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Chang Zi Qian

A friend who is three years into her doctoral programme in the San Francisco Bay Area texted me the other day to say she had finally figured out what was different about living in the US.
“I don’t need to perform any more. I am allowed to just … exist.”
Naturally, I asked for elaboration.
She said that back home in China, every decision she made came with an interview she did not sign up for. Every Chinese New Year, some relative would probe into her personal life with forensic precision. In America, on the other hand, nobody’s uncle asks anything.
I laughed, because I had heard versions of this from different people since I came to Berkeley. And every time, my instinct would be to blame Confucius, a man who has been dead for 2,500 years and whose core professional achievement has been making an entire civilisation feel obligated and stressed. Even now, he is still shaping the Chinese group psyche.
The funny thing is, as I am typing this, the idea of criticising Confucius actually makes me pause with guilt. Writing an article questioning his role in shaping our civilisational psyche feels like heresy, and my internal brakes engaged automatically. How dare I do something so outrageous!

But here’s the thing. If judged by the standards of his own time, the Chinese philosopher wasn’t up to the mark. He spent years touring different states and pitching his vision of benevolent governance to different dukes – much like a start-up founder, but with little success. Historical accounts describe how, at one particularly low point, he was spotted standing alone at a city gate and looking like a dejected “dog from a family in mourning”, a description he himself famously agreed with.
It took a few centuries before he could be effectively rebranded as an “exemplary teacher for tens of thousands of generations”. It was not Confucius who built the cult of Confucius. Instead, it was a Han dynasty official named Dong Zhongshu, who made Confucianism the state ideology and advocated a hierarchical society. In this system, roles such as ruler or subject, father or son, teacher or student are meticulously prescribed, so everyone just needs to perform according to the script handed to them and make sure the person above them is OK with their performance.
It is a genuinely elegant piece of social engineering. And here’s the part nobody says out loud: everyone is perpetually, quietly trying to be the director, and they secretly hope there is no one above them. Every Chinese person wants to be the one writing the script, as opposed to just reading from it.
This is most evident at home, where parents lecture their children incessantly, usually along a one-way street. Then there is lecturing as a competitive sport, with uncles correcting nephews, seniors admonishing juniors and strangers correcting one another. The grand arena of mutual lecturing, of course, is the online forum.
Once you enter, you will find quite a few people who think they know how to perform your role better than you. The moment you step out of line, all these self-appointed directors will rush in to magnify your misstep and readily have something negative to say.
Here’s the part nobody says out loud: everyone is perpetually, quietly trying to be the director ... Every Chinese person wants to be the one writing the script, as opposed to just reading from it

Sadly, although nearly every Chinese person wants to be their own director, almost nobody actually gets to be one. The genius of the system is how every performer is convinced that if they perform well enough, want it enough and make enough sacrifices, people around them will leave them alone and they will eventually get to wield the pen and write the script for others.
Most of them never do.
Therefore, when my friends tell me they can just “exist” or “be” themselves in the United States, what they are really saying is: they now have the option to stop performing. Almost nobody I know moved here for the dirty streets, wilful public transport system and expensive Asian food.
They are here to live the unwatched life. Here, there is no audience running a silent audit of how you behave, no perpetual appraisal of your earning power, your waistline, your marital status or your choice of partners, and no disapproval of you daring to sit down on public transport without earning it first.
It’s a small freedom, but dignifying. It just happens to be the kind of thing a very orderly society hasn’t got around to offering in thousands of years.
Confucius would probably disapprove of the case I am making, while Dong Zhongshu might be disappointed. Both might find it hard to understand why people would want to stop performing by choosing America. Quite likely, they would expect me to shut up and fall in line, wherever the line has been drawn for me.


