User:Fayecheng

Cultural Shame; traditional Asian clothing printed with visuals that represents my pressure to assimilate

“Am I Chinese? Am I Dutch?”

Hanky panky shanghai,
hanky panky shanghai,
hanky panky hanky panky,
hanky panky shanghai.

I still remember my classmates singing this supposedly ´Chinese´ version of the birthday song to me in kindergarten. I felt deeply uncomfortable, but did not know how to respond being a four-year-old child celebrating her birthday in class. So I smiled and sang along with the rest of my classmates. This was the first time I was aware that I was different from the rest – this made me painfully ashamed.

Being raised in a Chinese household in Rotterdam, I learned the need of switching from a Chinese persona into a Dutch persona. As I mature, my desire to be part of a ‘Dutch’ identity became stronger and stronger, while actively discarding my Chinese identity. Familial loyalties had to be ‘simply’ ignored. Only now in retrospect, I realise that such unconditional assimilation was all in vain; Demands to assimilate will never wither in the cultural powerplay, which the dominant society is pushing on and on.

This essay argues that total assimilation cannot be achieved in the Dutch society through analysing and deconstructing my personal embodied experiences in different concepts and theories. First, I will explain how the dominant discourse in the Netherlands (re-)enforce the norm of the Dutch identity. Second, I will provide an analysis on how various forms of reinforcement is being masked and finally, the result from the attempts to total assimilate on an individual’s cultural identification.