Archive for Vicky Tam

My contribution to the year-end review potluck

December is always a weird time a year. It’s a month where the western world tries to grind to a halt and finally stops for about one week. Around this time, people start posting notes on Facebook that dissect the last year in their personal lives. And this year, news sites are filled with retrospectives on the news, people, fashion, pop culture and technology that defined the decade.

I read a particularly astute Facebook update in which the poster likened 2009 to a boorish house guest that overstayed his welcome. It made me think about how I felt and how I would remember this year. Truthfully, I am always glad when a year is over. December is a month of expectation and anticipation and I am always relieved to put it behind me. I am always more capable of making plans and looking forward when I am safely on the other side of the calendar instead of counting down.

That being said, 2009 feels like three different lives bound together loosely by the last four digits of my digital camera’s date stamp. From January to the end of April, I was in Toronto finishing my last semester at Ryerson. My last year of Ryerson was by far the most emotionally trying of the four years. I had to come down from the high of going on exchange, a summer of backpacking and settling back into routine existence. It felt like all the fun parts of university were over. It was the longest I had lived with my parents since I started university and I was not a happy camper.

Making meaningful summer plans are always a source of anxiety, especially in journalism school. If you want a good internship, you need to start applying in December. So what to do when you know you’re leaving in September to do something completely unrelated? Keep your head down, suck it up and take a retail job while you wait to leave? It was a worry I had since I returned to Toronto in September 2008. You don’t want to find yourself among those scouring the “writing/editing” section of Craiglist in May. It was more pressure this year since we were graduating and it was now possible (nay, mandatory) to search for a full-time job. Through a miraculous stroke of luck, I managed to avoid all this. In January I got an email telling me I received a scholarship to study Mandarin in Taipei. In hindsight, I chose to treat this like a free pass to sit back and suffer the rest of the school year until I could get the dodge out of there.

Taiwan was a completely unexpected stop in 2009. I can say now, without a doubt, that it was the best part. Before going there I only knew about its existence and never given the country a passing thought. There was also something amazing about revisiting the Chinese language. Learning Mandarin came so naturally, I astounded myself everyday. Lessons in the textbook would spill out of my mouth without having to put in study time. It was always full-steam ahead. Of course it’s much easier to like something when you are good at it. I left with a different attitude about Chinese language and culture and I have to credit Taiwan for a lot of that.

Which brings me to the here and now in France. This is the part I hate the most about these year-end lists–self-eulogizing while you’re still living. Increasingly I’ve been finding it hard to say positive things about my experience here. Until now, I have been fortunate and sheltered in my experiences abroad to avoid some of the normal feelings of living abroad, namely loneliness and isolation. It sounds obvious but the biggest adjustment was realizing that when you’re no longer a foreign student, you don’t have a ton of other foreign students always ready to hang out with you. When you are at a place where you can speak the language, however badly, you now have the option of trying to mix with the locals (and a nagging feeling that you should, instead of befriending other foreigners.) This has been proved harder and more intimidating than I thought. Being a new kid in a French workplace isn’t easy either. It has not only been getting used to the French way of doing things with my colleagues but also becoming a cog in a school system I didn’t grow up with.

In the past two years, I’ve begun to measure time in countries or associate periods of my life with a place. I remember Utrecht and Taipei as such beautiful and happy times in my life. However, they were instant gratification. Toronto is a mix of social circles from different periods in my life that I could fall back into, which makes things both mundane but comfortingly easy. The worst part for me so far is the disappointment that I don’t love France yet. I really hoped and expected that I would.

Lately I’ve been thinking that France serves another purpose in the greater scheme of things. There wasn’t much difficulty or responsibility in Utrecht or Taipei, so I rarely had feelings of dissatisfaction. Here, for the first time, I have to try and work at building a life and finding a niche for myself. Needless to say, I’m not there yet. The catch is my contract finishes in four months anyway. I don’t believe in being defeatist and resigning myself to waiting until I can pack up and leave. I’ve done that before (see: the paragraph about how I spent the first third of 2009) and it didn’t make things any better. So I think I have my new year’s resolution and the first part of 2010 cut out for me.

My first update blog from France took two weeks to write. When in France right?

I’ve been in France for a little more than two weeks now. As perpetual foreign student (until now), France has been a stark contrast to the immediate and non-stop party of the Netherlands and Taiwan. The past two weeks have been an endless tirade of unexciting essential stuff–searching for an apartment, opening a bank account, trying to figure out how to get internet in my apartment. (I’m not there yet so I’m writing from the teacher’s lounge at the lycée.)

In the end, I chose to live in Strasbourg. Sélestat was actually bigger than I thought it would be. In my head I envisioned a main street full of shops that sell nothing of interest to anyone under the age of 65 (like the “downtown” in every small town in Canada.) The downtown, if you will, is small but decent-sized with a number of bars and cafés. I particularly enjoyed the internet café with a sign boasting “The only internet café in Sélestat.” However, there was no real moment of revelation. As soon as I got to Strasbourg, I decided to look for an apartment and if I found one in time, I would take it.

