Michelle Zhang: Where do we belong?

[Souls Without Borders: Profile on Michelle Zhang]

Souls Without Borders is a subjective retelling of the interviews and encounters I’ve had with wonderful people in Seoul.

Where do we belong?

A conversation about how arbitrary our cultural and national identities can be, which society believes are the key elements that define us.

Michelle is one of the people I’ve met with the most exuberant and enthusiastic energy. Her energy can be sensed from miles away. The strength is not just in the voice but the perplexing combination of clothing items collected from various places she has resided and traveled. The day I first met her, she wore teal pants and a brown ragged muffler to go with her thick orange fleece jacket. But what caught my eye is her multicolored bag with colorful strips which were reminiscent of Tibetan prayer flags. The other day, she wore a black Mexican Sombrero that she had bought during her gap year in Latin America.

There’s a certain fearlessness about the way she projects herself to the world that seems to bring her several adventures. The diversity she brings through her clothes and her experiences at once perplexes and intrigues the world, draws them in an attempt to figure out what she makes of herself. If no one else can say where she’s from by the way she presents herself, the only way is to inquire. Well, she succeeded in drawing me in; despite her suburban Massachusetts accent, there seemed to be much more to uncover.

Michelle’s parents immigrated to Boston from China a year before she was born. She is Chinese-American and a second-generation immigrant, if we were to describe her using terms assigned by a world that loves to categorize, label, and sell identity on neat racks as if they were wholesale goods sold at Costco. Once you’re on the racks, people already seem to know how you were manufactured from start to finish, what struggles you might have faced, and worse, who you are. As if identity was this stagnant pond the world assigned you to before your birth.

However, Michelle doesn’t really “believe in the idea that you belong to one place.” Her coming to realize that she didn’t have to define her identity to the place she was assigned to at birth or the place she resided in, came from traveling. ‘I started to see my personal identity as more complicated definitely when I started traveling,’ she said. The thing that made her want to seek out a new understanding of her identity was rooted in her endless pit of curiosity but also a sense of a lack of belonging in Sherborn, a tiny woodsy suburban town in Boston, the place she grew up in. “I don’t think that this would have happened if it wasn’t for the fact that the place I grew up in was so homogenous and that I always felt so different and never really felt like I belonged there… I stood out more than I should have normally,” she said.

I knew exactly what she meant having been the only odd one out from having lived in India.

“Because I looked so different from them when I was a baby so many people swarmed me when I would go out in the streets,” I added eagerly.

“Celebrity.”

“I was this little chubby kid and they had never seen that kind of a face before. And being the introverted self I am, I would get so tired of it so I wouldn’t even smile”

Michelle furrowed her brows impersonating a grumpy baby and squeaked, “Angry baby, ‘fuck off.’”

She continued on the topic of race being a factor in grounding a sense of shame and isolation, “My race was always something I’ve always been very self-conscious about. And also not just my appearance but culturally” She explained that she was “really uncomfortable with those things for a really long time,” such as while speaking in Chinese to her parents on the phone when her friends were listening, while inviting close friends for a sleep-over, or while bringing Chinese food to school, she would feel susceptible to criticism.

Anything that was viewed as ‘other’ was considered ‘weird’ or ‘socially inappropriate’ and I knew exactly what it felt like to be ashamed of one’s origins. Growing up in India, I was once ridiculed for drinking piss while it was only Barley tea. Ever since barley tea was replaced by water and seaweed rice rolls, or kimbaps, were replaced by white bread sandwiches. Such experiences made me feel like a misplaced yellow packet of boring salt-seasoned Lays amongst Red and Green Kurkures, Indian chips that tasted like fireworks of masala in your mouth.

“When I was younger, I couldn’t differentiate other people’s stereotypes of who I was, [such as, from the] negative perceptions of Asians are like dorky and Asian culture is weird, ‘Oh, you eat dog’ or whatever ‘ching, chang, chong.’ You know that shit, who doesn’t? Because that was all I knew. White American culture was all I was exposed to, I didn’t realize that that wasn’t THE, capital T, reality,” Michelle said.

“The first time I was really able to step out of that was when I went to Tanzania when I was fourteen. I don’t know what got into me when I was fourteen, but I had a mid-life crisis. And I was like, ‘Mom, Dad, I need to broaden my fucking horizons.’”

She added in disbelief, “When I was fourteen like, ‘Are you okay?”

There, the impression Tanzanians had on Michelle was starkly different from that of Americans. She was taken aback to realize that it wasn’t her that resulted in the reactions she had received as a kid.

