How To Be Considered CHINESE

What does it take to actually call yourself Chinese surprisingly a lot of people on the internet are discussing this right now Yeah, you guys are clearly having identity issues But Mia's shopping never happened for me, but I can empathize or sympathize with you Alright guys, there's two posts on reddit One is from a half Chinese half white guy who's just questioning his identity like hey Can I call myself Chinese now? And then also one post is from a person who was born in Hong Kong came to America 11 years ago And they're also questioning whether they could call themselves Chinese so as Chinese people who have thought about this question David You know we talked about this stuff on our channel before who said you are a Chinese Maybe you are just a empty bamboo shoot a juicing as they would say in Cantonese, but anyways guys We're gonna go through our quick thoughts We have a list of things that might make you Chinese and then the top comment section So I'll please hit that like button as we get into it. Hopefully this combo is helpful Yeah, I think the main thing that sparked it is this that this hopper guy Andrew He doesn't speak Mandarin and then this guy who immigrated from Hong Kong as a parachute kid for you know better education career opportunities He can't read or write Chinese and somehow interestingly enough this I don't know if it is this is the crux of like possibly causing an identity crisis, right? But I think we do need to talk about and no one is a real gatekeeper to identity But what could make you feel more confident in you being Chinese? What made me feel more confident that I'm Chinese over the years. Let's talk about it Yeah, I think my quick thought is that realistically man be in Chinese to be honest and this sounds crazy Andrew It doesn't mean anything like I think it has a lot What I just don't think you mean being Chinese doesn't know it doesn't not mean anything But I think it's way more complex than being let's say for example something That's more monocultural like being Japanese or being Korean. I think that those things first of all I think you can still argue. What does that mean? But there's like maybe less argument I think being Chinese is particularly something that's incredibly hard to define even for somebody from China because they don't necessarily understand anything about a province like a 3000 Chinese is a broad term and also there's a large Chinese diaspora. Are you including Chinese from Malaysia? they have a different experience than Chinese from China from Beijing a Chinese person from Shenyang up in the northeast is gonna have a different life from someone who from Hainan if you added up all the Diaspora Chinese globally under which is like anywhere from like 350 million to 400 million That would already be one of the biggest countries in the world. And that's just people in Chinese communities growing up overseas It is like a gigantic Population, okay. Okay to simplify it for people though because we want this to be a helpful video Let's just say there is a general Chinese identity I'll just like let's just roll with this idea because if we say it's too complicated then no one is Chinese No one can be Chinese. Do you mean either noodle or maybe a dumpling? Yeah, I guess Uh, I think for me and I think this is a question This is how a lot of Chinese Americans or people Asian Americans can answer this question If you're wondering whether you're Chinese I think the simple answer is anybody can claim that they're Chinese anybody can claim that they're anything but it also goes down to your Work like what effort have you put in to connecting with your heritage or the people of that heritage? I think is a legit question. Not that there are strict guidelines. There is no gatekeeper Nobody can take your identity away from you But you should answer that question for yourself and say what effort have I put in to being Chinese? You're saying instead of just worrying about sort of how whatever polar Eastern Western sort of stakes you got born into right worry about how you build out those campsites Rather than just where those stakes got laid down by your parents like you can earn your stripes This is definitely something that you can earn your stripes And I would say so it's a little bit under you compare it to being a basketball player, right? Cuz a lot of people they got Hooper tattoos, but me and you know, there is so many levels Oh, yeah, if you say you're a basketball player Depending on who you're talking to they're gonna be like wait, what do you mean? You're a basketball player? You're like, oh, I mean, you know, I just shoot around with my friends You're like you're not a basketball player But if you train constantly and you love basketball and you train to be good at it and you play often Then you take it very seriously. And yeah, maybe you could call yourself that you call yourself Hooper, right? What if I take it serious, but everybody else I grew up around doesn't know anything So I was just the most serious of my fishbowl So I have that identity but then when I went into the world to meet like NBA players kids or you know Luka don't you just the future Lucas I felt very minuscule right right like I would start I met Vince Carter one time Would I tell him I'm a Hooper I'd be like Yo, I could play ball. That's what I would say. Literally. I would not say yo Vince Carter. I'm a Hooper, right? I think if you wanted to actually plot out identity you could Andrew on an infinitely complex 