Michelle:
So I was recently back in mainland China. I say recently, meaning so recently that I'm still having sinus problems from the flight. I have my tea here for this reason. I also just got over jet lag a couple days ago. And essentially by the time you see this, I mean, I should be okay, but wow, I did not intend to do an episode on this, but it's a very long series of flights. And on those flights, I think I was having very sort of full circle moments and just thinking about how much of my relationship to self, to language overall, a lot of the passion that you might see that I have comes from the fact that I grew up needing to hold all these different identities and all these different worlds. So in sort of uncharacteristic fashion, because I've never wanted this podcast to be about me, I have so many guests on for this reason, but I do think that it's maybe time that I start telling a little bit, like don't get too excited.
It's not going to be a whole biography, but sort of pieces of myself that I've come to recognize over time. And I sort of want to highlight the fact that even thinking about the last time I was in mainland China, which was a while ago, it was 15 years ago, I was a study abroad student. I was in a very kind of contained and closed setting, but I do think that given the transformation in me, first of all, my life where I've gone, what I've done, that mirrored against the fact that the country has gone through so much change, that it just made this last trip seem so incredibly impactful. And I just want to highlight some of these pieces. So for those who don't know, a lot of my family ancestry ties back to mainland China. Why we say mainland, you can Google, and I do think it's important to specify.
I personally spent a lot of time going back and forth all over Asia, but specifically the mainland as a kid. I mean, those flights were incredibly long because flight paths from the East Coast of the US didn't open yet. So we'd fly to the West Coast and then go from there. I learned as a kid how freaking giant the Pacific Ocean is to fly over. I also learned a lot about customs and duties and border control, what's allowed in or not. I learned how to Tetris my suitcase. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that I think you consider normal when you're just a kid in these moments that are in fact not universal. I didn't know that this wasn't a thing for other children. I just thought it was normal because I knew so many kids actually in the same boat. So we were all like, "Yeah, okay, summer or okay, like this school break or whatever when I hop on over." Now I'm not going to get too much into the backstory.
I actually did a guest episode with our most recent guest, Yovana. She has her own podcast and she invited for this season adults who grew up by our multilingual on her show to talk about the learnings and experiences and insights that we've had going from kids self to adult self. And so she invited me on this episode. If it hasn't released yet, we'll be releasing very soon. I will put links everywhere. In that conversation with her, I talk a lot more about the language environment that I grew up in and all these influences specifically passed on by my family, but particularly my grandparents to me and how I saw myself, how I saw others, and how multilingualism for me was just so normal. And I never questioned it. And I never even thought that there could be a world where people, especially if you think about currently it being 2026, and I receive messages constantly from people who say, "Oh my God, yeah, this teacher just told me recently that my kid is confused because he's speaking too many languages at home." I mean, it is mind boggling because I'm pretty sure that everybody on both sides of my family spoke and still speaks multiple languages.
And it is not seen as a strange thing. And this idea that you could be cognitively hampered is just ... Thank God there are people who are online trying to educate on this. I didn't even know it was a thing that I needed to be educated on until I grew up. But today I think I really just want to highlight the big difference I saw in myself being in China. Now, the last time being 15 years ago, why I even pushed to do a study abroad program, it was not only for the language, but it was for the fact that I wanted an experience that was independent of my family's influence. And I think that it's very important that, especially for diaspora kids, immigrant kids, that we learn how to see a country or society or culture independent of the storyline of our family because it's not a question of who is right or wrong.
We don't all experience the same thing. So there's no competition here. It's more of I just wanted to see how society would treat me, how when they interacted with me, because I am a heritage Mandarin speaker and one that is extremely fluent and extremely culturally fluent as well. I grew up with so many people from different parts of China. I was very, very, very lucky to have a very strong community of all these different types of people. So me knowing about all the different provinces and all the different local languages and customs and all this stuff, I count myself very lucky because it means that just through exposure and interaction with people who had already settled in my area of the US, I was able to be back in the mainland with that sort of adaptability and be seen as like, okay, you kind of use the language a little differently or you don't exactly sound 100% like us, but are probably just from a different province, or you've spent a lot of time overseas and that's why that explains this aspect that is a little bit different.
