So full of thoughts after our second day of shooting. We spent the morning with Ryan and Gina – from Xiamen and Xian, respectively – and it really makes me think about the possibility of a united Chinese voice. I had kind of given up on this, assuming that we Chinese are all too different to be represented by a single community. But talking to these two gives me hope – Ryan even believes it is imperative that we present ourselves in politics, in media, etc. Our roundtable discussion at Mon Nan echoed the same sort of reflections, and then some. It was great to see the old gang again (Cedric, Rob), and some new faces too (Ros, Xiao), and despite all of different varieties of Chinese-ness (from being half-Singaporean to being Chinese-Filipino), we seemed to gravitate towards the same kinds of issues – discrimination, identity, inclusion. And yet, as Ainsley so eloquently put at the end, we seem to always just skim the surface of each issue every time we get together. Can’t we move beyond just talking about the same topics over and over again? What’s the next step?