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Chinese culture

The unspoken reason my Chinese friends choose America

A noodle restaurant along a largely deserted pavement in Arcadia, California. Outside the Confucian system, there is no perpetual appraisal of your earning power, your waistline or your marital status. Photo: Getty Images via AFP

A sculpture of Confucius watches over Nishan Sacred Land, a cultural site in Qufu, Shandong province. Qufu is the birthplace of the Chinese philosopher, whose ideas loom large across Chinese society. Photo: Xinhua

A Chinese-American bride says yes to a lucky red dress

The Hong Kong Wedding Fair at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in 2025. Photo: Dickson Lee

Newlyweds pose for a photo with their marriage certificates and a red wedding decoration at the registry office on May 20, a date that sounds like “I love you” in Chinese, in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Although red is a lucky colour in Chinese culture, contemporary Chinese brides increasingly prefer to wear white. Photo: China News Service via Getty Images

Amy Wu performs the tea ceremony with her father, Dr Joseph Wu, at her wedding. Photo: Courtesy of Amy Wu

A Singaporean in Guangzhou wonders: why do I feel so at home here?

The city skyline rises over a canal in an urban village in Guangzhou, in southern China’s Guangdong province, on April 16. Photo: AFP

Maxwell Food Centre in Singapore in 2017. With the success of the decades-long Speak Mandarin Campaign, Singaporeans rarely order hawker food in southern Chinese dialects like Teochew nowadays. Photo: Shutterstock

Can Chinese sleeper hit Dear You conquer the US box office next?

A still from Dear You, the hit Chinese film shot in southern Teochew dialect. Photo: Handout




Wang Yantong (left) and Chen Qinqin in a still from Dear You. Photo: Handout

Wu Shaoqing in a still from Dear You. Photo: handout

Opinion

China Opinion

World Opinion

Culture

What does it mean to be Chinese? Views from SCMP Opinion

Who’s taking over the unseen work of organising Chinese New Year?

Chinese New Year decorations in a shop in Singapore’s Chinatown in January 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE

A family poses for a photograph in front of a floral display ahead of Chinese New Year at Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay in January 2021. Photo: Reuters

Families gather for early reunion dinners in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, on February 12. Across the diaspora, Chinese New Year gatherings require more coordination than is talked about. Photo: Sam Tsang

Rice has a place in Chinese hearts, whether we eat it or not

A farmer carries harvested rice in Daoxiang village, Heilongjiang province, in October 2024. In China, rice occupies a special place in the national imagination, somewhere between food and faith. Photo: Xinhua

A child eats out of a rice bowl in a day care centre in Jiangsu province in the 1990s. Chinese children who leave specks of rice uneaten are often warned they will marry someone with pockmarks. Photo: LightRocket via Getty Images

People carrying a variety of containers push towards a government station selling cheap rice in China in the mid-20th century. Photo: Bettmann via Getty Images

Don’t you dare come between Chinese women and our virtual boyfriends

A wallpaper featuring Xavier, a male character in Love and Deepspace. The Chinese mobile romance game combines cinematic 3D graphics, combat and an ambitious science fiction story with in-game dating. Photo: Papergames

A still from a trailer for Love and Producer, a Chinese otome game. Otome games are female-oriented and story-driven,  unlike most other games. Photo: YouTube/evolxlovetw

The self-sacrificing Chinese mother I never wanted to become

Anxious parents wave as their children emerge from the National Higher Education Entrance Examination at a high school in Beijing in 1998. In Chinese society in the 1980s and 1990s, the self-sacrificing mother could be seen and heard everywhere. Photo: AP

A mother introduces her baby to a personal computer in a store in Beijing in 1997. Photo: Reuters

A woman feeds a baby in a pram by a water lily pond in Singapore in 2018. Photo: Shutterstock

Children are picked up by their guardians after school in Singapore in 2021. Photo: AFP

China, Hawaii and the bridge of memory I helped build between them

A boy offers incense before an ancestral grave on Diamond Hill in Hong Kong on Ching Ming Festival on April 5, 2023. The festival is a time of remembrance across the Chinese diaspora. Photo: Elson Li


The Shenzhen-Zhongshan Link in Guangdong province. It is one of the bridges connecting cities in the Pearl River Delta that are on opposite sides of the Pearl River estuary. Photo: Xinhua

