What is the most confusing question you can ask my 5-year-old? “What’s your favorite cartoon?” “How old are you?” “Do you like school?” No, the most confusing question is “Where are you from?”
“Japan!” he shouts. Guys, we’re not from Japan. I don’t even think he’s been to Japan.
Our family is a cultural cocktail. I’m Chinese-Indonesian, my husband is Malaysian-Chinese, but our kids are technically Australian. As regional expats, we blend in visually in Singapore; our differences aren’t as obvious as, say, a British expat family. We look like everyone else.
Learning about his "home country" of Australia
Our kids were born here, raised here, and go to school here. They even have a hybrid Peppa Pig meets Singaporean accent. "Get me some of that WOOTAH(water)! Where's the KAPAK (carpark)?"
It’s a strange paradox – blending in visually creates an assumption of Chinese-ness that’s sometimes there and sometimes not. For example, our kids have a confusing mix of Western and Chinese names based on their combined cultures. What does that even mean?
| Malaysian-Chinese Names | Family Name + Chinese Name + English Name |
| Indo-Chinese Names | Given Name + Middle Name + Family Name (Often Indonesian-sounding or Westernized due to assimilation policies in the 1960s) |
| Our Son |
Nathan Hugh Yi Shen Wong |
“Hugh?” my husband always asks, “What is the point of that? It’s just very long now.” I had good intentions, I really did, to combine the Malaysian and Indonesian naming conventions. But now with a long mish-mash of Anglophile Chineseness. Filling out immigration forms is going to be fun.
This confusion was further amplified last week.
Panic set in when my son's teacher asked us to bring items from our home country for show and tell. My Indonesian heritage at home consisted of…piles of batik kids' clothes. No Indomie, no krupuk. "HELP!" I texted a friend, begging for Indonesian toy suggestions. "I have Bakso Mie and Ondel-Ondel," she replied. "Great," I thought, "What's Ondel-Ondel?"
"Ondel-ondel are Jakarta people,” my son chanted after I showed him Youtube videos of our Indonesian…cultural…stuff. "No, no," I corrected, half-guessing, "they're the puppets that represent Jakarta." He then pointed to the food. "These are noodles and dumplings!" "It's mie and bakso," I sighed. Clearly, we had some cultural catching up to do.
"Just do your best," I told him, resigned. Four weeks a year in Indonesia, spent at relatives’ houses doing playdates, doesn't exactly qualify as deep cultural immersion. Other than “I need to go to pee” and “Milk please” in Bahasa, kids, whatever culture, like the same things. Sweets, playtime and TV.
But perhaps that's the point. "Where are you from?" for these kids is less a geography lesson and more a playground conversation starter. It's the "Do you like Peppa Pig like I do?" of identity. We can’t just download our entire culture into our kids – it's not like installing an app. With each generation, things get a little…fuzzier. We hold on to the important bits – the "Selamat Pagi (Good Morning)," the batik for special occasions – but the rest? Well, it blends. It mixes. It becomes something new. And honestly, that’s kind of a hot mess. But a good one.