3d math chart Like I don't even really understand math this deep, but I know enough and there's people in my family who understand math You can actually chart out your identity on a 3d plot chart, but you know, it's too complex So I think the best way I could do it is just like an XY axis You know what? I mean, you know quadrants, you know quadrants the four quadrants that's popular to rank things on reddit, right? Right. So probably if you're part Eastern and you're part Western Andrew You're gonna have two plot chart distributions where there's clustering on two different points on the plot chart, right? So you are control in control for the rest of your life once you become realistic of what? 14 15 16 17 until the end of your days Okay about how many reps you new reps you develop on this plot chart? Mmm, so I'm saying at the end of your life Just worry about where your plot chart ended up instead of worrying about where your parents put your two initial dots Yeah I think a lot of people are having trouble dealing with people questioning Whether they're Chinese like in person because you can get like a little bit crunchy and feel a little embarrassed You're like well, I'm Chinese and then they're like, oh, why are you Chinese? You can't speak Chinese Are you from China? Oh, you don't look Chinese and then they're just like I don't feel Chinese anymore But this is why it's important to do the work so that you feel confident in yourself Not necessarily to convince the other person because you can't convince everybody it's for yourself. Anyways, David I have a quick list of ten things that might make you Chinese you guys let me know Where you guys rank on this list? Here's just ten things I came up with. All right, this is Andrew's list This is my list. You may not agree with somebody who has been questioned not by me But like by a lot of people your question, but I've been questioned by people from China Anybody who's ever questioned whether I was Chinese They were from China Anyways, number one you have Chinese heritage obviously Chinese blood doesn't mean you got to take a 23 in me Or what does this mean? No, I mean the more Chinese if you have a notable 1 8th blood. Yeah, that's counts for something Yes, all the Jamaican Chinese, you know number two You can speak a Chinese dialect on some level number three You can stand in the middle of a busy densely populated Chinese area and not feel super uncomfortable You know when you some people are like Chinatown bugs me out. Oh, it's like I don't know You're not really being Chinese right now. Well, actually because a lot of China has just really high population Yeah, it's just like dense. You got to be around China. You got to be able to sit and feel somewhat comfortable around Chinese people Number four you desire to eat Actual Chinese food at least three times a week and you can't say Chinese food is super icky or way too Greasy because those are not things that a Chinese person would say. Yeah I'm not gonna lie on a scale of like 1 to 10 though Chinese food is probably like let's just say the world average of greasiness is 5 It's probably above a 5 this if you made me say like 10 though It's not a 10 out of 10 or fry food can be greasy It depends on how much grease and and and oil you're using number 5. You got to be able to use chopsticks Fairly correctly. All right. Wait, so where's cross sticks rank on this? You if you can't if you're doing the cross fingers terrible if you're throwing up gang sign Yeah, if you're super functional with it, come on number six You're familiar with the stories of popular Chinese folklore such as Monkey King and you will celebrate Chinese New Year Obviously Chinese New Year. That's the most biggest celebrated Chinese. That's like being a Christian and not celebrating Christmas, right? Do you have to be scared of the Nian? Is that too not you don't have to be superstitious Number seven you attempt to say the names of Chinese dishes while ordering at Chinese restaurants to a Chinese waiter. Oh You got to try like even if you say the rest of the sentence in English Yeah, can I get one up to ha, you know, like the walnut shrimp? Number eight you have some non self-hating Chinese friends. Yeah, but I am from China and even I I hate myself So there's some complexity this one number nine That you get treated or identified as being Chinese sometimes at least amongst your friend group if you're the most Chinese guy your friend Accounts for something number 10. Oh, oh, are you saying if somebody's like hey, why do Chinese people do this? You can't just go. I don't know. I'm more like white if anything Yeah, you got it. You got to be able to answer the goofy ridiculous Chinese representation questions amongst your friend group All right You mean the the tick-tock in front of the congressional members grill like your friends got to be able to like oh, yeah We got a Chinese friend. Look. