From "Hola" to "Ni Hao"

“Where are we?”

That was the first thing my youngest sister said when she saw the land of China. I ran off the deck of the ship to reply to her question. I saw what she saw, what my other sister saw, and what my parents saw. “No,” I whispered to myself, “No, no, no.” Police officers with long olive-drab coats and hats, which looked like the Soviet Union’s, were standing at the end of the platform. Maybe we are in the wrong place, maybe North Korea? No, that can’t be, please.
The ship stopped at the platform, people rushed through the small gate. Workers from the ship threw our black bags on land, ten of them, and each of them bigger than me. They yelled at us to take them quickly. The five of us barely carried them to the immigration room and waited for the car to pick us up. “%$#!@,”someone yelled at me. I turned to take a look (I thought I had heard “ching chong,” the only Chinese words I knew). Two people were “talking” to each other about their luggage, with hurried and angry faces of distrust, and voices that would echo if they were in the mountains. But they were not talking, according to my experiences of what a normal conversation sounds like in the countries where I’ve lived. I was scared of the possibility that one of them might throw something, soon. I had learned my first lesson in China: speak loudly.
I can’t forget my first school day in Shenyang International School. The school in Paraguay was smaller than the one I am now attending, provoking signs of distress all over my body. I could feel my sweat glands opening their pores, my muscles contracting in a rickety way. After a few minutes, I was relieved to see nobody stretching their eyes saying the conventional rhythm “Chino cochino cara de pepino.” (Dirty Chinese with the face of cucumber). That phrase was my daily morning call at school in Paraguay, where I lived for nine years. Strangely, those words did not bother me even though I’m not Chinese, and my eyes aren’t that small (my peripheral vision is better than any of them).
Later, as I went to the lunch room I noticed that there were a lot of Koreans in the school. To my surprise, however, I noticed that I was a faction of the same group of people. At that time, I thought and spoke half in Korean and half in Spanish, making the "language" very esoteric. They looked at me as if I were a stranger. The feeling was indeed very strange; we just looked the same, stretchy eyes beneath glasses with straight black hair. Aren't those all the qualities that one needs to be "Korean"? The students asked me if I was Korean, I nodded to all those questions I had never doubted before. I was facing an identity crisis, on how conspicuous I was, and how different from the people of my own blood was I.
Where would I go? Back in Paraguay they said I'm "Chino" (Chinese), in the Brazilian school I went to, they called me "Japa" (Japanese), and here in China, my fellow Koreans said I was not Korean. What was wrong? Maybe it was because I was born in Paraguay with Korean blood. Maybe it’s just how I looked; maybe I just needed longer hair. To break my daydreaming thoughts, a Korean guy I did not recognize came and pinched my chest hard, saying, "Jjijjipong" (it means chest pinch, a popular game back then). Laughing, he left, but the pain and sorrow I faced did not. A sudden rush of feelings flushed throughout my entire body. I flashed back to the scene where my parents were saying we are leaving Paraguay the following month, back to this abysmal situation I was now facing. I began to sniffle, I needed a place to rest, a place people call "home."
I struggled with my difference from the stereotypical Koreans. In the end, what I concluded as my biggest difference was my hair. It was short, without side hair, with a farmer-like touch. The typical hair for the Korean guys back then (and still now, to some degree) was to grow their hair, until it somewhat resembled a helmet. Then, the application of wax on the hair to make it spiky was the “coolest” trend that time. After months of patience, I had achieved my goal. I received kudos. Some of the girls that had said I looked funny started to say I was “cute,” and boys stopped treating me as an inferior being. They used to say I looked “countryside-ish,” but they stopped saying that. If I was juxtaposed with a stereotypical Korean, people wouldn’t see the difference, except for my challenged height. Accepted by my culture, a minuscule bit of confidence began to set in, slowly opening my heart to allow some change to take effect.
I reflect on myself. Born in a country that is way half around the world from where my parents were born, I can only describe myself as a mutant. At the age of three, our family moved to Spain, and lived there for three years. I can still faintly reminisce from the pictures in my album, how I did not even bother to think that I was different. During the six following years where I lived in Paraguay, I was happy with myself. Being a "Paraguayo" was good for me. The sudden immigration in one year to South Korea, as a pit stop on the way to China, was almost baneful to my identity. I was totally lost when I felt how a Korean, could be so different from all the other Koreans. Everything seemed peculiar, what I was before, what I became, and what I could be in the future. But one thing I know for sure, I tried my best to understand the cultures that made me who I am. I started sympathizing with them, however illogical their values may seem. From arguing with my Chinese teacher that Taiwan does not belong to China, to seldom waxing my hair—everything added up to my love and passion for these cultures.
Now I am here in Shenyang, China, the place where we finally settled, but will again leave. I like China, for its exceptional fragrance, for its culture, and for its people. The only disappointment is that I do not get the “special” attention I received in Paraguay (i.e. the rhyme of the cucumber), because everyone in the country has stretchy eyes, straight hair, and the same skin color. Believe it or not, I somewhat miss the rhyme; I sometimes even chant it to myself. With Koreans, I have no problem hanging out. I learned that someone cannot fake his or her own blood. The Korean culture is inherently passed down to my subconscious. I learned how my culture was valuable, and how other cultures admire the Korean culture. Now, I am not afraid of being. I still have no absolute identity, but I am not doubtful. I am not a faction anymore, but rather an embodiment of cultures.