I think when I was going back before and studying abroad, I really just wanted clarity on a lot of things. I wanted clarity on myself. I wanted to know all the questions that people had asked me since I was a kid like, "Do you feel more Asian? Do you feel more American?" Well, I'm Asian American, so welcome to the idea of being a hyphenated person. I think I just think about it like there was never a conflict to begin with. And the only reason I think for a lot of my adolescent years, I thought there was a conflict was simply because people told me there was a conflict. I wasn't allowed to have multiple identities. Therefore, I had to choose a box and just this constant ping pong effect of going and trying to be in one box or another and never feeling fully inside of one, feeling in between all the time.
I laugh now because I see this time, me going back being like a full grown adult person. I mean, technically I was an adult before, but I hadn't had the experiences that I've had in the last 15 years, right? So I didn't go through all the different moves and all the different career job changes, life changes, life phases, all that stuff. And now just thinking about it and showing up and not caring to a certain degree how I'm perceived because I know, like I know who I am and I know what I'm made of and from. And I feel a sense of just really quiet pride inside of me for this because I think a lot of us get branded as having identity crises, as if we have some mental, like we're incapacitated mentally in some way or emotionally because we just don't know. And I not only feel that it's like, well, it's not even a thing anymore, it shouldn't have even been a thing because had younger me known that I didn't need to choose a box, had younger me known that of course being a Western born Asian person, that I wouldn't be having the type of experiences and social exposure as my other family members, cousins of my generation, but that didn't make me invalid.
I wish I could get back all the time that I spent agonizing over this. And I think the fact that this time going there, just showing up like as I am using language as I do, I mentioned in my episode with Andrea in episode 12 that I had a sort of unexpected emotional grief block with Mandarin and the Chinese language overall because after my grandfather passed, which was very, very, very unexpected even though he was quite elderly, he was 98, but everyone in my family on that side lives a very long time. So it was not actually expected and no one expected that it would happen this fast. It was due to an accident. And I just wasn't prepared not only for losing him, but losing the connection that I had to the language. And it made me realize that this piece of me, this part of who I am, the things that created my Mandarin speaking self came so much from my grandparents' influence on my life in a way that just, you'll have to wait for me to publish a book on it.
I'm not going to go into a ton of detail, but I think they never once told me that I was somehow unworthy. They never once made me feel like I wasn't Chinese enough or that I was too American or anything. I am just so lucky to have had their influence on my life, both of my grandparents. I was so lucky to have multilingualism modeled for me throughout the course of my early years, and I'm not going to cry. What's very sad for me is that I don't get to talk with them, either of them. My grandfather was the second one to pass. Yeah. I don't get to talk to either of them about what I'm realizing now, which is that everything they told me growing up about how I get to be this wonderful version of US American born Chinese person, I never needed a doubt that.
That messaging did not come from them. That messaging came from all the other crap I was surrounded by. This was the first time that I got to be kind of a tourist also. I was there before for family, but typical thing, family just makes you, rushes you around every possible city, village, town. You see like a billion family members, you're somehow related to all of them. You have no idea who they are. I think it was really great this time because I just felt so secure and empowered. I felt like I wasn't asking for validation from anyone. I wasn't asking for confirmation from anyone. If there was ever confusion, for example, where do you live now or so you work overseas because people around hear me speaking multiple languages, there was not this sense of like, "Oh yeah, but don't worry, I'm still really Chinese and don't worry, I'm not Western and don't worry, I'm this, I'm that.
" I just got to be like honestly, authentically the, I think, fullest version of me that has ever existed. And that includes the totality of everything I get to hold. And I think it's so wonderful that, I mean, it's way more relaxing, way less stressful to live this way. I am a firm believer that we need to be very careful about how we pass this message along to kids, especially since I was one. This idea that you are not worthy enough when you didn't choose how you were, where you were born, the circumstances that you were born into, et cetera. It goes back to what Andrea talked about in her episode in episode 12, the sense of instilling positive language identity. I think this is so underestimated. We focus a lot on the learning languages part. We don't focus a lot on the relationship to self part.
I mean, there are plenty of moments that I think some people looked at me like, "What is happening?" Because as someone who shows up and has all the cultural codes and everything, take for instance, me walking into one of these and a half street stall, half outdoor dining, I don't know what to call them, like this type of dumpling shop and me just politely asking if I can sit down because nobody asks, you just do it, you just order and you sit down because there are chairs. And it's been a while since I've had ... I mean, I just arrived. It's been a while since I've had this type of dining experience. I'm so sorry that I haven't been in the continent for a while. So the girl running the shop just looks at me like, "What the crap? What type of question is this?
