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I feel like my English self and my Teochew self and my Mandarin self are three completely different people.

In English: confident, of course, but also feeling very much like an interloper in a world which isn’t my own.

In Teochew: complete acceptance that, from my accent, places me immediately within 5 miles of where my grandfather was born. Largely among a diaspora that, like me, has never been there but speak of Swatow as ‘our home’. Speaking it at Thai and Vietnamese restaurants immediately gets me great food and friends.

In Mandarin: competent but bored and apathetic, mostly irritated at this language and whenever I have to speak it. But also thankful for the insights and access into another world outside of English.