Embracing Taiwanese-American Identity Abroad | Real You Mandarin Podcast EP23

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This is my first AAPI Heritage Month not living in the US, and it's brought up a lot for me. So this episode is a solo one, just me, thinking out loud (in Mandarin) about what it actually means to be Taiwanese-American when you're no longer living in America. If you're an American-Born Chinese (ABC), American-Born Taiwanese (ABT), or any kind of overseas-born heritage speaker who has ever wondered which bucket you actually fit into, I think this one will resonate.

A Lifetime of "Where Are You Really From?"

For most of my life in the US, I had a complicated relationship with the "Taiwanese-American" label. I'd bristle at the question "where are you really from?" and answer "California," but somewhere underneath it I didn't fully believe I belonged to either side. Not American enough. Not Taiwanese enough. I actually hosted a 5-year English-language podcast called But Where Are You Really From? trying to unpack exactly that feeling.

Moving to Japan didn't resolve any of it. But it did change something else: I stopped having to argue with myself about it. In Japan, "I'm American, my parents are Taiwanese" is the cleanest, most legible answer to give. And for the first time, I say "I'm American" without hesitating.

Becoming a 第一代移民 for the First Time

Living abroad means I'm now technically a 第一代移民 / dì yī dài yí mín / first-generation immigrant myself. Which is wild, because for my entire life in the US I was the child of immigrants, never the immigrant myself. Watching myself fumble through trying to express my opinion more deeply with friends or fudge my way through a doctor's appointment in a country whose language I don't fully speak has given me a completely different appreciation for what my parents did when they moved to the US 30+ years ago.

Mandarin As Comfort, Not Performance

The other big shift has been my relationship to Mandarin itself. In the US, with so many fluent Mandarin speakers around me in Southern California, I almost never reached for Mandarin to connect with strangers. I was too aware of all the ways my Mandarin wasn't "good enough." In Japan, my Mandarin is stronger than my Japanese, so it's quickly become the language I reach for whenever I sense someone might speak it. It went from a source of low-grade anxiety to a source of unexpected warmth and 共鳴 / 共鸣 / gòng míng / resonance.

I share a few specific moments in the episode where this played out, including one with a Taiwanese chef at a pop-up event in Kyoto that I still think about all the time.

Identity Is Not Static

What I keep coming back to is that 身份認同 / 身份认同 / shēn fèn rèn tóng / identity isn't a fixed thing you arrive at once and then carry around. It moves with you. The same person can feel like an outsider in their home country and find a strange new sense of belonging halfway across the world. 反思 / 反思 / fǎn sī / reflecting on it out loud, in Mandarin, has been part of how I'm starting to make sense of it.

Key Vocab From This Episode

身份認同 / 身份认同 | shēn fèn rèn tóng (identity)

反思 | fǎn sī (to reflect / introspect)

第一代移民 | dì yī dài yí mín (first-generation immigrant)

共鳴 / 共鸣 | gòng míng (resonance / to deeply relate)

Wherever You Are in Your Identity Journey

If any of this hit somewhere familiar... whether you've moved abroad, are thinking about it, or are simply trying to feel a little more at home in your own heritage from wherever you currently live... Real You Mandarin: Self-Expression was built for exactly these kinds of conversations. The course is less about reaching native fluency and more about giving you the language to express the real you in Mandarin, starting from wherever you actually are right now.

Not sure if it's for you yet? Try a free lesson first and see what it feels like to learn Mandarin through content you actually want to talk about in real life.

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