Carrying household items and a child, civilians fleeing from Japanese troops walk along train tracks in eastern China in 1944. Photo: Getty Images

Talking when you eat is bad for you, and other Chinese beliefs

A family carries on eating during a flood in Liling, Hunan province. Photo: AFP

A man receives moxibustion at a traditional Chinese medicine institution in Fuzhou, Fujian province. In TCM, burning herbs are applied to acupuncture points or meridians to dispel dampness from the body. Photo: China News Service/VCG via Getty Images

Greens and a fish are prepared for dinner in a home setting in Beijing. Fish bones can be a hazard at the Chinese dinner table, as fish is often eaten whole. Photo: AP

Villagers harvest Ottelia acuminata flowers in Eryuan county, Yunnan province. The aquatic plant is known as an indicator of water quality and has become a popular dish in cities outside Yunnan. Photo: Xinhua

When a Chinese auntie met the right uncle

Mixed-race couples often adapt to each other’s culinary traditions and cultural habits. Photo: Shutterstock

Britain’s Prince William poses for a photo with winners of the Diana Award, Sophie Pender (right) and Vivi Lin (left), during the SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival in Shoreditch, east London on June 3. In class inflection-obsessed Britain, accents – posh, working-class or foreign – are potent signifiers. Photo: Pool/AFP

Ultra-Orthodox Jews from the Sanz Hasidic dynasty prepare a table with fruit to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Tu BiShvat, the “New Year of the Trees”, in Netanya, Israel on February 2. Both the Chinese and Jewish calendars are lunisolar and Chinese New Year often coincides with Jewish celebrations. Photo: AP

Senior citizens play chess in Chinatown in Singapore in 2018. In Asian societies including Singapore, people past a certain age are addressed as “Uncle” and “Auntie”. Photo: AFP

Once, I was proud of the Shenzhen miracle. Now I’m not so sure

A food delivery drone takes off from a site near Shenzhen Bay Park in Shenzhen on January 17. Photo: VCG via Getty Images

People pose in front of the statue of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen’s Lianhua Hill Park in 2010. Photo: AP

People walk past the headquarters of Tencent, the Chinese tech giant that developed the WeChat super app, in Shenzhen’s Nanshan district in 2021. In a matter of decades, the city has evolved from the centre of shanzhai or copycat manufacturing into China’s innovation hub. Photo: AFP

Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai performs during the first Global Chinese Golden Chart awards in Taipei in 2011. Photo: Reuters

How to deal with this ‘very Chinese time’ in Western lives

Foreign tourists in traditional Chinese costumes take photos near the Forbidden City in Beijing on April 16. Photo: AP

Members of South Korean girl group Blackpink arrive at Buckingham Palace in London on November 21, 2023, ahead of a state banquet for the South Korean president. K-pop has broken decisively into Western markets. Photo: AP

A tourist poses with a fan and his mouth open, as if to swallow up a monorail train passing through the iconic Liziba station in a residential building in Chongqing on April 23. The foreign fascination with China extends to the infrastructure of some Chinese cities. Photo: Xinhua

Thousands of worshippers including actress Lana Wong Ha-wai (centre), dressed as the Goddess of Mercy, plant the first joss stick of the Year of the Horse in Wong Tai Sin Temple on February 16. For some in Hong Kong, Chinese practices and environments are being rebranded through Western validation. Photo: Sam Tsang

In China at a time of geopolitical flux, I feel right at home

Chinese traffic police officers walk by a US flag on an embassy car outside a hotel in Shanghai on July 30, 2019, as officials from both sides met for talks aimed at ending a tariff war. Photo: AP

A well-dressed crowd throngs the Tsim Sha Tsui railway station to travel to the mainland for family celebrations of Lunar New Year in February 1970. There was a time when Hong Kong felt like the height of modernity. Photo: SCMP

Investors play cards in front of screens showing stock market movements at a securities brokerage house in Beijing on June 24, 2016, after reports emerged that Britain had voted to leave the European Union. Photo: EPA

