Reflection on Chinese Canadian Experiences based on Woo’s Banana Boys
The Chinese Canadian experiences are always varied and written from different perspectives based on a myriad of existing factors. These experiences differed from the people of Chinese ancestry in two ways. For instance, those experiences of the early Chinese immigrants to Canada significantly differed from those experiences of the Chinese Born Canadians (CBCs). However, one underlying and universal experience shared by these individuals from the Chinese ancestry is the feeling of not belonging and the desire to integrate into the western culture that typifies Canada. The guilt, as Woo puts it, emanates from the fact that these individuals “could not declare themselves pure Canadians nor completely associate themselves with the Chinese ancestry” (12). Such a dilemma exacerbated the already existing hollowness emanating from a lack of identity. Therefore, Woo’s experience is the feeling of hollowness and not belonging trickles down from the elder Rick in China to Mike and shared by the Banana Boys in the Canadian context as they cannot directly relate with neither the Canadian nor the Chinese people entirely.
Rick first experiences the feeling of hollowness and not belonging at his early stages in life as a Chinese residing in China. Even though Rick’s father was a warrior, brave, and met the threshold of what an ideal man in the Chinese society entails, Rick chose a divergent path that not only “equated him to being weak but also as a non-conformist” (37). Rick’s choice of being a poet is criticized as an epitome of weakness and disgrace. Therefore, from a personal perspective, such qualities might have contributed to the experiences of vulnerability that will continually haunt Rick and even reflect on Mike in the future as he chooses to be a writer. These choices created hollowness among these individuals and equally catalyzed by the societal perception towards these choices, as evident when Rick’s ex-girlfriend tells him to get brave and look for a decent job apart from writing. Such utterances do not help but continually worsen the unfit tag of the individuals in the excerpt.
Again, the experiences of hollowness gave the Banana Boys their identities and aspect that made them distinguishable in Canada. Woo highlights that despite the efforts of the group to associate with western cultures, such as listening to western music, the group still associated themselves with juk-sing (bamboo). Outwardly, they were Chinese by their looks, but inwardly, they were white Canadians and hollowed just like the bamboo. The hollowness is made worse by the existing distinctive factors such as “eating steak and burgers the same day and over-analysis of music to determine the racial elements in the lyrics” (Woo, 15). Thus from a personal opinion, such practices show that despite being CBCs, the Chinese in them still lurks, an aspect that rendered them divided between being Chinese or Canadian.