" And then on top of that, forget this story, let me jump to another one, checking out of my hotel because China has changed a lot and they use digitized platforms now for everything. And I just don't know sometimes either some words because I don't live in the country, so how am I going to know these words? And it's not like a level issue. You see, it's like a societal exposure issue. And yeah, checking out and asking for the receipt of my room service or whatever I got. And the front desk person asking me if I wanted something very specific, which she asked me which platform, this is what I internalized it as, which platform I wanted it sent to. And I was like, "I don't understand why it has to be on a ... " And so I was like, "I just want a paper." I think it's really funny because that's exactly what the issue was.
She was like, "Oh, okay, you want a printout?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I just wanted it printed out because I keep written copies of everything." And I'm just thinking like, "Oh dear God, I must seem really, really weird in this moment because I just stared back at her like, what are these words?" Which happens, by the way. Even if you speak the same language, you don't necessarily have the same vocabulary because vocabulary is shaped by what you use in your society and like local area also. Oh my God, I think the last moment that comes to mind is how much I have just made peace with the fact that there is no more imposter syndrome, there is just me. You get me on whatever day I am. So some days you might be like, "Wow, this is incredible." And other days you might be like, "Wow, she can't even put a sentence together because sometimes I'm tired, sometimes I don't feel like it.
Sometimes I have other things in my head. It happens in English too." Well, so I edit this podcast, but you don't see me live. I mess up a lot. I feel like what's really funny is that there are certain words that I use more in other languages, so like non-Mandarin, non-Chinese, right? I was flying out from China to South Korea. Soul is not a word I say often or not ... I don't even know if I've ever needed to say soul in Mandarin Chinese ever in my life. I don't think I've ever had a conversation because most of the people who I'm talking to about this trip maybe also speak English. I don't know. I changlish a lot just whatever in all the languages that I know it's soul except in Mandarin, it's not, obviously. And so I have this moment, which I knew it wasn't soul, but I knew that I didn't have the word in my head when I was walking up to the counter.
And so when they ask me where I'm going, I just hand over my passport and go the capital of South Korea, because that was the only thing that was going to get me to the other side of this interaction. And I think past me would have been horrified that I didn't have the word because, oh my God, what would that mean for me as a Chinese descent ancestry person? Oh my God, the shame. And it's more like, are you kidding me at this point in life? The amount of things I've had to do and hold and be. And I don't have to feel, I think, any sort of sense of unworthiness. And I think that that was just really nice to see. It's nice to see that I give myself more grace now than I used to and genuinely, not just for Instagram. I think there's so many of these little moments that happened over the trip.
Now, I've mentioned a couple times that I am a heritage Mandarin speaker, but what does that actually mean? I have come to realize over life that not a lot of people not only understand this term, it's fine if you don't understand a term, if you understand the concept, but equate heritage language with just foreign language, which is not the same. It's very, very, very tough, I think, and I feel that it all gets collapsed. Now, no two heritage speakers, even if they are of very similar background and biography and all that, have the same experience. I talked about this with my guest, Heather, in episode 11, where she talks about, and I talk about the fact that we ended up with different relationships to our heritage languages compared to our siblings and others in our family. It's really, I think, one of the most overlooked parts.
I mean, other than those who are heavy in the multilingualism parenting areas of the internet, I don't hear a lot of talk on this in the larger language space. I hear a lot of, you guys know this, but I hear a lot of best method stuff. I hear a lot of follow me because I have all the answers. I hear a lot of, "Get fluent in 30 days, try my app, whatever." I don't hear a lot about, "Hey, there is an entire demographic of people that exist all over the world that basically grew up with a certain language and came out the other side with vastly different experiences and vastly different, not only relationship to the language, but relationship to the community of people and the culture and different modes of communication. So speaking, reading, writing, like this is not all just all in a box guaranteed, okay?" And after mulling it over, I think Andrea and Heather, their episodes released, I think I pushed them out over a year ago.
