Who am I? Identity question by Vietnamese-born overseas

The following is a guest post by Yveline Van Anh

My parents used to tell me never to forget my roots. “It doesn’t matter that your passport says you’re French or that you live in China,” they would say, “Con luc nao cung se la nguoi Viet Nam. You will always be Vietnamese.”

I was born in a Vietnamese family. I grew up, however, not in Vietnam, but in Paris and Beijing. I spoke and read not only Vietnamese, but also French, Chinese, and English. I was schooled in French, English, and sometimes Chinese. I met people from all over the world and experienced all these cultures. Yet, inside, I still felt Vietnamese. Every day when I came home from school, where everyone was from a different country, I would speak Vietnamese to my parents and eat Vietnamese food. I thought that this made me Vietnamese, that I could only be Vietnamese.

However, because my parents were hesitant about re-visiting the country they had to leave almost 30 years earlier, I did not visit Vietnam until last year, when I was fourteen years old. I was excited beyond belief. I would finally be able to see my country, eat all the local food my parents constantly talked about, see the neighborhoods they grew up in, the neighborhoods I would have grown up in. I could finally be where I was supposed to be, in the country that I belonged in. Needless to say, even then, I knew this was going to be an experience I would never forget.

The beach at Nha Trang

It only took me a few hours in Hanoi to realize that I didn’t belong. The Vietnamese they spoke was a different dialect from mine; we didn’t even look the same. My family and I stood out like a sore thumb. We weren’t truly foreigners, but we weren’t locals either. I felt more like a tourist than a member of the community. I was not a part of the culture I thought I belonged in. I was afraid of speaking to the locals for fear that they would reject me. I felt like I was a lamb placed in the middle of a pack of wolves every time I stepped outside alone. Throughout my short two week stay in Vietnam, I went to the North, the middle, and the South. Each region had different customs, spoke different dialects and ate different types of food. Hanoi was famous for its cha ca, Nha Trang for the beaches and nem nuong, and Saigon for the sites and che. Despite thoroughly enjoying the trip to Vietnam, I didn’t fit in anywhere in the country. Sure, there were many things in each region that I felt connected to, but I was always just a tourist who just happened to understand what they were saying, who just happened to know and like the local culture. I realized that I wasn’t truly Vietnamese.

This realization devastated me at first: what was I then? I wasn’t French and I surely wasn’t Chinese. I didn’t belong to any one country. Was that even possible? I asked myself. Could I really not belong anywhere? It was then that I realized I didn’t need to be restricted to just one culture. I finally understood what it was my parents were saying when they told me never to forget my roots. They didn’t mean that I was only Vietnamese; they meant that Vietnamese culture would always be a large part of my identity, and that I shouldn’t forget that part of myself as I picked up new cultures along the way. On paper, I am a citizen of France, but in my heart, I am a citizen of the world.