A woman prepares to leave her home as a worker dismantles lockdown barriers in Shanghai on May 31, 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE

Growing up Hakka, around a language that few dared to speak publicly

Lai Chi Wo, a Hakka walled village, in the northeastern New Territories of Hong Kong in 2019. The settlement has a history of more than 300 years. Photo: Roy Issa

A parade known as the “walk of ancient events” is held by Hakkas in Luofang township, Liancheng county, Fujian province, in February 2024. Children dressed as historical figures are transported in sedans by teams racing on land and through water to commemorate their ancestors’ migration from China’s central plains. Photo: Xinhua

Hakka women wearing traditional fringed hats work in the fields in Lo Wai, a village in Tsuen Wan, Hong Kong, in 1990. Over generations, stereotypes of Hakkas as having rural roots might have contributed to a reluctance to speak Hakka in wider society. Photo: SCMP

The Tianluokeng cluster of tulou, or earthen buildings, in Nanjing county, Fujian province, seen on April 9. Hakka settlers built the iconic buildings in the hilly terrain of Fujian to protect themselves against bandits. Photo: Xinhua

Chinese overseas need not keep to ourselves. I certainly don’t

People take selfies in front of the archway of Chinatown in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2025. Photo: Xinhua

A fortune-teller gives a reading in Chinatown in Lima, Peru in 2008. Photo: AFP

Lewis Woo Yee of Houston accepts a Congressional Gold Medal during a virtual ceremony broadcast from Capitol Hill in Washington on December 9, 2020. Seventy-five years after World War II ended, US Congress honoured thousands of Chinese Americans who served the US in the war. Nearly 20,000 people of Chinese ancestry served in the US military during World War II, including about 40 per cent who were not US citizens due to laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. Photo: House Television via AP

Sculptures depict a scene of learning from China’s past along a tourist street in Beijing on March 1. While intellectual curiosity is prized in China, the same cannot be said for social curiosity. Photo: EPA

In New York, ‘Chinese’ doesn’t begin to capture our many tastes

People go for skewers during a Zibo barbecue festival in Wuhan, Hubei province in 2023. As Chinese food reinvents itself overseas, different food cultures are coming to the surface of the uniform concrete-and-glass facades of Chinese cities. Photo: Getty Images

Workers for a Chinese restaurant enjoy lunch in New York on March 6. Photo: AFP

People eat and drink in the street in Wuhan, Hubei province on April 8, 2020, after the world’s first coronavirus lockdown was lifted. Photo: EPA-EFE

A man buys a steaming hot bun in Hubu Alley, a centuries-old lane famous for breakfast, in Wuhan in 2005. Photo: SCMP

In China, some of us are keeping elderly care in the family – for now

A daughter feeds her mother at a community elderly care centre in Suzhou, Jiangsu province in 2020. As families grow smaller in China, different generations face different decisions on elderly care. Photo: Xinhua 


A man shovels coal into a tray next to a stove he uses to heat his home in the village of Heqiaoxiang outside Baoding, Hebei province in 2017. China’s high incidence of lung cancer has been linked to indoor and outdoor air pollution. Photo: Reuters

Retirees practise tai chi in a high-end retirement community in Changping district in northwest Beijing in 2019. Photo: EPA-EFE

Seniors walk along the beach in Sanya, Hainan province in 2017. The island province is a popular winter destination among retirees fleeing the biting cold of their hometowns. Photo: AFP

The great Chinese New Year divide and how I bridged it

Children hold up calligraphy banners they have just received for Chinese New Year in Singapore on January 29, ahead of the holiday. Photo: Xinhua

People shop for tangerine trees at a Lunar New Year Fair in Victoria Park, Hong Kong, in 2017. Mandarin orange cultivation in the Chiuchow- or Teochew-speaking part of Guangdong can be traced back to the Tang dynasty. Folk customs involving tangerine trees and mandarin oranges have since taken root in communities with sizeable Teochew populations, including Hong Kong and Singapore. Photo: Felix Wong