Since then, I've just been really, really asking myself, "What ways can I bring more voices into this space?" And so I'm very happy to announce that. Beginning next month, I will do a kickoff post, but beginning in May, there will be a new Substack series called Inherited Interrupted, which will feature pieces from me and pieces from different guests who will share their experiences on aspects of being a heritage language speaker. I am beyond excited because I feel like when we talk about multilingualism, we're forgetting that for a lot of us, this started first inside of our homes, inside of our families, or inside of the people we consider family or the communities that we had, that it's not necessarily something that we learned in school. When I'm asked how I learned Mandarin, it is one of the weirdest questions I think I had to reconcile or deal with really, really early on.
What do you mean? How did I learn it? I just speak it. I speak it because my family speaks it and they only speak this. And well, they mainly speak this. I had my grandparents who basically only spoke Mandarin, right? So in order to talk to them, I wasn't using English. I mean, it's kind of like asking me how I learned English, right? "How did you learn English? "And it's like, " Well, I didn't. I absorbed it. "So I acquired it. I didn't sit in a classroom having it explained to me. I went to school, I was a gymnast, I had friends, I saw people, I bought groceries. This is how it happened. And it's not only to say that, oh, immersion is the way or whatever. This is what's felt really weird about the multilingualism polyglut space for me, I think. When I hear people talking about how great it is that I speak Mandarin because, oh yeah, China's rise to power and I'm having all my kids learn it too, the two is so strange.
The two, I can't tell you how weird that has been for me to hear. I did not learn Mandarin because of the change in the global economy. I literally had to speak to my family members and I had to translate or I had to be ... Also, it's like a part of me. "What the hell dare you? How dare you reduce it to something that might boost my resume or consider it the same or because I do not consider this the same at all compared to the other languages that have been foreign languages that I learned in my life by choice, right? So we're going to get deeper into this. Substack is a great, great, great place, I think, to start it. I love what I've been seeing so far. I hope that it does not devolve into all the other platforms that we all have to rotate.
Two things. First is if you would like to contribute a piece for this series, please reach out. I have already asked a couple people to draft for the initial phase, but of course we welcome more. I also just invite all of you to think a little bit about how you're using this or talking about these things. And if there are any of these kind of false equivalencies happening. So one big one being that heritage language, foreign language, not quite the same thing, okay? Not quite the same relationship, not quite the same kind of stakes for some of us. I do not want to say that these are the only groups that exist. You know the amount of precision I try to put into all of my expression just to qualify constantly that it is such an individual thing that no two language learners or people are alike.
There are still certain themes that we might address. I'm very excited to open this up. I hope that you all will follow along, make sure that you are subscribed on Substack and Following. I mean, both because apparently they don't do the same thing as I've learned. We're going to continue with guest episodes here, a couple other episodes from me. Coming up, we are going to have somebody who's going to address more of the classroom learning side of things, so learning in the classroom while the world is changing. AI is here. Technology has been evolving so quickly. So make sure that you are subscribed here. Make sure that you are following on all your favorite, all of them, okay, all of your favorite channels. Please, please, please, if you can take a second to leave us a rating or review, this would help a lot because this helps boost discovery.
This helps other people find us. Also, recommending other friends and family to listen, I think is one of the most impactful things. If you know other people who are interested in these topics, I have no marketing budget. Okay? It is just this. It is organic. It is probably too organic. I get contacted constantly by people trying to tell me to optimize and they point out all the things wrong with my website and they do ... It's just super rude actually, but I'm going to say I kind of don't care at the moment because I have other things to deal with. I have other priorities, including this new series. I want to create this space before I go and launch it up into the moon. So I hope if you've been enjoying the episodes and the material so far that you will continue to spread the word.
Thank you to everyone who has been here so far. You can reach out to me anytime and I will see you in the next episode. Bye-bye. Oh my God, that was another thing that freaked me out when I was there. So China's using Bye-bye now. Okay. It's topic for a different day, but that was huge, huge for me. I was there being like, " Zai jian, everyone was like, Bye-bye. "I was like, " What is happening? "So people using Bye-Bye is like, for me, I have long filed that into Chinese diaspora people or people with, I don't know, who Chenglish all the time. Topic for a different day, but I think that this is fascinating. Also fascinating to see all the English on all the signs. I told Yan he has no excuse for trying to navigate. It's everywhere. It's like on the trash trucks and everything.
Anyways, we'll discuss this later. Let me know also what you thought about this. It's a different kind of episode. All right. Bye.