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
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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WELCOME BACK. Identity adventurers like you make this global niche what it is -- so, thanks!
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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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
[...] just did a guest post on ExpatHarem about expat identity, through my own identity in China, Ailin: Ailin sings a fierce karaoke song, loves pink pastel [...]
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.
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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