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"So are you Canadian or Chinese?" - sense of fractured self comes from this question


chrislankfields 1 / 1  
Oct 6, 2014   #1
Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

I grew up believing that I had no cultural identity. Over the course of my life I've alternately been Chinese, English, Hongkongnese or Canadian, depending on how I've been feeling at the time. You see, I've always felt like an outsider. I was born in Canada but, having lived there for two years, I can't really call myself Canadian. Ethnically I'm Mainland Chinese, yet having lived in Hong Kong since I left Canada I know practically nothing about Mainland China. In Hong Kong, I attended an international school that was part of the English Schools Foundation as opposed to a local one, and consequently I've matured a strange affinity for the English (and their tea). And despite seeing Hong Kong as my home, as a Mainlander and an international school student, I couldn't see myself as a Hongkonger either.

Even the culture of my parents clashed. My mother comes from urban Beijing, where even amidst the economic stagnation of the sixties and seventies there was always a sense of exciting things about to emerge on the horizon. My father, on the other hand, hailed from a rural farm in the central Chinese province of Hubei. It was so backward, so out of sync with the modern world, that during his childhood his village called bicycles tie ma, mandarin for "iron horse". Their cultural disparity (and arguments as a result), needless to say, contributed to my longing for a solid culture where I could proudly belong.

It wasn't always so. My sense of fractured self has its origins in a relative's joking question: "So are you Canadian or Chinese?" I was still in primary school at the time, and having seen my Canadian passport I unhesitatingly declared myself Canadian. To this she replied, "But all of us here are Chinese - if you're Canadian, how can we be family?" From that moment onwards I became incredibly self-conscious of my identity. I was shaped by it. To my gweilo (literally ghost man; colloquial Cantonese for foreigner) friends I talked overtly about soccer, rugby and T-pain. To my Mainland Chinese cousins I recited lines from Chinese soap operas. And I spoke Cantonese whenever I had the chance, just to prove to all the 'real' Hongkongers in the vicinity that I was one of them. Having no cultural identity meant that I constantly wanted to prove to myself, and to others, that I was one of them. It meant that I was being defined as someone who couldn't be defined.

As I entered high school, I was still struggling to come to terms with who I was, but it mattered less and less as the years went by. I had friends from every race and every continent. I was dedicating time to orchestras and jazz bands and swim teams and yearbook committees. I was falling in and out of love like a teenager should. And I had the privilege of going overseas with my school: music tours to Italy and Spain, Challenge Week in Egypt, community service at an orphanage in Cambodia. Seeing all these places made me realize that there was so much color to our world, so much vibrant life and contrast, so much made possible through the delights of cultural diversity.

I realized that I was never meant to be satisfied with one, predestined culture to live with for the rest of my life. I realized that our identities are dynamic things we forge for ourselves. And now no culture defines me. I define what they mean to me. I'm my own person now.

I grew up believing I had no cultural identity. Now I look at the world and say:
Bring on the cultures, wide earth, and I'll bring them together in spectacular fashion. I'll make me.
vangiespen - / 4,134 1449  
Oct 6, 2014   #2
Wonderful essay! You have presented a highly engaging and relevant background story for yourself that shows us how clearly you understand yourself and what the prompt expected you to talk about. However, it feels a little bit too long so I will try to help you shorten it whenever I can. There are also some grammatical issues that we need to address. I will point those out and correct it for you also. Let's get started :-)

- ...as opposed to a local one. Hence my affinity for British tea. Despite Hong Kong being my home...

- This is an irrelevant part of your essay because it deals more with your parents than you. So it is not really important. It will also tighten the focus of your essay once you delete this part.

- I will not change any part of this paragraph. It perfectly sums up how you dealt with your identity crisis :-)

I realized that I was never meant to be satisfied with one, predestined culture to live with for the rest of my life.

- Combine these sentences into one paragraph to maximize its effect as a strong conclusion.
OP chrislankfields 1 / 1  
Oct 6, 2014   #3
Do you think this essay (or something very similar) is appropriate for the UoC title Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?
vangiespen - / 4,134 1449  
Oct 6, 2014   #4
Chris, yes, this essay will definitely work for the prompt you described. However, you will need to adjust the essay in order to align better with the requirements of the new application essay. This means that you will not only have to revise and rephrase the essay, but you may need to add or remove certain information, depending upon the needs of the paper.

I really think that you should try to write a fresh version of the essay using the same topic in order to avoid plagiarism problems with your essay applications. It is also very difficult to rely on a generic essay for the fulfillment of all your application needs. So you will need to analyze the new essay prompt and look for differences in requirements within the similarity of the prompts. If you can post the prompt here, we might be able to advise you as to how you can adjust your current essay to make it sound entirely different while still using the same topic as the subject of the essay.

You also have to be willing to do the work because we can only guide you in the revision of the essay. We cannot write it for you :-) So you will need to be patient because we may need to edit the essay a number of times before it totally feels different from the first one that you wrote.


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