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   Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 28-Jun-2026 21:49:31 JST Adrianna Tan

   Just saw a Singaporean person post about her experience being called a ‘banana’ by other Chinese Singaporeans (an English speaking Chinese person).

   People used to try that shit with me then they learn quite quickly that I speak more Chinese languages than they do.

   The person who posted that was right that the environment is often unkind to people who don’t have a linguistic gift or grounding or relationship with their Chinese languages, but the environment also fails to account for how all of that was stripped from us through Mandarin hegemony.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 28-Jun-2026 21:53:13 JST Adrianna Tan

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     The only criteria for being a banana is apparently speaking English without a strong Singaporean / Chinese accent.

     I think people like to put others in boxes. I used to really wonder about why some some people felt so strongly about this. I found their ‘if you’re Chinese you should speak Mandarin or you’re worthless’ bigotry hilarious. Most of the time the people who believed this weren’t even very good at Mandarin.

     I think the Chinese diaspora in Singapore and Malaysia have similar historical struggles around identity that are completely different from what I know AAPI folks face in the U.S. The ‘Straits Chinese’ is very strong and old and shaped in relation to the countries near China that our ancestors moved to and built strong communities in.

     It’s often a pluralistic identity, just like how many Abrahamic monotheistic religions there evolved into a syncretic one with localized traditions; I think Chineseness feels like that there.

     I don’t think about this very much, but China’s looming rise in the neighborhood has definitely given rise to anxiety or enthusiasm around what this all means.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 28-Jun-2026 21:57:26 JST Adrianna Tan

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     I don’t think anything has changed. China doesn’t give a flying fuck about the straits Chinese diaspora and demands everything from us including loyalty to a motherland most of us have zero relationship with beyond language and food.

     Personally, I’m very comfortable with my in-between-ness between east and west, between America and China. I feel a solidity of identity and language, in that I don’t need to adhere too strongly to either ‘pole’ and in that I can be whoever I need to be and speak whatever language I need to.

     I feel like a chameleon with two completely different identities and selves depending on where I am and what language I’m speaking. But also that my original and strongest self is the one between worlds.

     I can be a banana and I can be a mango. Or I can just be myself.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 28-Jun-2026 22:02:43 JST Adrianna Tan

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     In time I learned that the people who would try this shit (try to impose some weird singular Chinese Singaporean identity) were often the people who had experienced a loss of status and privilege. After independence, we (as in Singapore) shut down Chinese medium schools and the English speaking Chinese people ‘won’. It’s been that way ever since. Anglophile Singaporeans (including myself) get every opportunity and privilege.

     There’s been a desperate grasp for Chinese elite identity ever since. And they weren’t winning. So there was a lot of, well if we don’t have status then we might as well just live by assuming that all English speaking Singaporeans are completely out of touch with their roots and therefore, we are better than them.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 28-Jun-2026 22:13:53 JST Adrianna Tan

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     Anyway, a person whose work has helped shape my thinking on the world through a lens of southeast Asian Chinese identity and experience is Wang Gungwu. He was born in Indonesia, did most of his schooling in Malaya / Singapore (back when we were one country) and then went to Australia.

     His books speak of a world navigating the messy transition of world war 2, the transition from colonial rule to independence; and what it meant to be a Chinese indonesian - Malaysian - Singaporean - Australian. He also writes with a clear eye on today’s China.

     I learned from his writing a sense of belonging and solidity in identity that doesn’t need to rely on any superpower or state validation.

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     Adrianna Tan (skinnylatte@hachyderm.io)'s status on Sunday, 28-Jun-2026 22:27:34 JST Adrianna Tan

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     There are also nuances of class and racial identity through accents.

     My accent in English immediately puts me as someone who went to specific types of schools in Singapore. In fact most people back home can guess exactly where I went to school. Even though it was a ‘public school’.

     I sometimes feel I need to codeswitch in order to not stick out too much. At the hawker centre or in the taxis or in the bus. I didn’t want to be seen as a certain type of person.

     It’s also weird to me because my parents don’t sound like me when they speak English, yet I sound like whatever I sound like. I can also sound like them. In the US, nobody can tell I’m an immigrant.

     Going to a fancy school as a teenager and going to the heart of elite Singaporeanness there, where my classmates’ families literally inspired crazy rich Asians, and then going home to a community centered on the local wet market where Malay and Hokkien and Teochew and Cantonese and Singlish were the defaults, used to be more whiplash. Now I just think of that time as.. the beginnings of my multi-faceted life.

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     Suzanne Aldrich (she/her) (suzannealdrich@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 29-Jun-2026 01:34:30 JST Suzanne Aldrich (she/her)

     in reply to

     @skinnylatte I’ve been learning so much from your writing. I’m looking forward to your books!