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's me. That's me And then number 10 you have a Chinese name and you are able to write it in the proper characters Oh You have to have been assigned at one or or gotten one You got to know how to write your Chinese name Does it does it count more if you got assigned it by an actual old Chinese person? Versus you know, like you're you're allow sure and like Mandarin. Oh, oh don't want 101 Yeah, obviously if if you got your name from an actual Chinese person or like a relative, it's better. Yeah Anyways guys, you don't have to be 10 out of 10 Those are just 10 things to think about and a lot of that is is effort right there Yeah, I think that this is almost like how to be considered just like at least like a semi-valid ABC Yeah, at least semi Chinese like you got to be everybody to in my opinion Even if you're not Chinese can be semi. Do you have to be cheap or at least value minded when you make it when you're making? Like that one white guy Dashaun that's teaches from Canada that teaches Chinese in China Is he not semi Chinese at this point? I would I would say he's maybe not a Chinese person, but he's like semi Chinese Yeah, maybe you know probably yeah. Yeah. I gotta see how he probably thinks and acts kind of like a Chinese person at this point Um, anyway, let's get into the top comments It says if you were actually Chinese as a half Chinese person You'd be more math centric and stick to the proper characterization of half Chinese half is half no more no less That's the mathematical truth Yo, you can be half Chinese and culturally more Chinese. It's possible, right? So he said now actually just be whatever you want. Just don't flip-flop your identity when it suits the moment personally I'd stick to half half you don't need to die deny any part of yourself to validate the other one Yeah And I also think sometimes if you identify as half But you're more Chinese than people think you can also impress people that way as opposed to setting the bar very high and saying I'm A Chinese person and then them questioning I think it has a lot more to do with your day-to-day life Reps and like pings that you have in interactions than anything you were just born into right? Yeah, but I feel like a lot of people are just like freezing themselves being like except me as I was born What's tough? It's like some people do are born into an identity That's easily acceptable by the larger society or you know, and other ones are not more complicated somebody said You will be judged no matter what you call yourself People will be angry at you regardless if you call yourself Chinese white half Chinese hopper, whatever You don't have to justify your identity. It's not it's up to other people to not be bigots. Yeah, I Overall, like I said It's really about how you feel about yourself because no one even a person from China Cannot take your Chinese in this away even like I don't know if you met Xi Jinping like he doesn't he's not responsible for your identity You know, we can't make that call. You can probably make that call about you entering China, but not about you being Chinese but what I'm saying is that You for yourself to be confident when you meet people You got to put in some work So for like me, I'm not good at the Chinese language But I try to speak it when I can and then if I do meet someone from China and they're like, oh How do you know about Jiangsu? How did you know about the food in Dongbei like I'm like, oh, yeah Cuz I put in some work to understand the culture like oh you seem to understand China fairly Well considering you don't speak Chinese. I'm like Yeah, that's why I put my work into that right and if they tell you that your Chinese language skills are very bad You have to go Somebody said yeah, whether or not you speak the mother tongue doesn't make you any less a Chinese in South America There's a huge population of ethnic Chinese that have been mixed over a hundred years at this point They look more Latino than they do, you know Cantonese or Mandarin, but they still can speak the language a little bit I consider them Chinese. Is this do you agree disagree or what is this? I think within the context of South America, they absolutely could be Chino Latino, but for sure I mean, it's it's morphed as a diaspora community, right again again to think it's about effort like from the diaspora I mean our Chino Latinos any less Chinese than Chinese Americans who are third generation in America you know what I mean, so if you can speak some Chinese dialect you hold on to that heritage and you've tried you've put in some effort to connect with other Chinese people and the Chinese heritage and you don't hate being Chinese and you don't hate other Chinese people completely then I Think for sure they should be able to consider I agreed that it's more about interpersonal pings and like real-life treatment than like I do think like watching YouTube videos about the history of China or reading books about the Modern and ancient mid-tier history or whatever they matters a little bit, but that's second place to IRL interactions Yeah, you know, I mean I've even met people who are like have Chinese that like run a Chinese organization You know or like the leaders of it now I don't know if they're doing that for their insecurities of like oh I need to earn Chinese points But if they feel compelled to do it and people let them do it and they are doing it Because they honestly do feel the Chinese heritage within themselves, then that's great Somebody says as a half Asian who also grew up in a majority Asian neighborhood I totally understand the insecurity of identity for so long. I couldn't call myself Asian I always had to explain my background to call myself Asian to another Asian the identity insecurity of being mixed as a bee It's always best to work towards identifying yourself how you want to there will be naysayers But your identity is your own don't get caught up in other people's opinion Also, I thought about this really interesting thing Andrew Sometimes it has to do with a media or a celebrity figure that's exalted especially in