“Home is where the heart is?”
I left.
In the car’s rear-view mirror, my father’s figure diminished into a blur, blending with the shadow of our family home. “Don’t drive so fast!” He bellowed. Yet, off I went; speeding and plunging headfirst into my long-awaited independence.
You guessed it: at the ripe age of 24, I moved away from my parents.
For most young people, this process is simply a rite of passage into adulthood. They are free to explore the world and themselves, creating their own paths. For children of immigrants, leaving home means we are safe from our parents barging into our bedroom, shouting to a representative on the phone: “speak to my daughter!”.
Growing up in Australia as a first-generation immigrant, I often struggle to form a concrete understanding of ‘home’. Now that I am moving into my own space, I have been pondering about the definition of home — a complex concept that I must now digest.
As a child, all I knew had been Guangzhou. It was a city where its native flora intensely bloomed all year long and the streets gushed with an abundance of food. In spring and summer, humid air clung onto every strand of fibre in people’s clothes. Dazzling shopping malls never seemed to close, and the labyrinth-esque subway system carried millions of people like an unceasingly flowing river. Ever since the establishment of Silk Road, this ancient metropolis had once harboured one of the most prosperous ports in the world. Fast forward to today, its stellar economic, social and cultural status remains unchallenged. I held immense pride for my city.
Home became an abstract concept when we immigrated to Australia. My life was being rewritten, like overriding a code. I could not determine where exactly I belonged. Our first home was a tiny one-bedroom flat that we rented in Melbourne’s West; I absolutely detested every inch of it. If teenage angst was a fluid, it would have flooded the flat and poured all over the street. It was so blatantly uncertain whether this new environment would offer the same permanent level of security, comfort and peace as the motherland.
Although we were detached and isolated from our family in China, my parents and I tried our best to adapt to the Australian way of life. Bit by bit, we nestled into this multifaceted city. We navigated through its volatile weather, adjusted to its slower pace of living and combatted the plethora of problems faced by new immigrants — one child labour operated interpreting session at a time.
Luckily, the strong presence of Australia’s Chinese diaspora had made the process much more seamless and brought us a reassuring sense of belonging. Perhaps I would never be able to call Guangzhou home again, but its granite-lined alleyways, fallen cotton-tree flowers and incense-filled temples were everlastingly etched into my childhood memories.
Adolescence was a strange and frustrating time, accompanied by rampant confusion — I was puzzled by the changes occurring to my body, whilst everything around me looked, smelled and felt so drastically different to the land that I grew up to know. I was thrusted onto a foreign territory, where I was seen and treated as a foreigner for the first time in my life.
Like other child immigrants, I could not escape the fate of encountering an ‘identity crisis’. The term was popularised by Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst, whose theories had laid foundations to conceptualise the experiences of identity formation during cultural transition and adaptation. He proposed that social context and interactions were instrumental in the conscious sense of self. When immigrant adolescents faced the typical identity conflicts that characterise this developmental stage, they also encountered unique challenge of creating an identity that merges elements of both their heritage and new cultural setting. Therefore, they are particularly vulnerable to significant shifts in identity, as a result of immigration.
In response to the translocation, I have unknowingly moulded myself into a new person. The woman I am today is a product of separation, assimilation and integration.
By now, we are all exhausted by the hideously persisting presence of COVID-19. Here in Melbourne, the sixth lockdown is currently in place to combat the latest outbreaks. After the frenzied period of bread-baking and coffee-whipping has faded, no one has prepared us for all the disruptions and devastations that invaded our lives.
Whilst the stay-at-home orders are effectively keeping the virus out, they have enabled the pandemic to plunge every drop of its impacts into our homes.
Not only did a simple dwelling become a fortress, it is also a weapon against the deadly virus — in a global war without gunfire and missiles. It is a form of defence only available to the privileged, involving luxury goods that many have taken for granted: a roof over your head, clean and direct water supply, food on the table and the most glorious of all, access to electricity and internet. The state of crisis has brutally exposed AND exacerbated the pre-existing economic and health inequalities, which disproportionately impact culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
Furthermore, homes are no longer truly private and personal. People have accepted the fact that their bedrooms and living rooms are now publicised, freely scrutinised by classmates and colleagues. No matter how professional or quirky a Zoom background may appear, it will not hide the inevitable noises and interferences from household members, nor does it alleviate the disruptions caused by inferior internet speeds. The bleak contrast in living conditions between people of different socioeconomic statuses is on full display. The way people work and study has changed dramatically, and it seems like we are not going back.
Our homes have been at the forefront of the battle against COVID-19. If I must also discuss the devastating mental health impacts of isolation and confinement, the displaced refugees with no chance of returning to their countries and the First Nations People, who have yet to claim their colonised land as their own home — this essay will never end.
Here I am sitting in my little territory that I occupy, feeling grateful and content as I enjoy the newfound liberties of independent life. Yet something feels missing in this new place. I now reside in a home without a plate of chopped up fruit on my desk, brought to me by my mother; nor the booming sound of my father’s portable radio, forever dialled to the SBS Cantonese station. However, perhaps the existence of my housemate’s air fryer distinctively marks this dwelling as a young adult household, instead of a traditional family home.
“Home is where the heart is”, as they say — perhaps I have found the definition of home. I fit in the in-between. As immigrants, we are a new generation of Australians. Our malleable identity is a signature characteristic that defines the notion of globalisation. My heart is occupied by two cultures; the fluidity of identity allows first-generation immigrants like myself to adapt, advance and transcend the basic notion of belonging.
