Q&A: Part 1 (Going back to China and my identity as an adoptee)

[Music] okay hello and welcome to this Q&A video I asked on Instagram if you guys had questions and you did so I'm going to do this Q&A in two parts the first part I will do today and I will talk about things regarding China and things regarding my identity and then ending with some opinion or advice questions and then the next Q&A I will do will have questions about like what the first meeting was like and then more questions about my current life and things I'm thinking about so one question I got all the time is how was my Chinese language study coming and to be honest guys it's not great so before I actually met my Chinese parents I have taken one year of Chinese at university so I understood what I didn't know and I knew some basics but I was so scared to speak as you can tell in the video and of course it was one year so I didn't understand most of what was being said and that's the only formal language study I've had since I've been doing a lot of like self-study but it's really hard and I haven't been very intentional with it so someday I want to be able to invest a lot of time and energy into learning Chinese but I just haven't been able to find that so if you guys have any tips or advice please tell me because languages are hard what was moving to China like so if you don't know last school year I taught English in China I was primarily a high school teacher but I also taught some kindergarten and first graders as so mmm moving to China was interesting though it's really hard for me to feel connected there I liked it because I've learned a lot about China and Chinese culture and a lot of new experiences that I wouldn't have had otherwise but also the job wasn't exactly what I thought it was gonna be so yeah it was difficult but I'm glad I could go to China and I don't know if I would move there again and if I did move there again I would probably move to someplace like Shanghai or yeah someplace where I just have more options I don't know but it was a good experience overall but a difficult one for me so next was there any culture shock that you experienced when you first met your biological parents not really because before I met my biological parents I actually um was living in China for one month I taught at a kindergarten so the month before I met my Chinese parents I was living with a host family and that was my first time in China since my adoption so I did have culture shock on that first trip to China but I kind of dealt with it when I was with the host family so yeah but also culture shock doesn't really faze me I and I've traveled enough that I know what to expect with the culture shock and that kind of gets to the next part of the question which is how do I cope with culture shock you just got to learn and you just have to realize you're going to be ignorant and you have to just learn and be open-minded and it's not always easy so you also just need to know your boundaries and know how to take care of yourself so that would be my advice and lastly are there any challenges getting to know your Chinese family or living with them yes getting to know them is nearly impossible because of the language barrier we've had translators but I don't think we trim we use them well like it's really hard for us to communicate on a deep level with a translator and living with them I also feel a little bit of pressure to I don't know like be there like perfect daughter which I don't even know what it is so I'm really careful when I'm around there and there are cultural differences like I feel like I'm a very independent person but you know they see me as their daughter and like this little girl who they want to take care of which is their way of showing love but it's very different than how I see myself so um things like that make it hard to live with them for long periods of time they're loving me and their own way which I appreciate but we aren't really able to get to know each other because of culture and because of language so it's hard but I do enjoy a challenge and I like learning more about them so hopefully as time goes on we'll find ways to connect with each other in other ways okay so now on to questions of identity which is so complicated but a lot of you had questions so the first one is did your adoptive parents ever talk about race and did you learn about Chinese culture growing up no we never talked about race in my household um basically because most people were from the same race and if they weren't most people were adopted like me so they were like I don't know whitewashed you could say so I didn't really realize how important race would be in my life until I got out of my community and people started really seeing me as Asian and and then I was like oh there's like this whole conversation and there's so much history and America and race guys it's so complicated so but I think it's a really important conversation to have and then next okay yeah did I learn Chinese culture not really so when I was growing up we used to go to these events in this summer put on by the adoption agency so it was like a shallow way of talking about culture but it was still a way to learn a little bit about Chinese culture but I don't really remember those and we didn't do them for a long time so I would say I didn't know anything about Chinese culture like just the same as any like white or black kid probably knows in America um okay the next question is how have you struggled with your identity in any capacity being adopted and raised and in transracial household so there are a lot of things growing up that I just didn't notice there were microaggressions that looking back I see were like actually really hurtful but at the time like I'd even know that people were being mean or that those things are not okay to say like I remember a lot of my friends grow enough to be like oh you know you don't even look that Chinese you don't even look that Asian and they would tell me that like it was a compliment which is so hurtful on so many levels because a it's it's saying that like oh you know looking white you know that's the goal and that's what everyone should strive to be and also just rejecting the part of me that is Asian I didn't know how to talk about race so but now looking back it was interesting childhood that's for sure and then the next question is do you feel culturally Asian or white where do you feel more at home USA or Asia I feel more culturally asian-american but if you had asked me like five years ago I would have said probably white but I've come to realize what it means to be Asian American and people see me as Asian American when I go to Europe people don't see me as like a white American they definitely see me as a American so if I've had to adopt that label onto myself and it's helped me explore different parts of my identity and to be able to relate to other kinds of people so yes and I definitely feel more at home in the USA even Asia okay so now I'm just going to go to the last question which is going to be an advice question and what would you want to share with other adapt days on acceptance so accepting yourself as an adoptee is so complicated [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you guys for watching and I will see you later bye

Channel: Kati Pohler

Views: 64,058

Rating: 4.96668 out of 5

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Id: 00ufkzO58kw

Length: 9min 31sec (571 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020