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A new lyricism

By JOCELYN EIKENBURG

Ailin sings a fierce karaoke song, loves pink pastel T-shirts, paints squiggly green snakes, and isn’t afraid to argue with a bus driver. I know her well — because Ailin is me, when I’m in China.

When you live in another country and culture — where the old rules don’t apply — the idea of “me” changes.

Green squiggly snake by Ailin

Green squiggly snake by Ailin

An expat persona offers the freedom to redefine who you are, and what you want to be.

It is perhaps the one unspoken delight of living in another country.

Ailin wasn’t just an escape from who I used to be, but an identity transformation. Ailin nurtured my creativity, like SARK, breaking away from my biology degree. I found my writer’s voice through blogging, and played with watercolors, creating everything from serpents to cicadas. Ailin helped me overcome stage-fright through karaoke. Channeling the Taiwanese pop-star Jay Chou at the microphone gave me courage to stand up before a group, like my company’s formal Christmas party in 2005. Through Ailin, I learned Mandarin Chinese and its idioms, each like a four-character poem. With this new language, I touched the heart of the Chinese man I eventually married.

Yet, after five and a half years, Ailin is less of a persona and more of who I really am. If only Ailin could fully translate into the United States — or even Idaho, where we now live. Most of my friends and family will never appreciate my Chinese, how I sing the dreamy ballad “Rice Aroma”, or what it’s like to be a yangxifu — a foreign wife in China. I feel fractured, a caricature of the girl I once was in Asia.

Then I retire to my room and summon Ailin, as I continue one of her lasting legacies. I write about China.

How has your expat identity transformed you?

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Jocelyn Eikenburg is the writer and Chinese translator behind Speaking of China.
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December 7th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Category: global niche, identity, self-image
  • Dear Judith, thanks for the comment, and for sharing your journey of living abroad as a different persona! From your experience of feeling "at home" in California, it's clear you were destined to be a Dutchess Abroad! ;-)

    It is indeed true that the real me blossomed only after I went to China. Amazing how a new country can meld a new you.

    Dear Madeline,

    Sorry I missed your comment so many months ago (must have been the timing on X-mas). Thanks for sharing your experiences. Sounds like you have many different identities to juggle, with a connection to so many different countries!

    Dear
    .-= Jocelyn's latest blog ..Ask the Yangxifu: Waiting to Say “I Love You” To a Chinese Boyfriend =-.
  • dutchessabroad
    Dear Jocelyn, How good to be send on a trip through time thanks to your post. Your carefully chosen words rang a bell early this morning, but didn't quite resonate until sunset, when I sat down to visit with my younger self.
    After feeling like an outsider growing up in my own country, I embraced really being one in Los Angeles when I arrived there at age eighteen. Even 5th generation Californians made me feel more at home than ever had been the case in the Netherlands. While I didn't receive the moniker Dutchess Abroad until 1989, I've always been just that. Living abroad granted me the comfort of accepting who I was already.

    Often it's not easy for those you leave behind to catch up with the changed you after you return.
    [i]But perhaps you brought with you the true Jocelyn, who was able to bloom in that very different environment, so very far from her familiar?[/i]
  • thanks for a though-provoking post. What you bring up has never occurred to me before and yet having read it, it now seems so clear.

    I too morph to fit my surroundings - a polite Canadian when I visit family there, a more aggressive American at my home in Chicago; much less aggressive when I lived in Sweden, and a different kind of aggressive - not American-style - when I lived in Italy... and the name, yes it changes.

    lots of food for thought. Thanks much.
  • @Anastasia

    Oh, if only Americans could pronounce your name with the same sophistication as the Romans! I prefer ah-nah-stahhhh-zia -- that's what I'll call you if we ever meet up in person, okay? ;-)

    @Catherine

    "Catherine" does have a certain elegance to it that you'll never find with "Cathy".

    I will say, though, I enjoyed the quotation above, how he said "your name changes too. It’s pronounced differently, shortened." I loved having my name shortened abroad, because all my life, I have shouldered the burden of a long, obscure name that always needs to be spelled out, and often must be corrected in conversation. The Chinese never have problems with "Ailin", which is a godsend. ;-)
  • Jocelyn, someone in another forum reminded me of being ah-nah-stahhhh-zia when I was a student in Rome, a much spicier version of my American vanilla eh-neh-stay-sha....odd how a name change for local pronunciation convenience can actually take on meaning for us.
  • dutchessabroad
    Ah-Nah-Stah-Zia, That's how I sounded your name in my mind as well! I was so astonished to hear you pronounce your name differently during our IRL global conference call that I didn't dare say it out loud at the time. I needed time to mouth it out myself a few times, but how would that have come across on the ether?
  • I can just HEAR the nasal intonation of your voice when you say the American version of your name, Anastasia! Or worse, the typical American inclination to shorten longer names like ours. I recently had to gently but firmly correct a friend from childhood with whom I've reconnected for not comprehending that I haven't been "Cathy" since I was 18 and left home for college. In her mind, that's still my name and who I'll always be.
  • Loved this post, just like everything you write Jocelyn!

    I've discovered that I'm more polite in China because I'm always aware of the fact that I'm representing my country. I might be the only American that some people ever talk to, and the things that I say and do might stay with them for a long, long time. So I try to be on my best behavior all the time. Which is kind of exhausting.