I live near the train station, a neighbourhood my coworkers tell me is kind of seedy. My building looks like the typical French apartment building, which is to say romantic and historic by Canadian standards. The stairways banisters are wrought-iron and the ceilings are high. My room is almost the size of my room in my parents’ house, except here I have a walk-in closet. My favourite part of the room is the ivy growing outside that covers the side of the building completely and surrounds my windows.

My roommates consist of one Spanish girl, who is doing a year of exchange, and one ghost. We have another roommate who had living in the apartment before us but whom we have never since we moved in. We have pieced together a few theories and life stories about her based on what we heard from our landlord and the former tenant and are waiting to see who will win the bet.

As for the job that I came here to do, I feel completely overwhelmed. I have 12 classes spread out over four days. Each hour I work a different teacher (nine in total this semester) and each with a different class of about 30 students. The teachers generally have paired me up with their weakest classes in hopes of giving those students more practice, so they can pass their exams. They have given me brief explanations about my responsibilities for each class. Many of these involve me taking half the class and teaching them a lesson I came up with. The whole thing sounds awkward and terrifying.

All I did this week was introduce myself to each class. The teacher then told the students come up with questions for me, which yielded one week of very siliar crops. How old are you? Are you homesick? What are your ‘obbies? (They never fail to ask that last question yet always fail to pronounce the “h.”) Some of the better questions include: Are you married? How much money do you make teaching here? Do you want to stay in France forever? Do they eat snakes in China?

Originally, I wondered if I would be the only Asian in Sélestat. In one of my classes there are two Vietnamese girls, so I’m not a complete oddity. Still, the students are curious about my ethnicity. I have had several requests to speak and write Chinese so far. They’re a bit intrigued at hearing the same sentence in two types of Chinese. One student also requested that I speak some French, just to hear what I sounded like I suppose.

I’ve never changed schools in all my years in the Canadian public education system. After spending all eight years in the same elementary school, I was shipped off to the high school where all my other classmates went. For the first time I feel like the new kid in school both with the students and the teachers. In the teacher’s lunch room, I fear the day I go in without an English teacher and have to try to start a conversation in French with a 40-year-old math teacher.

My Spanish roommate told me last night that it feels like the days are really long here. I would have to agree. It feels like I’ve been here for much longer than two weeks. I’ve been busy everyday trying to get things together and I’m wondering the day will come when all the annoyances of moving to a new country are finished. I feel a little frustrated that there are so many more things I need to do before I feel I have my life set up here, or at least a comfortable habit. Socially and linguistically, I’m nowhere near where I want to be. The former can’t seem to happen without the latter. It requires almost no effort to make friends as a foreign student. It’s not hard when everyone else has no friends or responsibilities. It helps that the international party language is English. Waking up at seven most mornings is not conducive to wanting to go out at night alone to try to meet and befriend people in broken French.

The German assistant at my school quit before classes started and before we ever met. The teacher in charge of the language assistants told me her father called to tell the school his daughter would not be doing the job after all. After two weeks in the country and one week on the job, I can’t say there that idea doesn’t have any appeal for me. This is, without a doubt, the most difficult time I have had abroad. The hardest thing for me right now is to remember just because I’m in a foreign country, doesn’t mean I’m on vacation. My previous idea of life abroad was a bit of a bubble existence that I can’t deny that I miss. I thought France was a way to avoid the real world for a little while longer but, apparently, it comes with its own set of problems. This, it seems, is the time to master a brave face and learn the meaning of sticking it out.

Asian-dominated suburbs: the best cultural decompression chamber

As I sat down to write this blog, I got the chance to practice my Mandarin for the first time since returning to Canada three days ago. Already feeling cooped up in my parents’ house in Markham, I decided to find a café to try and write. One of great Taiwanese past-times is bringing your work and laptop to a café for hours and sitting next to your friend/boyfriend/girlfriend in silence while they do the same thing. In Taipei one of my favourite Sunday rituals was taking a five-minute walk to Café Belgie, in a quiet corner in the Shida night market, and grabbing some Belgian trappist beer while attempting to do my homework. In Markham, I contemplated riding my bike but settled on taking the bus to Green Grotto Tea Room in one of our great suburban plazas. When I walked in, the waiter asked me in Mandarin if I wanted take out or not. I managed to stutter that I would be staying. It took a great amount of effort–partly out of surprise I was being asked in Mandarin and partly in a struggle to remember how to pronounce the word “sit.”

Markham is one of the biggest Little Hong Kong’s of the world. It’s home to Pacific Mall, North America’s largest Asian indoor shopping mall. You can probably get by in this town speaking only a handful of English words–that is if you if you speak Cantonese. So identified are the Cantonese with Markham, they complain about feeling invaded when new ethnic groups (mainland China, Indian, Taiwanese, Tamil) move in.

