"Where are you from?"

Here's something I had written up in July when I was sans easy internet access. It's not much of an entry for something that purports to be a photoblog, but I think it sets the mood for the rest of the entries that I will (soon) post.

"Hey. What's your name?"
"Xiao Xiao. And you?"
"My name is ___. Where are you from?"

In America, my next line would usually be "New Orleans". When prodded further with "where is your family from", I would always respond "China".

In China, things are different. The concept of where a Chinese person is from is threefold. First, there's the place where a person was born. Second, there's the place where a person grew up. But most importantly, is the place where a person's ancestors were from generations and generations back.

For most people, these three locations are one and the same. For some people, two out the three may differ from the other two. For example, a person's family might have relocated to another part of the country, where that person was then born and brought up. In situations like this, that person may identify with either locations.

For me, however, all three locations are different. I was born in Beijing but spend the first year of my life in Nanjing. My ancestors were from Shandong province. That's just the simplified version.

Actually, my ancestors weren't all from Shandong. Three of my grandparents originated from Shandong, but my mother's father is from a village in Zhejiang province, close to Ningbo. Apparently, this is actually quite unusual in China. For all of China's long history, the North and the South have had massive cultural differences. People either identified themselves as from the north or from the south. Very few people are part one, part other.

Where I spend my childhood isn't so straightforward either. As everyone who reads this blog knows, I moved from China to the United States in the middle of elementary school, thus spending roughly half of my youth in China and half in America.

To add to the mix, when I go back to China these days, the city where I stay is not Beijing, not Nanjing, but Shanghai, for that's where my closest relatives in China now live. Out of all the cities in China, I probably know Shanghai the best.

When people ask me where I am from in China, I usually tell them that I was born in Beijing. Sometimes, I tell them that I grew up in Nanjing. If they seem particularly nice, I tell them the whole story, sometimes omitting the detail about America. Other times (usually at retailers where the salespeople can figure out that I am not local), I avoid the trouble and simply walk away.