    Oh, and karaoke in China. I was surprised to learn that most people don't mix alcohol and karaoke, at least my co-workers don't. They wanted me to stand up and sing "Country Roads" before I'd even had one sip of beer. While I do try to project a polite and respectful image of Americans, I feel no need to project a sober one, especially not while singing karaoke. :)
  • Vocabulary. This really only works if you've travelled with someone. Inevitably, you incorporate foreign words into your day-to-day patois. Usually, they're the most banal words or numbers. My husband and I now have conversations peppered with words from all the countries we've lived in. We do it without thought and quite mechanically. I have no doubt that people find it, at best, annoying, and at worst,condescending.
  • I recognise myself here too, Jocelyn - thanks for this post. Loved the video and its message.

    Instead of fracturing when I moved to Turkey, my personality blossomed - better late than never, I suppose! In Selcuk public life I become Ketri (because few Turks can pronounce my name correctly), the worldly woman, a knowledgeable English and Spanish-speaking expat who loves an audience and can explain to travelers those puzzling aspects of Turkish life they would never dare ask a native. Back in California, I’m much more wilted, just a middle-aged former fashionista still picking up winter gigs in the design field, a woman who flaunts her distinction by reminding the very few who are interested that her ‘real’ life is lived in Turkey.

    The writer Elif Shafak summed this phenomenon up very well in an interview in 2005: "I also like the old Jewish tradition of changing your name when you change your life. I like the idea that when you move to a new country and change your language, that your name changes too. It's pronounced differently, shortened. Your new friends shape it to suit their language. There are people that complain when their name is pronounced differently. I like it when that happens. I have the feeling of reproducing myself. I like being many people."

    Me too!
  • dutchessabroad
    Catherine Ketri, love the sound of your Turkish name. You made me smile with your description of your present Cali self. Wilted, you? Get out of here! Ha, ha!
    The funny thing is, when I go to the Netherlands people (especially former beaus) seem to enjoy remembering a younger version of me, of course because it makes them think of their own younger self. In memory we're all young.
    I do recognize and appreciate I am the middle-aged former theater designer when I notice all those new names and young faces associated with the trade I used to be part of and it has taken me a while to realize that's the natural state of affairs. It was in effect a post by Anastasia about relating to another generation that put me straight, since I hadn't recognized the natural change of the guard as such.
  • That was an "aha" post for me as well, Judith, when I realized like Anastasia that I connect with a younger generation more firmly than with my own. I consider it a gift, the ability to renew and reinvent, to remain in the moment. The "changing of the guard" is more in evidence when I'm here in the US because of my previous lives here. Back in Turkey (soon!), I'll be free to relish my middle-aged status and experience to be who I am now, not who people remember me to be.
    .-= Catherine Bayar's latest blog ..Wool Prayer Rug =-.
  • Thanks for sharing this intimate observation about how life abroad changed you.

    Rice Aroma is a very catchy tune Jocelyn, great that you can sing it. When I lived in Asia I 1) didn't embrace karaoke (couldn't sing to save my life), and 2) wasn't familiar with the words to any favorite American songs (my upbringing wasn't steeped in the John Denver-kind of music that appeared in karaoke systems). You can imagine how this shattered the local communities' hopes for an American sing-along. My 13 years of classical music training made no difference, I was an unmusical creature in their opinion!

    I was given local names which didn't stick, but recognize your concept of a persona custom-made for (and by) a particular culture or setting. Personality fracture is a definite issue when your context changes...such a strange, internal tension when important and vibrant parts of yourself are put into cold storage -- but, as you showed, also a chance to let a new piece of yourself come forward.
  • dutchessabroad
    Karaoke is beyond me, but I relate to the mouth full of teeth (as we say in Dutch) whenever asked to sing a Dutch song when in company. Very disappointing to sing-along loving folks. On the other hand I stunned my husband on our first date by joining in on every first line of each and every of the American Pop & Rock song he started singing.
  • Thanks for the great comments -- I'm glad the post resonates with you.

    @Sher -- what you say about "Ana" being a part of you, but only discovering her in the Czech Republic...that makes me wonder about myself. I have to imagine that the same was true for me, but it took a change of scenery, habits and everything for it to come out.

    @Tara -- yes, that fractured feeling is tough. I also found it hard, in the same vein, when my dad and uncle came to my wedding in China -- not because I didn't love them or want them to be there, but that I was divided among the person they knew, and the person my family in China knew. It was an interesting experience, to say the least.
  • Thanks for the thought-provoking piece Jocelyn. Though I wouldn't say living in Turkey has given me a different persona, I do feel like it's been instrumental in showing me different facets of myself that I wouldn't have seen had I stayed in the States. I feel like I've become more of myself and discovered new depths to my character. And I do know the fractured feeling you mention - because I'm not wholly myself in either place.
  • I can so relate to your post. Before now, I've never heard another expat mention their expat persona. My expat persona is "Ana." She's very Czech and is not afraid to tell it the way it is, take matters into her own hands, etc. This is definitely a psychological way of dealing with a life in a new country. I find that "Ana" is really a facet of my very self--she's always been there, but it took moving to the Czech Republic to find this "Ana" part of myself.

    Thanks for sharing your expat persona with us!
    Sher
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