“[In Tanzania,] I think their attitude towards me was very different from their attitude towards other students who were white. For them, they were like rich white people. You know what I mean? Like tourists. But with me, they were like, ‘Oh, China? China’s our friend. China built us railroads. I’ve never seen a Chinese person.’ It’s more exciting… That was the first time I was like, ‘huh, that’s really different from how I am treated in the U.S because of my appearance.’ And this obviously says nothing about who I am… You know, I’m American,’ she said.

“I realized that identity is not this fixed thing. It’s not like people have these objective labels about themselves, it’s more so like what the labels you put on yourself have more to do with the society you live in and how other people want to understand you. And the labels that are helpful for other people to put you in a certain box so that they get you,” she added.

She realized that the way she was perceived in the States pertained to their own set of preconceptions defined by other’s perspectives just as how in other countries, the cordiality displayed towards her had nothing to do with her identity. Although she has plenty of Chinese cultural influences from her household, the difference in how she was perceived was not because of a deeper understanding of who Michelle was but because of how others labeled and categorized her according to their respective culturally affirmed notions based on her looks.

During her gap year, Michelle traveled to Latin America and spent months in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia. There, again, she experienced privilege due to ethnicity, similar to what she had experienced in Tanzania.

“It’s interesting because part of how I felt about Latin America is perhaps how white people feel in Asia. You know how Asians love white people?” she asked.

“Yes, oh my god. They do,” I blurted almost concurrently; I knew how obsessed people could be with white people, white culture, white everything, and how dismissive people could be with anyone a shade darker than them.

“I heard that from Koreans. Koreans are like, ‘Yeah, Koreans love white people.’ Chinese people also love white people,” she added.

“I think if you’re whiter looking or if you’re brown or even if you’re black and you’re learning Spanish, there’s quite a lot of people who look like you and speak the language, but there are very few people who look East Asian and speak fluent Spanish. So I think the better I got at Spanish, the positive feedback loop was so strong because they didn’t expect me to fit in… Growing up, I’d always been like it would have been better if I was white, it would probably have been easier. But in this case, I was like ‘fuck that, who wants to be white Latin American. You’re boring. No way.’”

I wanted to be that boring person. I was fed up with the defiant prolonged stares that only seemed to make me embarrassed, the snickering in Hindi — calling me Chinese and what not — that already assumed I had no grasp of the language. I wanted to dissociate myself from the cultures that were supposed to be part of me. At times it felt as if I had to be a chameleon, shape-shifting according to the dominant culture around my environment, changing mannerisms and values to conform to a set of customs so vastly different from another. However, my personality was always a shade too white or a shade too dark in the environments I found myself in. So, instead, I chose to identify with something I had no first-hand experience with, something that I was exposed to through media yet something not as prevailing enough in my immediate environment for people to judge me according to its respective standards of normalcy. At times, I was ostensibly rakish, defying traditions that went against my newfound individualistic American philosophy, while feeling like a hunted rabbit. I was almost too eager to perfect my English which led to neglecting my Korean and Hindi. I read everything in English. I bought a copy of The Vegetarian by Han Kang, a Korean author, and was not able to focus due to weird phrasing as it was translated without consideration of the lingo-cultural context.

“I don’t really give a shit about the U.S. No, wait that sounds mean. [I mean] everybody knows about the U.S. We’re literally in the most privileged position ever. Everybody knows about our culture to the point where we’re like we don’t even think we have a culture. That’s when you know cultural hegemony is established. When people don’t even think they have a culture. No, the only reason you think that is because fish can’t identify they’re swimming in water. You know it’s everywhere so you can’t identify it. It’s no fun for me to talk as the cultural ambassador for the U.S. No one needs that. So instead, it was more interesting for me to talk about, ‘Oh, in China..’ or ‘In my Chinese family… we do it like this.’

I guess I tried to embody American culture because it provided me with a safety net to fall back to when I felt different. It was the safest option, if you were American, everything was condoned. Being Korean-American had a certain ring to it. You were jaunty not disreputable, expressive not unscrupulous, and carefree not irresponsible. Being blatantly loud in the subway, wearing clothes that were considered to be too revealing in Korea, not being able to understand Korean — all of it was normal. How could you know? You’re American after all. But, at the same time, you’re one of us too because America is ‘cool’ and rich. If you’re from a white country, your actions must be more progressive. No matter how absurd or condescending.

But being Korean-Indian? What connotations did that come with? Almost nothing other than questions such as ‘I know it’s a sensitive topic but… wasn’t it dangerous for you there as a girl?’ and ‘do they really eat with their hands?’ I mean, the term Korean-Indian in itself feels awkward in my mouth as if it were a foreign term I’m trying to grasp. Other than India being a country featured on T.V for donations to help poverty or human rights issues, there was no basis for people to understand what being me truly meant and I spoke Korean well enough to be assumed to know all the other socio-cultural cues that were unspoken but preeminent.

