Musings of a Historian

I realised, when I was writing my memo yesterday, that I get quite frustrated on certain topics or subjects. Next Monday, we will be discussing Chinese diasporas as an angle of study on Global China. This is a topic that has always been very close to my heart, both personally and academically. Living abroad as a Singaporean Chinese in the UK has made me much more aware of the different dimensions of Sinicisation or "Chineseness". I get annoyed to be identified as Chinese, as in the PRC, yet I am Chinese, so why am I annoyed? 

It's only recently where I realised why I get annoyed about it. There is firstly the sense of inadequacy of not feeling Chinese enough. I can't read Mandarin characters particularly well, nor can I speak it formally, or at an academic/ professional level. Living in Singapore, there is no strong attachment to "Chinese" food either - home to me is laksa, prata, nasi lemak and chicken rice.

My memo for the week came out almost like a long-standing rant that I always had about the study of Chinese diaspora - I love it, but there are some aspects about it that irk me so much at the same time. It is almost like a sense of addiction where there is much love and hate at the same time. Perhaps, I keep going back to reading and writing about this subject to tackle some uneasy issues within myself, regarding my own identity. 

I spent the past few days sick while attending a course on how to teach teens mindfulness and yoga. Yoga, for me, has always been an extremely private practice that I do not share with people. I don't take photos of myself doing yoga, neither do I usually invite people to practice with me. About the latter, after a while I grew to realise it was more of my deep-seated insecurities about my body and the "teacher" in me who always wants to share something that I learnt battled with that.

Anyway, back about teens... I know I will be working with teens as a history teacher, and I am trying to consolidate what I have learnt the past few days (their psychology, biology/ hormones that is going on inside them). On one hand there is always a fear of losing the rigour of history, the argument and perhaps never-wanting-to-lose competitive streak that the subject hones in us. And I am trying to see where can the balance be. Would a rigorous curriculum and teaching ethic for the subject, while being a compassionate teacher (as a human being) help balance the nature of history as a subject?

Also, why does history have to be so tough upon its students? A professor once told me that I was ready to graduate because I was starting to become very sceptical about things. Being sceptical is good and can be transferable to other skill sets - planning of events and its contingency plans, being prepared for the worst, more critical eye when we meet people and the things that people may say about themselves... It all sounds very negative sometimes, doesn't it? Like a constantly doubtful and frowning individual that people are perhaps afraid to be judged by.

I have chosen the title of my thesis to be, 'Identifying Peranakan identity at the crossroads of Empire, the Malay World and the Sinophone world.'

D.P.S. Goh, 'Unofficial contentions: the postcoloniality of Straits Chinese political discourse in the Straits Settlements Legislative Council,' Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 41:3 (2010), 494.