Green Grotto is across from Metro Square, a mall I have been told is a Taiwanese mall. This meant nothing to me whenever I first heard it. It was just another Asian mall in Markham. Being back here makes me want to seek out all the Taiwanese in Markham and talk to them about Taiwan. Like how most people (local and fellow foreigners) assumed I was Taiwanese in Taiwan, I’m guilty of assuming people in Markham are Cantonese.

I can tell I have already developed that connection to culture you get after living there for a short time. It’s like how every time I meet a Dutch person I can’t let the opportunity pass without discussing the country and my favourite quirks about its people. I can see myself gushing about Taipei in much the same way except in broken and mispronounced Mandarin.

There won’t be much time to make Taiwanese friends, at least here in Canada. Yesterday, I went to the French consulate to apply for my long stay visa. From reading the language assistants’ online forum, it’s unanimous that French bureaucracy is a slow and inefficient nightmare. (When my arrete arrived in Canada back in July I found, after some inspection, some of the documents were dated in May.)

After handing over my documents, I was told that decision would take 10 days to make. After the waiting period, I should email them for the answer. If yes I would have to make another appointment to come in for the visa and if no, well, I guess I will be taking an extended French vacation and a slightly more imminent existential crisis.

The consulate official gave me back my passport with a slip of paper inside with my request number. I asked the consulate official if the wait was 10 business or just 10 days. “Just 10 regular days,” she assured me. I left the office and rode the elevator down to go reacquaint myself with Toronto. As I stood in the lobby putting away my things I took out the slip of paper in my passport. “10 business days.” it said.

Merci beaucoup.

A place where “Chinglish” involves English and two types of Chinese

I have an estranged relationship with the Chinese language. While my first words were in Cantonese, preschool sped up the inevitable. By the time my parents enrolled me in Chinese language classes in at age five, English had usurped the title of my native tongue and I could feel a mutual grudge building.

I grew up in Markham, a Toronto suburb with a high population of immigrants from Hong Kong. You may know us for Pacific Mall, bootleg DVDs and raids by the RCMP on Pacific Mall to crack down on bootleg DVDs. Like any typical suburban youth, I harboured a certain disdain for my hometown and, in my case, by extension, the Chinese culture there.

When I told my friends I was going to learn Mandarin, I was met with the same reaction: “But don’t you already speak Chinese?” Toronto loves to pride itself on its multiculturalism. It’s our default catchphrase when explaining the city. So I was surprised to find out they didn’t know the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese and then once again at how difficult it was to explain it myself.

I’m Chinese but I’m no sinologist, but here is my rough explanation. The language spoken by the majority of Chinese people is Mandarin, which when literally translated means national spoken language. Regions have their own local dialect but everyone is taught to speak Mandarin at school. Cantonese is the language spoken in southern China’s Guangdong province and, mostly notably, in Hong Kong. Written Chinese is the same regardless which variety you speak–sort of. In mainland China they switched over from tradtional characters, which is still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, to simplified characters, which have fewer strokes and easier to write.

As a Cantonese speaker, I can’t understand when people speak Mandarin. There is a lot of crossover in terms of grammar and vocabulary, but the pronunciation is often completely different. When I started to learn reading and writing in Chinese school, I felt there was almost no connection to the way I talked. As a Cantonese speaker, the best way I can think to describe the difference is that Mandarin feelings like speaking the way I’d write a formal essay. Having learned a little bit of Mandarin, Cantonese, especially the Hong Kong kind I grew up with, now feels like talking entirely in street slang. The language you learn in school is always very formal and  correct but still I’d be impressed if local Mandarin could touch the dirty depths of Cantonese.

Learning Mandarin has unearthed a Cantonese cultural identity I didn’t know I had. Everyday in class I have a “eureka!” moment when my teacher says a new word and I can match it with its Cantonese cousin. However, sometimes comparing the languages sometimes gives rise to “that’s not the way we do it” type sentiments. Half the time I can translate things directly from Cantonese to Mandarin and impress my teacher and the other half, she laughs at the things I come up with. Then there are times when I’m trying to think of a Mandarin word while I’m talking and the French one accidentally slips out.

The way foreigners instinctively stick together here (I am no exception) gives me new appreciation for how difficult  the immigrant experience is. Suddenly the smallest errands become epic journeys that require seeking help from online forums or your friendly neighbourhood English-speaking Taiwanese.

Being here has made me realize I feel most like myself in English. Not being able to communicate verbally robs me of a big part of my personality. I realize now this played a big part in why, at a young age, I already felt turned off by Chinese culture. Now I wonder who I would be if I surrounded myself completely with non-English speakers. Often I feel like I could never be fluent or as comfortable in another language as I am with English. The biggest obstacle might not be a matter of practice or time, but just a matter of letting go.