I wanted to box myself under the neat labels of what the term ‘Korean-American’ meant. Because that was easy. Everyone understood American culture or even aspired to be a part of it.

Michelle continued on how she would rather talk about and play the role of being part of the Chinese culture although she didn’t feel Chinese at times.

“I’m really not influenced by China in terms of my personality. So, when traveling to other places they see my face not my personality first. You know what I mean? They’re just so excited about me being Chinese that I don’t want to bum them out. You know what I mean?… But I realized, I can’t be a 100% cultural ambassador for China because I don’t even know what’s going on there. I don’t know the country very well. I would go back as a child every couple of years like I was a kid. I would visit family and eat a fuck ton of good food. They would take me around the touristy spots to see pandas and shit. And that was the end of that.”

I started pondering about what she had just said. I guess we had thought about the same issue … I was Korean but I didn’t really feel Korean. Michelle was Chinese but she didn’t really feel Chinese. I would never truly be Indian in India. Michelle might not always feel American in America.

“But I felt like the next time I have the opportunity to travel for a long period of time. I need to go back to China and I need to understand my roots and be able to be an ambassador for this face that I have, you know? Even though it feels like it’s imposed from the outside, this is still something that I want to do. Because I can’t change the fact that I have this face and you know and it’s not a bad thing that people are interested in what they think you are from what you look like. I kind of got past the whole thing of like, ‘No, I’m American.’

“Yeah, it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day,” I added, only partially believing what I had just said.

“[It’s about] connecting with people. You’re missing an opportunity if you insist on that.”

Maybe that was true. I had been quite picky with the people I tried to develop relationships with. There were always two categories, ‘too Korean’ and ‘not Korean enough.’ My heart was always reserved for the latter group as that’s where I saw myself to be. I only started to wonder now, if I was the one doing the categorizing and labeling to guard myself against the uncertainties and mistakes I might face in a new culture.

“But anyway, in my second gap year, that’s when I went to China. And I think the biggest takeaway from that is that it’s a very big country with thousands and thousands of identities wrapped in it. It’s not ever going to be one thing no matter what the government wants you to think. No matter what any people want you to think, it’s so diverse, so many religions, ethnic minorities, languages even. Even within one tiny region, the Shanghainese that is spoken within the city is so different from the Shanghainese that is spoken two hours outside of the countryside that I can’t understand. And it’s so different from Mandarin that they could literally be speaking in Korean to me in the sense that I don’t understand what they’re saying. The diversity is mental so I’m not any less Chinese than any other person who is part of the diaspora or even any other person who grew up there. Maybe in certain aspects like the things that I grew up watching or my values or how I act. Of course, that’s different. But in terms of how much I know the country, nobody can know a country in and out. You know what I mean? I don’t feel so defensive about having to know the U.S in and out so why do I feel about China, you know? You don’t belong anywhere because you belong everywhere, it’s that kind of a thing. And so the version of China I got to know when I went there would have been so different from the one I would have known if I had grown up there. I realized while talking to Minervans who are Chinese that there were parts of the country that I knew better than they did. And that’s mind-blowing for me. They know nothing about the ethnic minorities, about the things that are not in the mainstream. Yeah, and different classes. Because I was hitchhiking across the country, a lot of the people who picked me up were like workers or cargo-truck drivers. Conversing with them, I learned stuff that I definitely would not have learned in the socioeconomic class I would have grown up in had I grown up in China.”

As she talked, I realized that I might have been the one coloring an entire nation with a single color pencil just like how it is with maps, arbitrarily deciding the identity and limits of 51.7 million people. Or reducing down the nation to its failing education system, plastic surgery, mainstream Kpop, and suffocating uniformity. I realized that I was forming arbitrary boundaries around places that felt scary, as well as, forming a boundary around myself to differentiate and hence protect myself from the world.

I still don’t completely understand how growing up in India has shaped me. I don’t think I can ever disentangle myself and say, ‘Look, this bit here is influenced by my time in India. And this part by Korea, and you know of course there’s a shit ton of American media I consumed along the way.’ In other words, I don’t think even the term Korean-Indian could ever truly convey the essence of who I am. But there’s a pang of nostalgia whenever I go to Itaewon, a multicultural district in the heart of Seoul, and see several Indian and Pakistani people who are fascinated by the fact that I can speak their language. And there’s a sense of comfort I find amid all these strangers who more or less look like me. It’s been so long since I felt like I was just another drop in the ocean.

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Written by Hyunjin Cho

Special thanks to Michelle Zhang, Faisal Qadir, and Sojung Shin who’ve proofread this piece and given feedback before publishing.