Lo hei, which literally means “tossing up” in Cantonese, is not so much a dish as an event during Chinese New Year in Singapore and Malaysia. Photo: Shutterstock

I feel for young Hongkongers who say they are ‘from the UK’

People cross London Bridge, with Tower Bridge in the background, in London in 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE

A woman masks up in the London Underground in London in March 2020. Days later, on March 11, the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Photo: EPA-EFE

Teenagers leave a secondary school in Odiham, west of London, in 2020. For young Chinese in the UK, being perceived as British or not fully Chinese can feel like social insurance against stereotyping. Photo: AFP

A Chinese Singaporean’s first-world dilemma: should I change my surname?

Door gods glower at Thian Hock Keng, Singapore’s oldest Hokkien temple, in 2022. Now a national monument, the temple was built and dedicated to Ma Zu, the protector of seafarers, in the 1840s, an era when long journeys could only be made by sea. Photo: Shutterstock

Signboards in traditional Chinese along a street in Singapore in the 1940s. Photo: Getty Images

Kong Xiangkai, a descendant of Confucius, China’s most famous teacher, reads the Analects at an ancestral temple in Quzhou, Zhejiang province in 2006. Photo: AP/Xinhua

The Singapore River in 2019. Where shipping activities once flourished in pre-war Singapore, bumboats now carry tourists. Photo: AFP

Where do lonely hearts in China go now? Late-night live streams

A woman walks in the nearly deserted shopping area of Sanlitun in Beijing in 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE

A retailer shows clothing to online shoppers during a live stream from her shop in Beijing in 2020. On Chinese platforms like Douyin, shopping, entertainment and conversation blur into an endlessly scrollable feed. Photo: AP

Traditional Chinese parenting 101: sending a child on a solo mission

A child rides a bicycle towards the Hong Kong skyline in 2011. Photo: AFP


Pedestrians walk around Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district in 1997, with the red-brick Signal Tower and lush Signal Hill Garden in the background. Photo: SCMP Pictures

A child buys ice cream from a street vendor in Sha Tin district in 1988. Photo: SCMP Pictures

A man walks with a small child in Sydney’s Chinatown district in 2001. Photo: AP

Am I Chinese? In the US, the answer is complicated

A visitor views relics from China’s Bronze Age at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in 2024. Photo: Xinhua

TikTok CEO Chew Shou Zi testifies before the US Senate Judiciary Committee on online child safety in Washington on January 31, 2024. Photo: EPA-EFE

People load their bags onto a train in Shenyang, Liaoning province, in January 2025 as millions make their way to their hometowns across China ahead of Lunar New Year. Photo: AFP

Devotees wade through floodwater at a temple during the eve of the festival of the Nine Emperor Gods in Kuala Lumpur in October 2024. The sprawling Chinese diaspora includes generations of ethnic Chinese in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian nations who observe Taoist festivals. Photo: AP

Why Chinese women like me are done being quiet and ‘appropriate’

Young women go through etiquette training at a vocational school in Beijing in 2007, ahead of the 2008 Olympics. Photo: Reuters

Attendees of a business fair in Chengdu, Sichuan province, exchange ideas on November 20. Photo: Xinhua

A girl raises her hand to answer a question in class in Baokang, Hubei province, in 2015. In China, girls learn to speak softly and not to interrupt. Photo: Corbis via Getty Images

A female comedian performs in a theatre in Beijing in 2020. Chinese women have become bolder in public conversation. Photo: AFP

A very Chinese funeral and all the things my family didn’t say

Ghost money and incense sticks are burnt in front of a gravestone during the Ching Ming Festival at a cemetery in Shanghai in 2017. Photo: AFP

An elderly man carries a child at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing in 2023. The Chinese have entirely different words for maternal and paternal grandparents, which vary from region to region. Photo: AFP

A man walks on a plank over the East Lake in Wuhan, in China’s Hubei province in 2020. Wuhan’s myriad rivers, lakes and ponds contribute to humid summers and damp winters. Photo: Xinhua

