Race and Ethnicity

After about 23 weeks or more in KL, esp. TARC...I found out that the majority are Chinese. So, you would have assume that most of the Chinese here will find it very easy to settle down. However, that is not the case. One of my friends from abraod had been commenting on the various "race" that is available here. Meaning, somehow, in some ways, we cannot get into a particular group easily although we are all the same race. Y is that so?

Well, actually its not the race that has set us apart, its ethnicity. Accoding to sociology defination of race, Race is socially composed people who share biologically transmitted traits while ethnicity is shared cultural heritage. For this main reason, some of us cannot assomilate ourselves in. Lets see why.

Language(or should we say dialect) speaking, Chinese in KL mostly speak Cantonese. And of course, students who are from abroad or dunno to speak the dialect seems to miss out a lot. We Chinese had a bad habit of speaking our own languages or dialects when other friends of difference race and ethnicity is around. One of my Indian friend told me that was frustrating as it is like threating him as an out-group. Well, I do feel for him as somtimes my friends wags on with a topic in Cantonese and I am there eating sand.

Then again, it somehow provokes u to brush up ur Cantonese, but to some certain extend, it still frustrates u. Then, there are many types of chinese u can find here, lets see some examples.

First of all, there are Chinese who we call the typical Chinese. Speaks, wear and walk like Chinese, which speaks only Mandarin and dialects, full stop. Yup, in classes, is sympathic to see them struggle. But, elsewhere, there are the ones who talks the most. These, as we labelled them, are called the typical Ah Beng and Ah Lian type.

Then, there is the, we called Banana type, that is the opposite of the Ah Beng type. Basically, they will fair well in classes and studies, but struggles in the Chinese-majority society. However, many of my friends which are catogorized here seems to pick up Mandarin and other dialects frigginly fast, which impressed me. Perhaps, maybe its easier to pick up ur own mother tongue than foriegn languages(that explains the situations of the typical chinese type.)

The third group, is the middle of the two types catogorized above. Basically, they can mix with both groups and other races as well. This group, however, ranged variably. There are people who are bilingual, trilingual and so on. So, the more languages and dialects u can speak, the more advantage u are obviously. I got friends who can speak almost anything, from Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka, Malay and has a good command of English and also some Tamil, blah blah..Damn, where the heck they find time to learn so many languages huh?

So basically, to survive well in KL and TARC, the basic recommendation of language u need to noe is English, Mandarin and the Cantonese dialect. Prior to the open day of TARC today, I would like to advice to-be-students here to brush up their language skills in order to....well, live well?