So I was in class today learning about Chinese heritage when my tutor asked a question and it hit me:

"So who here is Cantonese?"
My friend looked at me with a quirk of his eyebrow and expected me to raise my hand, but I didn't.

And so an internal debate started within my mind, and it boiled down to this one question, "Am I Cantonese?"

I mean, sure, I speak the language/ dialect (and I would say I'm pretty fluent) and I know some of the rites and traditions of this ethnic(?)/ dialect group, but does these things make me Cantonese?

Now, you might be confused over my dilemma here. Let me explain, I'm born into the dialect group of Hokkien, following the patriarchal pattern that is, and my identification card reflects that my dialect group is Hokkien. So to say, I'm inherently Hokkien, by blood.

So how did this identity quandary come about?

(I bet you could pretty much guess from the title that) I'm brought up by a Cantonese family - the maternal side of my family. So naturally, I've learnt the history, the language, the culture and the wonders of its cuisine. And, I love it. I love the Cantonese culture, the food, the history, the language and everything about it.

I feel like a Cantonese; I behave like one.

In fact, apart from the fact that I'm born a Hokkien, there's nothing else that's Hokkien about me.

So once again, everything boils down to the debate of nature and nurture again, especially on this issue of identity. Yet at the end of the day, I would say my identity is very much nurtured, into a Cantonese no less and that you of course can argue that maybe somewhere in my genetic make-up, the Hokkien traits and what-nots are unavoidable and stuff, but let's not go there.

Identity is a social construct, after thinking this through, I pretty sure when next time someone asks if I'm a Cantonese, I'd put up my hand. At the same time, if someone asks if I'm Hokkien I would say yes too. After all, cultural fusion is not a contemporary phenomenon.

it matters not who I am but who I want to be.

till next time.