Funeral urns are tucked into a hillside in the vicinity of Guangzhou, in Guangdong province in 1982. Photo: Roger Viollet via Getty Images

I put myself on the Shanghai marriage market. It wasn’t pretty

Elderly parents display information about their children in the marriage market in People’s Square in Shanghai in 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE

Dating apps like OKCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel and Tinder were popular in pre-pandemic Hong Kong. Photo: SCMP

At the marriage market in People’s Square in Shanghai in 2020, a man holds up a profile specifying the age, height and education level of not only the candidate but also the ideal desired partner. Photo: EPA-EFE

 At a wedding banquet in Shanghai in 2019, the bride and groom toast friends and relatives. Photo: Shutterstock

My food obsession has deep Chinese roots

A child plays a game with zongzi, or sticky rice dumplings, on a high speed train running between Chongqing and Chengdu in southwest China in May 2017, ahead of the Dragon Boat Festival. Photo: Xinhua

People crowd around a meat skewer stall at a busy market street in Shenyang, Liaoning province, in 1995. Photo: Mark Ralston

Workers make dumplings along a production line in Siyang, Jiangsu province, in 2024. Photo: Future Publishing via Getty Images

Villagers gather for a mass banquet to welcome a new lunar year in Changtanhe Dong township, Hubei province, in January 2024. Photo: Xinhua

My family’s journey through China’s changing educational landscape

Children take part in a bicycle race at the Second Experimental Kindergarten in Yantai High-tech Zone, Shandong province in 2024. Photo: CFOTO / Future Publishing via Getty Images

Students wearing masks walk down a smog-shrouded street in Beijing in 2015. Photo: Xinhua

Children attend MakeX, a national robotics competition featuring robots designed by primary and middle school students, at the Songgang Sport Centre in Shenzhen in 2017. Photo: Nora Tam

The art of winning at and beyond the mahjong table

A player discards a tile during a session at the Hong Kong Mahjong Company. Photo: May Tse

Masked or not, people carry on playing mahjong during an early outbreak of coronavirus in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong in February 2020. Photo: Martin Chan

Shoppers from Hong Kong load up on groceries at a Sam’s Club in Shenzhen in January 2024. Photo: Eugene Lee

Young Chinese are trying out the simple life. Am I missing out?

A view of Lieshen village in Chongqing on August 15. Photo: Xinhua


Job-seeking migrant workers gather outside the railway station in Guangzhou, Guangdong province in 1996. In the 1990s, job security in China was jeopardised amid economic reforms. Photo: SCMP Pictures

A cafe favoured by tech types in Zhongguancun, Beijing in 2014. Photo: Simon Song

Half a world away from Hong Kong, I had a Chinese epiphany

A view of All Souls College of the University of Oxford. Photo: Shutterstock


People come and go from Tsim Sha Tsui MTR station along Cameron Road in 2016. Photo: AFP

Actor Nigel Hawthorne receives his knighthood at Buckingham Palace in London in 1999, having come to prominence as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the wily civil servant in the British television series Yes Minister. Photo: AP

Two sailors carry a portrait of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth through HMS Tamar, the Royal Navy’s shore base in Hong Kong, as royal portraits are taken down days before the handover on June 30, 1997. Photo: AFP

I crave a sense of community. Is that my Chinese side talking?

A group of men play cards in an alley in Beijing on July 29. When people live in a hutong, a narrow alleyway lined with siheyuan – courtyard-style residences – a culture of connection is baked in. Photo: AFP


Children interact with a robotic dog at an AI robot exhibition in Dongying, Shandong province on August 3. Photo: Xinhua

Shoppers walk along tram tracks at the Chun Yeung Street wet market in North Point, Hong Kong in 2017. Photo: Shutterstock

An ‘elegant’ English name would be all wrong for my Hong Kong baby

Young residents from diverse backgrounds holding new mainland travel permits return to Hong Kong in 2024, after a trip to Guangzhou and Foshan. Photo: Xiaomei Chen


Traditional seals inscribed with Chinese renderings of English names are displayed in a souvenir shop in Tsim Sha Tsui in 2021. In Hong Kong, names are often given in both Chinese and English. Many parents either romanise their child’s Chinese name or choose a Western name – a colonial practice that still echoes through the city. Photo: Nora Tam

Babies and parents get ready for a crawling contest during the Super Parents & Kids Expo at the AsiaWorld-Expo on December 6. Photo: Nora Tam

Why are urban Chinese like my friend falling for guoxue scams?

