Half This, Half That
By Maya / Mai Hà Tran
10 minute read
I sat across the table from him, letting the crunching sounds echo throughout the room. In one clenched fist, a knife, and in the other, a crisp cucumber. He starts his routine of cutting the slices into shapes that allow for maximum sauce capturing. The carving is meticulous and nonsensical. His hand guides the blade in smooth motions away from his body.
The knife goes down and the chopsticks are armed. Now for the reward. The cucumber slice is submerged into a whirl of fish sauce and floating chilli islands. It swells. The perfect bite awaits. Crunch. And then more crunching. And the expedition starts again.
Who are you?
You are strange.
What are you doing?
It confuses me.
Are we really the same?
I don’t recognise you.
The importance of my cultural identity never really sunk in until after my dad died. Up until that point, it was used as an explanation more than anything else.
“This is why my lunch looks weird”
“This is why our kitchen has an odd smell”
“This is why my dad is different.”
It was a cheap escape from further questions. An axe to misguided curiosity. But rarely would it actually end there.
“What’s your Chinese name?”
“I’m not Chinese”
“But you’re Asian right?”
“Yeah, but only half!”
I would say that last line almost in defence. Desperate not to be categorised by what appeared to be an outlier in my DNA. I wasn’t going to claim to be something I wasn’t.
I continued like this into high school. Dodging questions about my ethnic ambiguity and avoiding my dad like the plague. He drove the school bus. At lunch, I would sometimes see him walking along the garden beds with his arms behind his back, his eyes peaking over his rectangular glasses. He would bend down, pick something from the foliage and pop it in his mouth, crunch and continue. I would catch my classmates staring too. A quick diversion would surely stifle my embarrassment. “Hey! Everyone’s playing frisbee on the top hill. Let’s go!”
But then we went to visit dad’s family. A 20-hour flight landed us in a humid and bustling Los Angeles, a rude shock to our cold Melbourne bodies.
Dad is one of ten children. That’s a lot, even by South-Eastern standards. There certainly weren’t a shortage of uncles and aunties. You can only imagine what our welcome party looked like at the airport when we finally rocked up.
“Oh, you look just like your mother, beautiful girl!”
Huh? My mum? But she has pale skin, blue eyes and wild blonde hair. I am simply not that. But I do have her freckles, thrown in no particular order around my cheeks. More things for people to find puzzling about my face. My aunties’ faces were smooth and clear with not a blemish to distract. I wanted to touch them and feel the softness they possessed. If I flicked off my pesky freckle stains, maybe I could look like that too.
We sat around a table of animated voices, rejoicing in fits of laughter and wide toothy smiles. I tapped my cousin on the shoulder. “What are they saying?”
“They’ve missed you. Last time they saw you, you were drooling in their arms. Now you have to lean down just to hug them”. Another laugh broke out. I laughed too. It was certainly a surreal thought.
This is when I started to realise that I was stuck in a sort of limbo. In a room full of family, where do I sit? With my brothers, as clueless as me? With my cousins, forced to translate every word? Little did I know, this conundrum would be a reoccurring one for the rest of my life.
Where do I sit?
That question has become a lot harder since losing dad. A truly important link was lost that day. The gateway to my heritage had become that much more unattainable. No one was tying me to this world of “different” anymore. I didn’t have to figure out who that person sitting across from me was anymore. Well, that’s what I wanted, wasn’t it?
The kitchen became less vibrant. The smell went away. Leftovers emptied from their Tupperware containers. The wok no longer stood as a proud ornament on the stovetop. Condensed milk was no longer poured into the coffees, and there certainly weren’t cucumbers at breakfast anymore.
But this is what I wanted, wasn’t it?
How wrong I could have been. What I would do to guide my younger self now. To show her just how rich my childhood was because of “that half”. She would grow up to treasure that part of her identity more than anything else. Jump at any chance just to be “that half”. Feel how it felt as a kid to be surrounded by those beautiful round faces at the table that day. Oh, how she will long to be “that half.”
Where do I sit?
Want to know a secret? I get to choose. How good’s that?! That’s the part they don’t tell you. You can wear the most beautiful Áo dai’s without anyone labelling it as a cultural appropriation. You can switch between two different names to confuse people. You can cash in on some brownie points at the Asian grocers, simply by being a halfie. They can’t get enough of us!
However, with the weight of decision-making comes some guilt. The guilt of copping out on the less desirable aspects of both your cultures. The internal politics begin. Should I berate white society for all its flaws or milk my white privilege for all its worth? Should I bind myself to traditional familial expectations or carve out a non-conforming path by detaching myself from those very values? How can I be an ally to the Asian community as well as being an active member of it? The questions are relentless and insurmountable. Unfortunately, my parents never handed me a guidebook.
Being biracial is like being on a seesaw. It’s fun for a bit but then it becomes disorienting. A weak analogy perhaps but it has always been a visceral image in my head. I picture myself as a child navigating those ups and downs. I wonder whether my future children will have seesaws of their own. I worry about the further disconnect they will have from their Asian roots. Will their cultural identity become even more diluted than mine? I don’t want to be responsible for that. I don’t want them to resent me like I did my dad all those years ago.
So, where do I sit?
Well, the truth is, I don’t really know. But I wouldn’t want it any other way. I get to experience two cultures and it’s flippin’ phenomenal. I forget the rest of you don’t get this. How do you live? I get to live a life that extends far beyond one border. A bridge between two cultures. A voyeur of both sides. My European and Asian ancestors are brought together because of me. They are forced to accept and make peace with one another in spirit. An unusual assimilation perhaps but a beautiful one all the same.
Put simply, my identity is a cornucopia. That’s how my dad would describe his food at dinner time. An abundant array of good things, mixed together like a bowl of swirling Phở.
So let me introduce myself.
My name is Maya / Mai Hà and I am Vietnamese-Australian. I sit right here.
