Travelling between Australia and China for work, Jenny Zhou says she often feels misunderstood.
Ms Zhou is a bilingual actress and TV presenter and is what many in the Chinese community call an "ABC" — Australian-born Chinese.
She was one of only two overseas students at Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2012, when she said lecturers and students questioned why she "couldn't speak proper Mandarin".
"They couldn't get the fact that I was born in Australia," she said, adding Mandarin isn't even her mother tongue, as her parents speak Shanghainese — a Chinese dialect.
Now a fluent Mandarin speaker, Ms Zhou said she couldn't help but still occasionally apologise for not speaking it perfectly.
"I hope one day people cannot tell that I have an accent," she said.
Second-generation migrants like Ms Zhou can grow up in the intersection of two worlds: expected to embrace the culture of their parents' country at home, while navigating mainstream Australian culture outside of it.
This experience has left some second-generation Australians questioning their sense of identity.
Ms Zhou said there could often be a social disconnect between newly-arrived Chinese migrants and those who were born in Australia.
"They just don't understand the challenges of being an 'ABC'," she said.
The 'banana generation' and the 'cultural bridge'
Macquarie University Asian studies lecturer Mei-fen Kuo told the ABC many second-generation Australians often experience tensions between the expectations of both cultures.
Because of their unique cultural position, Dr Kuo said this group unofficially functioned as a "cultural bridge" between broader society and their families, bringing foreign ideas and perspectives back home, and translating them in a way their parents or grandparents can better understand.
But among Australia's first wave of Asian migrants, their children were sometimes brandished with the derogatory term, the "banana generation".
The label refers to someone being visibly "yellow" on the outside while being culturally "white", or Anglo-Saxon, on the inside.
It's terms like these which Dr Kuo said showed a lack of insight from those who use them, given the complexities of the roles second-generation kids have in a migrant family.
When migrant parents are called out on racism
Bridget Harilaou has grappled with the tensions of straddling two different worlds.
Mx Harilaou, who is non-binary, was born to an Indonesian mother and Greek father.
They used to find their parents' views on Indigenous Australians and various social issues offensive and unacceptable.
"I realised that there was this disconnect between the racism they experienced, and then the racism they perpetuated against others," Mx Harilaou said.
Mx Harilaou said that prompted difficult discussions at home, particularly if their parents expected "that people were not going to be racist to us".
"I decided that it was important enough to me that I was going to put my foot down, I was going to have hard conversations with my family," they said.
Mx Harilou said those conversations had managed to help shift some racist attitudes.
They said this expanded into solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, with the distribution of a letter explaining the central reasons for the movement to migrant communities.
"It was a letter to our mums, dads, uncles, aunties. And I translated it into maybe a dozen different … languages," they said.
'I just wanted a ham and cheese sandwich!'
Lucy Du was born in China but has lived most of her life in Melbourne after migrating to Australia with her parents when she was just four years old.
People who migrate at a young age and experience most of their upbringing in a country different than their country of birth are sometimes labelled as the 1.5 generation.
Ms Du was a university exchange student in Beijing and later worked at the Australian consulate in Shanghai for several years.
She said this was the time where she came to a realisation that she was now a part of China's "Aussie expat bubble" — something she never thought would happen.
She said she used to look down on international Chinese students studying in Australia as they often kept to themselves. But in China, she realised she was doing the same thing.
"I guess it is because I have a lot in common with other Aussie students and colleagues."
But at the same time she acknowledged she had a "limited" understanding of Australian history and culture, "especially things related to Indigenous Australia".
"I felt almost embarrassed not able to tell others in depth of what had happened in terms of their unique history and culture," Ms Du said.
Research by Swinburne University academic Glenda Ballantyne and Monash University researcher Aneta Podkalicka found second-generation Australians could often find it hard to choose specific terms to express their identities.
"For some, trying to describe their identities was really confusing, and their thinking changed from day-to-day," they wrote in the peer-reviewed M/C Journal this year.
"For others, the reason it was hard to express their identities was that the very substance of mundane, daily life feels very default."
That's something close to home for Ms Du, who said her cultural identity was very fluid and has changed throughout the years.
"I once really hated bringing wonton to school for lunch. I just wanted a ham and cheese sandwich like everybody else!" she said.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiamh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTEyLTI3L3NlY29uZC1nZW5lcmF0aW9uLWF1c3RyYWxpYW4tbWlncmFudHMtYmV0d2Vlbi10d28tY3VsdHVyZXMvMTMwMDUwMjTSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTMwMDUwMjQ?oc=5
2020-12-26 19:06:00Z
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