What’s your real name?

This quote is from Helen’s blog. It’s fairly safe to say that majority of us who have an Egnlish name as our first name may have/had experinced the similar questions at an event in the US. I was asked a few times just the other day at a company dinner cruise event in San Francisco.

- Vida? Is that your real name?

- Vida? That doesn’t sound Chinese?

- Very nice meeting you Vida. Does Vida mean anything in Chinese? I know it means life in Spanish.

- My pleasrue meeting you Vida. Do you have a Chinese name?              

What are they looking for here? They are looking for something, which is marked with a sticker of “Made in China”. Whoever has read Helen’s blog of “My Real Name” will feel the pain of a Chinese woman struggling for a self – identity as an immigrant in the US. Who is she? Is she an American? Is she a Chinese?

I am not going to get into the issue of the search for an immigrant identity in the US. Instead, I wanted to take a close look at what Helen said was the third identity of “mankind”.

This is a very powerful notion: that we can transcend our ethical background into a universal mankind. “Whether we are Chinese, Indian, Russian, Mexican, Italian, or Kenyan, we are all one.”

As I am writing this article, I am gazing at a picture of Helen and Judi (above), which was taken at Startbucks on University Avenue in Palo Alto just one week ago. I am lost in my thought as I am looking at the picture - both Helen and Judi’s image fades away and I see two young Chinese girls with the red scaves around their necks. They were holding the little read Mao’s book and lifting up and down their arms cyring “Long long live Chairman Mao” before they could sit down to start the class. They sat through their early aulthood with the Chinese education system. Now here they are – Helen with her tall decaf mocha and Judi driking a regular latte at a cafe in the United States.

From the red scarf gilrs in China to the sophisicated women in Caifornia, Helen and Judi have gone through the struggles we most of CAEA members went through – we all have developed our own survival strategy for life in the United States. Therefore, we all changed. We changed ways we don’t even understand sometimes.

In change management, change is defined as “ the window through which the future enters your life.” It’s all around you in many types and shapes. You can bring in about yourself or it can come to you in ways. As the immigrants, it seems we don’t have much choice about how to get around in a foreign country. We have to learn the language, we have to learn how to drive, we have to learn the way of doing business here, we have to learn how the local people live their life…..

Then what? When you look back, you find yoursef falling into a place where which can’t completely be defined as Chinese or American. You are like a mixed drink with its own flavor. You draw strengh from Chinese history and culture but are not bound by it. In order to survive, we took from the US land the things we needed. We adjusted the life in the US enviorment, and it has now become part of who we are, affecting our attitudes toward ourselves.

How many of you have heard of sayings like this – we are not an Amecian in the US and we are not a Chinese in China. Who are we? We are “mankind” as Helen suggested.

“I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”     - Martin Luther King

Comments

[Helen Wang]

Vida,

Thanks for this article. I like the quote from Windflower Institute... I hope we can all draw strength from our history and culture but not bounded by our past. Having been through both worlds, we are much richer! In fact, we have a lot to offer to the world! It's my hope that My Real Name can provide some inspiration for all of us who have gone through the identity search/crisis and rise above it.

[Kathy]

Hi Vida, thanks for the blog. It's really interesting. I have encountered the same name questions many many times.

[Mary Li]

Hi, i think you are very talented writer. I've been looking for someone like you to work with on the cross - culture communication projects. Could you contact me by email? Thanks.