by June Chua, May 24, 2005

"You have old person’s neck," responded my doctor-sister when I read out the results of my X-ray test. "You must’ve gotten it from Mom."

Rewind to one day earlier. My doctor’s response to my X-ray results was to ask if I had been especially athletic in my teens and 20s. She had never seen someone with so much degeneration in their neck bones unless they were over 50 (I’m not) or Olympic-class athletic (I’m definitely not).

It came down to one thing: genetics.

I haven’t had to think about the genes my parents passed onto me simply because I haven’t had any health calamities in my life – yet. Save for the exceptionally bad eyesight and, oh yeah, the deteriorating gums, I am the picture of health. Those two attributes truly make me my parents’ child.

After this recent visit to the doctor, I’ve come to realize our genes define a significant part of who we are. For me, there is another nagging question: how much does our cultural DNA shape us?

As we’re well into Asian Heritage Month, I ponder: what makes me Chinese?

I’ve written before about being Canadian and I’m proud to declare myself one yet I am the product of a civilization reaching back thousands of years.

Growing up, my image of Chinese people was coloured by stereotypical allusions to piano playing, mathematically superior geeks. When I wanted to play for the junior high school basketball team, my mother insisted I concentrate on piano lessons instead. I never want to tinkle those ivories again. I don’t have musical skill and am tone deaf.

I studied twice as hard in math than in any other subject so I could get a B+ while I soared in subjects such as English, social studies and drama. I got a Drama Award when I graduated from high school. Prone to melodrama in my teens, I railed against the illusion of the inscrutable Asian.

When I told my parents I wanted to pursue a journalism degree, I encountered silence. It just wasn’t done. As other Asian parents saw their children off to medical or engineering schools, there were many people like me who wondered why they didn’t have that “Asian Super Gene” that made them want to pursue scientific careers. Was I a freak?

Growing up, I would have given anything to fit in somewhere, anywhere. As it was, I ended up in the No Man’s Land of Asians-Who-Can’t-Do-Math.

Remember, this was the 1980s and my role models consisted of Connie Chung, the Calgon “Ancient Chinese Secret” mother and that Chinese nurse who appeared once in awhile in MASH episodes. Where were the artists, the agitators, the rebels?

When I was about four, I drove my tricycle down the concrete steps in our house in Malaysia. I hurtled down the steps, shrieking in delight at the motion and speed. When the tricycle hit bottom, I tumbled over and landed face first on the tiled floor.

My mother stopped screaming and rushed over. I steadied myself and peeled my face off the floor. Mom was crying. She was valiantly fighting tears of laughter because plastered onto my forehead were three square blue tiles from the floor.

Since then, my life has been a series of breakneck experiences, always leaping into the gulf and looking for the next adventure. I never thought that this, too, was an element of my cultural DNA.

You spend your life putting pieces of a puzzle together and sometimes it only takes a moment of recognition and you know exactly who you are.

It all came together one night recently when I watched a one-hour segment of a 13-part series called Chinese Restaurants, directed by Canadian Cheuk Kwan. Kwan travelled the globe for three years seeking the personal stories of the Chinese people who run their restaurants in the far reaches of the world.

The segment I watched is called The Islands and it featured one woman of Hakka ancestry who had settled on Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean.

The segment delves into her struggles in starting the restaurant and unearths the history of the Hakka people of China. The Hakka are the explorers of China and have dispersed around the world. Hakka women are especially fierce. When Chinese society decided that bound feet would make women more attractive, Hakka women rebelled and insisted on wearing their flat, wide sandals.

I am one-quarter Hakka, and in that moment the documentary plunged me into thousands of years of history and culture. It seeped into my pores. I felt a vast wave of pride and appreciation. It was as if I had found my spine, heart and soul.

There is no typical Chinese person. Media and cultural stereotypes reinforce uniformity but China is made up of a myriad of different ethnic groups. Being Chinese encapsulates a world of characteristics.

I don’t need to look around me to know who I am. It is in me.

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LETTERS:

I read your columns regularly and they often end with a moral, but I found the message in this piece especially touching.

You convey your experiences in a way that transcends your age, gender, and ethnicity, making it easy for anyone to relate. You write, "I don't need to look around me to know who I am. It is in me," but what you're really saying is, "Nobody needs to look around to know who they are. It is in them."

June, you teach us to be proud to be Chinese-Canadians, or just Canadians. Thank you.

Owen Wood | Montreal