Comment on Anyone feeling like doesn't belong anywhere?

DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I was born Chinese and my family immigrated to the US when I was 8

I post about this topic a lot here, so forgive me for being so repetative for those who might’ve already read this before, this is sort of just my platform for cartharisis…

:::spoiler click if you actually wanna read this wall of text… I was born during the One Child Policy, I was the second child in my family, the government would catch women who are pregnant with their second child and force abortion on them.

Mom was supposed to have a IUD which would’ve prevented my conception, but she never got it and left her hometown to a city (Guanzhou btw) for work… and because of jurisdictional issues or something like that, she just never went back to her home village for like 5 entire years. Honestly I don’t know if she even remember all the details… I mean it must’ve been traumatic for her. Repressed memories and all that stuff. One time she told me she forged a certificate about the IUD thing. But the other part of this was they would check fertile women for pregnancy every 3 months… I think this was only done for those that already had one child, but not too sure, mom didn’t elaborate much… but she told me she convinced another women to pretend to be her and show up to take the pregnacy test…

So 5 years after my older brother was born, my parents conceived me…

Then my mom told me that at month 7 or 8, someone noticed but turned a blind eye to it so didn’t report it.

So yeah… that’s how I came into this world… allegedly, I mean I obviously cannot witness my own birth, so my parent’s account are the only people that are direct witness to the entire ordeal that I know of… I mean I do have an older brother and I do have memories of China and the One Child Policy is public knowledge… so that’s as much fact checking I could do… I’d just have to go by my mom’s account

After I was born, I wasn’t allowed to be registered into the Hukou until my parents paid the massive fine somewhetr between ¥20000 to ¥30000 rmb… (idk if they even remember the exact amount anymore… so long ago…) in around 2002 to 2010s, and it sounded like it was a lot from how my mom described it… they had to save every penny they had… I think they might’ve asked relatives or friends for money, possibly, but not sure… they didn’t really elaborate…

So because of this… I feel rejected by China…

The other thing is… I was born in Guangzhou, and even after the fines thing was settled… the other problem was that my parents were rural… so we were essentially second class residents in Guangzhou, we cannot get a Guangzhou Hukou… me and my older brother are not allowed in Guangzhou public schools, even though my parents worked in Guangzhou… so they had to pay for a separate shitty school that’s, according to mom, worse than public schools…

So I also can’t really call my self a 廣州人 (Guangzhou-er) even though I can speak both Cantonese and Mandarin (sort of… now English has kinda taken over my brain)…

So that’s the China story… :::

Then the USA…

Okay I don’t need to explain this one much…

American-Born Chinese bullied me for being a weird kid that didn’t speak much English at first… then for non-Asians that I encounter… its racism, not everyone of course, but common enough to have this feeling of “rejection”

I do have US Citizenship… so I should be feeling very “fitting in” here… I can speak English very close to a native speaker…

But then we got a new sheriff in town… a second time… 🤦‍♂️ (y’all know who…)

So yeah…

Haven’t actually encountered ICE yet… but this is causing a lot of anxiety…

The US is beautiful, but politics is so corrupted… ugh…

Idk if it’s paranoia… but I feel kinda like very hyper vigilant if I’m in a predominantly white neighborhood…

Haven’t seen a lynch mob yet… but the thought of it is kinda scary…

source
Sort:hotnewtop