America where we have celebrity worship, etc Etc. Like either a high-profile person that shares your same identity Like I know a lot of hoppers they follow our friend Taylor rap who's in the NFL and he's not that great at speaking Mandarin He's probably better than he you would think but at the end of the day, he's like tatted up He's got his Chinese name on his arm, and he reps it pretty hard. You know what I mean? He puts some effort into you know what I'm saying? And I'm saying that that is really actually important for people who like need to see somebody who's validated in something more American Which is like the NFL? so I guess what I'm saying is like I think a lot of it comes down to like celebrities to and as Stupid or trivial as that sounds in an academic sense. That's fair. That's fair. It is what it is, man Ultimately Andrew, what are your takeaways? This is these are very interesting questions Are these people on reddit asking a legitimate question? Are they just looking for therapy? Do they just need to talk it out? Like this is kind of I don't know Maybe I never struggled with it. It's kind of a weird question. Yeah. No, I think that they're asking a legit question But I think the one thing that I didn't see in the comments was like, you know Just just try just like try to connect with some Chinese people some actual Chinese people, you know And don't be a self-hating Chinese Try to connect with your heritage give it a good effort if you at the end of your life or when you're like 30 or 40 years old and you can Sit back and say you know what? I may have not been born the most Chinese person. Maybe I'm half Chinese And I grew up in like a white area But I gave being Chinese an effort and I got some Chinese friends and I know a little bit about being Chinese And I understand the culture then you did you did a good job You know what? I mean like it but I'm saying a lot of people have to be Do the work first to be confident in themselves to talk to other people what if people are doing the work? But only within a narrow scope like like they're like I got one standard deviation I can go up and I've maxed it out and this is it and this is all I'm comfortable doing because I'd have to do Some really uncomfortable stuff to get three to four to five standard deviations away from where I was born Well, you know what then at that point you can have fun with it and you can be like, yeah, you know I'm like a bad Chinese. I'm Chinese, but you know, I Chinese sucks or like you can always downplay yourself and then set the bar low Right, right, right. I think press people. I think ultimately it's about satisfying your own standards internally, right? there are societal standards that will come into play if you want to become like a Chinese TV host or some sort of like Personality in the East or even represent an Asian American Oregon America, right? but as far as yourself goes you set your own internal thresholds and like Quality control bars you need to hit right ultimately I think a life Andrew my biggest takeaways life is a lot more mathematical than people want to admit but you know what I realized a lot of people who understand deep math and like this deep charting that's like actually all scientists use For every sort of like electronic 3d modeling, you know radio equipment and all these Waves and stuff like that. Um, they don't really like live crazy lives I guess it would be more like Robin gone Andrew You know the calculus rapper Like I can tell he's wanting to use rap to like break out of that like math tractor beam like laboratory work But I don't know if it's fully working, you know what I mean? But I could tell there's something in him that wants more right and then I feel like there's people who live these crazy like outlier lives And they don't really understand deep math, right? So then they can't like Map it out for the they can't map out their crazy life for people to understand how to live a crazy life So what I'm saying is just like basically if once you understand the math of life You will people can stop asking these type of questions because they can map out their own initial starting points on the plot chart and go Well, literally mathematically I need to accumulate the life experiences and accomplishments or accolades whether they're for outside validation or internal validation to change my identity Yeah, I mean you can visualize it I mean, I don't know if it has to be a graph, but it could be a flowchart of some type to something You know just some type of visualization about where you are and where you want to be and that's very helpful for anything Yeah, listen guys, we can't control the stakes in the sand that we got born into You know, you just start off with one little tent, but you control if that tent grows into a village or a town Yeah, alright everybody, uh, please let us know in the comments down below what you think about my ten Things that make you Chinese that list or what you think about being Living up to your identity, right? Like if you say you're an I if you identify as something is there some work that goes along with it? You let me know in the comments down below I noticed you did not put eating the crawfish in the malatang in in your list and where where is it? Well, because a lot of Cantonese people don't eat malatang, so I don't want to make that a requirement That's what that's a provincial Chinese dish essentially. But anyways guys Thank you so much for watching the hot pot boys and until next time we out. Peace