No, I’m not referring to the ripen long-curved thick yellow-skinned tropical fruit. Neither am I associating this word with something lewd, in case you are of crude mind. My reference is to the people – again no, I don’t have Bananas In PJs or jammies in mind – who are very much Chinese and whose ancestors and roots can be traced back to ancient China but who are illiterate as far as reading and writing Chinese characters is concerned, like yours truly here. In short, we are what most fluent-speaking Chinese would refer to as “yellow on the outside and white on the inside”, hence the term “banana”. Frankly, I find nothing derogatory in that term, rather a compliment.
I attended national schools with only English and Bahasa Malaysia as mediums of teaching. Mandarin was left to be taught on Saturday mornings as extra classes for students. Though I attended Mandarin classes, I never did make the cut. I wrote Chinese characters like I did drawing, couldn’t speak a word of Mandarin and was clueless at what the teacher in front was yakking about. Blah blah blah, yak yak yak, yada yada yada. After just a few classes, I decided I had had enough.
At home, Mom and Dad had always emphasised the importance of speaking grammatically correct English and Chinese languages always came secondary, if any. Mom would often sing to sis and me nursery rhymes from Mother Goose and read to us fairy tales when we were little. As we grew a little older, Enid Blyton became our favourite which Mom and Dad gladly bought. Mom and Dad were westernised Chinese, with Mom more westernised than Dad. That was how my “banana” seeds were being sowed and nurtured.
Growing up, sis and I frequented cartoons like Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs, He-Man and She-Ra, Spiderman and Friends, Jem and the Holograms, tv series/comedies like Mind Your Language, Super Gran, The Misfits, Gilligan's Island, Sesame Street, Murder She Wrote, prime time soap operas like Knots Landing, Santa Barbara, Dallas and English pop and oldies music, so much so that I’ve now grown up to only understand simple yet limited Cantonese words. That, too, happens to be the only Chinese dialect that I know. Throw in some Chinese proverbs, idioms and bombastic words and voila! You’ve made me speechless!
I have to admit that I have been constantly mocked and criticised by some typical Chinese people for my Chinese-language impediment. Yes, I have been verbally attacked for being inarticulate in the language. Yes, I have difficulties blending in with some of my Chinese speaking counterparts, but that doesn't make me less of a Chinese than the rest. I may not make it to the "Ah Lian" or the "Cina Ah-Soh" category, but I am proud of who my ancestors were and where they came from.
On the other hand, I am also thankful - in fact I consider myself fortunate - that my Mom and Dad saw the importance of English at an early age and strived to provide me with the best opportunity and resource to learning English.
As for the critics of us "banana people", well, let's hope that you have the entire knowledge of Chinese history, culture and belief at your finger tips. Otherwise, you'd just be like one of us...... Neither here nor there, neither this nor that! Period.
