Penang

Being in Penang, I feel that I am finally getting to learn about Chinese history/family traditions, from my actual family. It is wonderful to be here without my father, not because I don’t miss him terribly, but because now I am a cousin or a niece, not just Siew Mun’s daughter.
Also, with Kelly here, I am finally not the whitest, most foreign person at our family gatherings. It’s just beautiful.

I’m finally getting to know the island, after seeing the same clock tower, temples, and historical streets for the third time (sometimes fourth time, as we were taken multiple times this journey by different family members.) I can find King Street, where my father grew up, for myself in little India. I joked that by my fifth trip, I will tour my cousins around.

My week in Penang was filled with exciting, if exhausting, days filled with mostly food. Kelly and I were fed big family meals by day and evening, and then were taken out by one cousin or another at night.
Highlights: Seeing the Temple of 1000 Buddhas brilliantly lit up for Chinese New Year, watching the sunset at the beach, and having a German beer at a bar that felt more like NY than I have since August.

The strangest thing is that in Malaysia, a place that once felt every bit the opposite of the world, now, compared to China, has the comfortable feel of going home. English is everywhere, and the food is now familiar to me. I’m seeking for myself the char kuay teow, roti chanai, prawn and curry mee (noodles) that I’ve been missing these past years.

I’m also realizing how silly to be in China to learn about my family. Barely any of my family has been to China, and their slight interest to go is not one of root discovery. My whole life I’ve been explaining, “No, I’m not Malaysian. My father was born there, but we’re Chinese.” In ways, that is true. My family is not Malay, like the Muslim country. But being part of Malaysia’s large Chinese population is not the same as being raised China, especially in the past 50 years. Coming here from China, I realize that my father’s history has as much to do with heat and sweat and being a minority as it does with Chinese traditions and culture. I’m sure that I wouldn’t have been able to put my finger on this had I not been in China, and I’m grateful for what I have left to learn in my time in Beijing.