What Are My Roots?

I envy people who are effortlessly patriotic. Some carry it proudly like a birthmark – something they’ve never had to search for or explain.

Whenever I watch football with my mother, the question always comes as if she was watching the game just to ask this. “If China played Australia, who would you support?” (Honestly it’s pointless to support the Chinese team anyways because they suck) I say “neither”, too quickly.

I’m not telling the truth though. But I don’t want to lie. When the two answers feel too close, almost the same, “neither” is a word for people who have learned to step carefully between things, avoiding landmines.

The boy in the oversized sunhat, wearing a blue polo shirt tucked too neatly into his dark shorts, would not like this evasive and “play it safe” answer. Nor would the boy singing the anthem loud and proud at the school assembly. And definitely not the boy looking forward receive a dollar or two from his mom everyday at the prospect of buying froyos or popsicles at the school tuck shop. He would’ve said “Australia” without a doubt.

My mom was afraid though, or uncomfortable, at the prospect of me being a complete, stereotypical ABC (In this case Australian-Born Chinese). She didn’t want me to forget my Chinese “roots”, and so we moved to Beijing when I was 9 years old.

We’d visited almost every summer, but Beijing had always existed at a distance – a place of relatives, not roots. My uncle, my aunt, my grandparents: they were familiar, warm, but not decisive. What changed wasn’t geography, though.

Over time, the lines began to blur. I made connections, found myself shaped by Beijing’s seasons. “Australian” no longer seemed to hold the whole story. Something else began to take its place – not quite a label, more like a compromise, a bridge: Australian-Chinese. A hyphen trying to hold together two versions of belonging.

Now, after 8 years of life in Beijing, the spoken answer has become “neither”. Deep down, I still feel the tug of Australia – the warm imprint of a childhood so happy. But I don’t say that. To say “Australia” would feel like betrayal – not of a nation, but of people. Of time. Of the version of me who stayed.

What’s strange and funny though is that identifying with one place feels like betraying another – and yet there’s also the fear of being betrayed.

Last December I went back to Sydney. The first time in so long because of the pandemic. I was flying from Kansai International Airport, in Osaka, Japan. The sky was sharply blue. The type of blue you would see on the blue domes from the buildings in Santorini, Greece. Perhaps my excitement applied more saturation to the color of the sky. Near boarding, I was excited to see many Australians (By my definition of Australians I meant white Australian people). It felt familiar and reminded me of a distance time.

We were flying an Australian airline. Immigration forms were sent out before landing by this Australian flight attendant. The cabin was lit dimly with a warm light, evoking somnolence. I started to enter my information. Halfway I realized I was filling the Japanese one. She had assumed that I was Japanese.

I guess for someone white Australian, in Australia, Asians were ASIANS that were Australian. And for this flight, anyone Asian looking would probably be from Osaka. She just threw dice, and it landed on a very specific number, you could say lucky or unlucky, in my case being an Australian-Chinese. Obviously, it was not racially oriented, and I found it to be quite humorous, honestly, yet saddening, as served as a real-life scenario for the fear of being betrayed by the people that I identify with.

This brings me to the April two years ago. Messi came to Beijing with the Argentinian team to play the Australian team for a friendly. I went to that game. Walking into the stadium, you would see an ocean of blue and white, the chanting deafening. Hardly anybody supported Australia. Even I was wearing an Argentinian jersey with Messi 10 printed on my back (lol of course I would choose Messi over my country). But I was wondering, if I had put on an Australian jersey, the Chinese fans would probably see it as pretty weird. Australia has no exceptional football talents or stars. They probably wouldn’t think that I was Australian and that was the reason why I’m wearing an Australian jersey. And then they see a white guy wearing a yellow and green Australian jersey, and they’d assume that he’s Australian. It seems that I was searching for recognition from others that I belonged. It didn’t matter, really. But I cared, for some reason.

Apologies, I have digressed from my trip story. Nevertheless, I landed with ecstasy despite that experience on the flight. Because my life in Sydney seemed so distant, when I try to recall my memories, they seem to be playing straight out of a black and white film. The monochromatic reels of memory suddenly turned to color. I visited my old school, my kindergarten, my house with the blue bedroom walls and the lizard beneath the deck in my backyard we never bothered to deal with. I went back to the restaurants I had once loved. Many being Asian foods. Some tasted entirely different. Maybe some things are best left in memory – unopened, unspoiled. Like a carton of milk that you’re afraid to smell because you fear it has gone bad.

This experience reaffirmed my belief for my Australian roots, my childhood is based in Australia, and it always will be, no matter where in the world I am. What’s interesting though, is that my home changes. The distinction between root and home is something that I would like to emphasize, yet it also perplexes me.

When I was still living in Australia, I travelled to Beijing every summer. Homesick was a foreign feeling to me then. I felt safe and comfortable around all my family and friends. But ask me where my home is, I’d say Fairsky Street, South Coogee, Sydney, my bedroom with blue-painted walls and a white bed, my backyard with a huge lizard living under the wooden floor that we’ve never bothered to deal with, the grass field where a big bird hit my forehead, centimeters away from my left eye, nearly making me blind. Homesick is no longer something foreign to me as I grew older, became more independent.

However, what’s weird is that now, on school trips or travelling alone, the home that I feel sick for is the home in Beijing. My bedroom with white walls and a blue bed – an inversion of what came before. The yellow lamp casting its warmth at night like a second sun.

Home, I’ve come to understand, isn’t made of concrete or paint. It’s not tangible. It doesn’t live in architecture. It’s gravitational – something you don’t choose so much as feel pulling at you. It’s not rational. It’s not permanent.

My roots are in Australia. But my home is here in Beijing.

The question “Where are you from?” still chokes me sometimes. Not because I don’t know, but because the answer is layered, like sediment, or memory. Not quite one, not quite the other.