Posted on Sunday 22 January 2012
I have never met either of my grandfathers but their legacies live on in me.
My dad’s father was a compradore in Shanghai for Bayern. As a compradore, his role was to act as a liaison between the foreign managers and the local suppliers and workers. The role of a compradore historically was to bridge the language and cultural gap between foreigners and locals for practicality and later evolved into a position of segregation between the two groups. My mom’s father worked for Nedlloyd managing the Chinese crew that cooked and cleaned on ships for the Dutch officers because it was seen as inappropriate for the foreign (read: white) folks to be in such close contact with the masses (read: non-white). Colonialism is never pretty.
I was born under a colonial regime that put their stamp of approval on my passport and documents. I grew up in a culture where people were at once angry yet supplicant. I was raised in Asia but schooled by Americans, recreated at the American-run youth program, unwound on weekends at the American Country Club, and prayed at an international Catholic Church. My family moved to Canada because of the fear and insecurities created by a system that traded countries and its people like goods and refused to provide its citizens with the nationality that our hard work helped to build. I moved to a country where my skin color masked my ability to speak English more fluently than my white classmates; where my mother gets told by customers that they do not understand her perfectly understandable English just because they feel like they have the right to.
My grandfathers straddled the world between their cultural roots and their inherited structure of oppression. They were the ones entrusted to scurry between the two worlds interpreting, translating, representing. They had to live in and profit from an unjust system that reinforced notions of inequality and separation.
As I reflect on my life as a Chinese-Canadian this new year’s eve, I recognize that I too am complicit in this system that my grandfathers had to live in. I too profit from an unjust system that ascribes me a status that I did not earn solely because of my race. I too straddle two different cultures, interpreting, translating, representing. I am proud of my legacy and the struggles my ancestors have lived through but my hope is that the legacy I put forth to my children in the future will be a differnt one.
...but I hardly know her!
