Everywheres and Nowheres
Painting a picture of my racial and cultural background is no easy feat.
I belong everywhere and nowhere all at once.
I’m born in the Philippines but my parents take me to Hong Kong three months later.
My mother is a flight attendant and because of her I’m able to travel at a young age. Some of my earliest memories are of me sitting on her lap, feeling like I’m queen of the clouds.
I visit the Philippines and feel like a misshapen crop in a corn field, as everything feels familiar but it doesn’t. Having never lived there, there’s a whole experience of living that I don’t understand, that I am raised above by default.
I never learn how to speak Cantonese, and navigate through life in Hong Kong as an outsider. Being Chinese Filipino and living in Hong Kong, I already stand out amongst the locals and my parents carve out a close-knit Filipino community of their own. We cling to each other amid prejudice and stereotypes about our race.
I go to an international school with a Canadian curriculum, my parents wanting me to have the best that Western culture has to offer, despite living on the other side of the world.
I move to Canada when I’m 15, and my international upbringing stirs intrigue and curiosity…
