teens Camp. It’s just so good. I remember the last days of the Teens Camp that we had I just got really sad like I just had to go back to Macclesfield, had to go back and help my parents out at the shop, and absorb all the Chinese racist slurs at me.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also reminiscences about dim sums with her family and her cousins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“My family, my cousin’s family were basically just put it on the biggest round table and our parents would just order everything for us,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chinese in the UK: the good parts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I always find it quite difficult to write these articles because half or more of the article can be about racism. Luckily, Georgie provided a section in her episode about the good parts about being Chinese in the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first point she mentioned is that being British-born Chinese makes her unique. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second point is that she can speak Cantonese. She sees her ability to speak broken Cantonese an advantage on both her CV and her travels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Georgie also expresses how being Chinese embeds an appreciation for gastronomy. She says dim sum is her favourite food of all time and she spoke nostalgically about having a Chinese dinner with her parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The podcast<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
You can find Georgie’s podcast, Chinese Chippy Girl<\/em>, here<\/a> and her Instagram is here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese Chippy Girl is a particularly interesting podcast because it talks about growing up Chinese in the UK. The host is Georgie Ma (\u99ac\u73ee\u7476) who grew up in Macclesfield, England, near Manchester. In the first episode of her podcast, she shares her experience being Chinese in the north of England. Other episodes are in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353"}],"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=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":367,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farfromchina.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}