Being multicultural is beautiful, enriching and at the same time confusing and sometimes heavy. So many times in my life I thought about why things had to be so complicated for me.
Why couldn’t I just be one?
Before you read on and think that this is going to be a sad story, I hope that you already have a hunch that this post is actually very much in support of multiculturalism!
I was born in Budapest, Hungary not long after the country transitioned from communism to a democratic system. This change made it easier for foreigners to enter and settle in Hungary. So my ethnically Chinese parents decided to start their family here. Hence, I was born a Third Culture Kid (TKC) who socialized in the Hungarian school system but was raised in a Chinese home. Or more or less. To complicate matters, my dad was actually born in Belgium so he wasn’t completely of a purely Chinese profile either.
Most of my childhood cultural inputs came from Hungary where I was spending the majority of my time and from Belgium where I would visit cousins and eventually learn to be fluent in French. Occasionally, I would visit relatives in China as well. Those were the times that gave me a boost for what Chinese meant in addition to the food I was used to eating at home.
At this point, I already knew that I wasn’t feeling completely Hungarian because I just had to look in the mirror and that told me that I am not a white kid like everyone else in my class. But to make matters worse, I could not feel Chinese either when I went back to my grandparents. Even though my skin tone, hair color and facial features matched with everyone else around me, I frequently felt like an alien. I had people look at me and even relatives saying that I was a “banana” person. Yellow on the outside but white on the inside.
My next big cultural stimulus came when I arrived in the US for my studies. I was an international student so I was lucky to have some special attention from the staff. I participated in the International Students Program and it was customary to have the pictures of all students who were from outside the US to be hung on the wall. We had our first funny challenge immediately upon my arrival when they took my picture. They looked at me with a slightly raised eyebrow and a curious gaze when they had to write under an Asian face: “From Hungary” but with a Belgian flag since that was my citizenship.
In Minnesota people are very nice and careful so nobody ever asked me directly “Where are you from?” Instead, they asked “Where is home for you?” Well, that was almost even harder for me to answer. I would usually respond that my family is my home and they are currently in Hungary.
Over my university years, I developed my cultural identity and came to cherish my background and see it as an advantage instead of a limitation or burden. People would often say after hearing about my upbringing that their life was so boring compared to mine, they were born and raised in the same place and have lived their whole life in the same house. No offense, I did feel that my reality was quite far from that.
After completing my studies, I got a gift in the form of a job in New York. Now, if I had to designate the epitome of multiculturalism, what other place could I name than New York? From the very moment I moved there, I felt a strange feeling of being ‘home’. It was the first time I felt that way.
I heard five different languages on the subway ride home. I could taste foods that I have never ever seen in my life and trust me, I have seen quite a lot on the Asian continent. And most of all, I finally met people who were like me. Not raised in the country of their parents, feeling normal when using four languages in one sentence and embracing their mixness.
Once someone asked me if I felt American after having spent so many years in the USA. I stopped for a second. I said ‘No, but I do feel like a New Yorker.’ That’s when it clicked for me that it was so easy to feel like a New Yorker. You could be from anywhere in the world and you could love the weirdest things and you would still be accepted and cherished by the city.
Today I get to work in an extremely multicultural environment and I thrive in this. There are many Italians, North Americans, Brazilians, Hungarians and Chinese in my immediate networks.
It is my upbringing and experiences that prepared me to not get lost in today’s globalized world, in fact, to be able to succeed.
I am able to switch between having to be a one in the many like in China when everyone wears the same bag style; or to be the one in the many when I deliver training to a group of senior managers who are White men, double my age.
I have also learned to be direct and approachable with strangers I meet while waiting in a queue and somehow manage to become lifelong friends with them. Shoutout to my friends in London! At the same time, I can be very careful and considerate of hierarchical dynamics and know to just do whatever a senior manager asks of you even at late hours in the evening.
At Wyde, we can bring our full self to the table. It’s about identifying the part in yourself that you can connect to people with and often I find different parts of me emerging in this process because the details are appreciated.
What can you do to embrace your multiculturalism? What can you do to expand your multiculturalism? Check us out, we have a few ideas for you!