Names

When I was born, my parents gave me a Chinese name,
One that wore like a Made in China label across my chest,
Which didn’t bother me
Until I realised the connotations ‘Made in China’ had in today’s society;
Until I realised how similar the oriental syllables of my name sounded to the ‘ching chongs’ sung mockingly on the school playground.

When people asked me where I was from, I told them,
New Zealand.
I was born and raised there,
Always making it a point to slip in my birth,
A way of compensation for this name that does not sit flush with their tongues,
As if spending anything less than 100% of my life there deems me too much of a foreigner,
Of an immigrant.

So later on, I decided to change my name to something simpler,
Something that didn’t play touch-and-go with peoples’ tongues;
Something that could be found in the dictionary.
I can’t tell you how happy it made me the day Microsoft Word finally stopped putting a red line under my name.

My mother always told me the most basic form of respect you can show someone
Is to learn how to pronounce their name, properly,
So I wonder what it says about me that I no longer speak the name I was given-
Pushed to the back of my throat, pushed off of my birth certificate,
Syllables I still can’t speak without tasting childhood racism.

It is hard to love a country
When you are reminded of racial slurs more than you are of its customs and traditions.
I am the girl who does not know how to talk about her culture without it becoming a rant about racism-
Being told to go home in a place I call home,
Disparaged about in complaints of stolen jobs and claims of rising house prices,
Like it is a crime to have fled for something better.

I want to tell them about my mother,
Who gave up leather heels
So her daughter could run barefoot on green grass;
Surrendered her voice
So her daughter could speak a new language,
Gave her a Chinese name
If for no other reason than as a souvenir
From a land she will never know well enough to call home.

So when they tell me my last name will always wear like a tail,
Following onto every form, every application,
Stamped across resumes and IDs,
The last bit of me caught in the bamboo ceiling,
Tell them this language that stumbles so hesitantly off of my tongue
Is spoken fluently by over one billion people.
I have worried so much about being marginalised
That I forget this culture I am trying to dissociate myself from
Is the one that propagated today’s 40 billion dollar tea industry,
And this country I don’t know how to appreciate
Was the one to give me the ink and paper I so cherish today.

Remind me then, before it is too late, that there is no shame in the menial jobs my parents worked to provide for a family;
Remind me it is not my place to apologise when people pronounce my name wrongly,
And please, remind me to ask my grandmother for her tea eggs recipe.

I changed my name from a Chinese one to an English one,
And now, I am praying that I have not lost my identity in the process.

Mother

Mother,
Stepped afoot a plane for the first time,
Lost count of the number of miles it took
To reach the land that seemed so much nearer on the map.
Had a daughter whose birth rooted a lineage in foreign soil.

Mother,
Packed an entire culture into her suitcase,
Lugged it across the ocean,
Only to have it opened by a daughter who lost her way
In a myriad of alien traditions and customs
That tangled like Christmas lights.
Wondered how she would teach her daughter
Tens of thousands of characters,
When her school teachers had told her everything could be expressed
With twenty six letters.
Gifted her daughter an intricate name worth an essay, and watched it be abandoned
For one that was lighter on the Western tongue.

Mother,
Mined iron to construct her daughter’s bones,
Her own arms only strong after having to lift up an entire family.
Taught her daughter to fall asleep
To the sounds of bombs and explosions,
Left over from conflicts of the past that she was never really able to escape.

Mother,
Spun a perfect web for her daughter, using her heartstrings,
Gave up her wings to send her daughter on planes to chase her dreams.
But had to witness her daughter snip the threads of the web,
Wobble precariously on a tightrope,
Juggling recklessly lost dreams that she did not yet realise
Were precious crystals.

Even today, mother’s
Thick accent is caught in her throat,
Tastes bitter in her mouth.
She resorts to broken English
That slices her tongue.
Wishing she could understand the poetry
That spills from her daughter’s veins.

Mother says ‘I love you’
With the lines on her face that she let her daughter pencil in,
With the strands of ivory in her hair that she let her daughter dye.

And her daughter
Later found that, even with an eraser,
Her mother’s wrinkles could not be removed.
Smiles as her mother kisses her goodnight,
But watches her pad away, wishing
Her white hairs wouldn’t glow so brightly
In the darkness.