People young and old pray at Yonghe Temple in Beijing on January 1. After three decades of modernisation, many urban Chinese are spiritually adrift, restless and unsure of where to anchor their values in a fast-changing world. Photo: EPA-EFE

Children read the Analects of Confucius at the Temple of Confucius in Qufu, Shandong province in 2023. Guoxue, or Chinese national studies, concentrates on ancient texts and classical poetry. Photo: Xinhua

What’s in a Singaporean Chinese name? It’s a long story

People stop to take pictures beside a Chinatown mural of martial artist Bruce Lee in San Francisco in 2022. Among the Chinese diaspora in the US, a Singaporean Chinese name can turn into a “Guess where I am from?” quiz. Photo: AP 

People go out to lunch in Raffles Place, in the business district of Singapore, on August 13. Photo: AFP

Chinese family names can be romanised according to Wade-Giles, pinyin or ancestral dialects. Pictured are laisee embossed with the surnames pronounced zhang, chang and zeng in Mandarin, which could all correspond to the romanisation of Chang depending on whether one is more familiar with Wade-Giles, pinyin or dialect transliterations. Photo: Sun Yeung 

People walk along Cavenagh Bridge, the oldest bridge across the Singapore River dating back to the British colonial era, in 2021. In Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, the spelling of Chinese surnames has been shaped by migration history, colonial administration decisions and community traditions. Photo: AFP

1 Chinese auntie, 5 apps, 60 first dates

Newlyweds pose next to a red telephone booth in London on May 24. Dating today is not always about searching for a spouse, but for a compatible person to share life with. Photo: AFP 


On dating apps like Tinder and Bumble, users swipe right on a profile if they like what they see. Photo: dpa

People cross a street in Westminster, London on May 12. Photo: EPA-EFE

People enjoy Chinese and Vietnamese food at the East and Southeast Asian Community Centre in London on January 31. Photo: AFP

People laugh in my face when I say I’m Chinese. So what?

People walk past a mural of a Chinese letter writer in Chinatown in Singapore in February 2021. Photo: AFP

Staff work in a Chiuchow, or Teochew, restaurant in North Point in Hong Kong in 2017. Teochew people are historically from Chaozhou, an erstwhile prefecture in Guangdong, and have their own dialect and cuisine. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Siobhán Haughey has a pool named after her, in Chinese and English, at the South China Athletic Association on November 13. Photo: Edmond So

US Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang celebrates after receiving red packets for his children from a supporter during a town hall meeting at Penn Central Mall in Oskaloosa, Iowa, over Lunar New Year in January 2020. Photo: AFP

I’m not ‘lying flat’, just choosing a saner lifestyle than China’s 996

A woman with a child attends a New Year’s Eve countdown yoga session at Singapore’s Marina Bay in 2016. Photo: Xinhua 


At lunchtime, office workers sit along a quay in Raffles Place, in Singapore’s business district in 2023. China’s 996 work culture has been exported to Singapore, as Chinese tech companies expand overseas. Photo: AFP

Commuters navigate a subway station during rush hour in Beijing in 2021. Photo: AFP

People walk down Nanjing Road, the main shopping area in Shanghai, on May 1. In China, the tide is turning against 996 work culture, as the economy pivots towards consumption. Photo: EPA-EFE

The unspoken reason my Chinese friends choose America

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}When friends say they can just ‘exist’ in the US, they mean they can stop performing to the Confucian expectations that define Chinese life

When friends say they can just ‘exist’ in the US, they mean they can stop performing to the Confucian expectations that define Chinese life