Being Chinese Is Not a Trend — It Is My Bloodline

I grew up in Montreal, Quebec, Canada specifically the West Island where faces like mine were rare and belonging often felt conditional.

In school, Asians were scattered like punctuation marks in a story that wasn’t written for us. A few here. One there. Never enough to feel seen.

I remember the questions that weren’t really questions.

What is that you’re eating?
Ew, why does it smell like that?
Why are you so weird?

I remember the looks. The laughter. The distance.

I remember being spat on.
I remember being spoken to slowly as if intelligence had an accent.
I remember Francophone speakers talking around me instead of to me, assuming I didn’t understand the language, the tone, the disrespect.

And I remember the silence that followed. Because when you’re a child, you don’t yet have the words for racism you only know it hurts.

There were no role models who looked like me. No reflections in textbooks, media, leadership, or culture. Just survival and adaptation.

At home, we spoke Cantonese.
Outside, we spoke English or French.

We learned early how to code-switch not for convenience, but for survival. To fit in. To blend. To make ourselves easier to digest in Canadian life.

I was born and raised in Montreal, yet I often wondered:

If I don’t look like them…
If I’m not Chinese enough…
If I’m not Canadian enough…
Where do I belong?

When Identity Feels Like a Burden

There was a time I hated being Chinese.

I wished I were another ethnicity any other ethnicity. I didn’t want to explain the food. I didn’t want the questions. I didn’t want the stares.

And for a long time, I didn’t even want to learn Mandarin.

Even though Cantonese filled our home daily, Mandarin felt like another reminder of a culture I was trying to outrun. Outside those walls, I spoke English or French. I learned how to blend, how to assimilate, how to survive.

But somewhere between resistance and responsibility, something changed.

I didn’t want to learn Mandarin but I learned it anyway.

Not because it was trendy.
Not because it was easy.
But because I eventually understood that language is more than words. It is memory. It is access. It is inheritance.

What I was rejecting wasn’t my culture it was the pain attached to it.

No one teaches a child how to carry ancestral pride when the world tells them their heritage is strange, inferior, or embarrassing.

History Was Never Meant to Be Trendy

Now, people say it’s cool to be Chinese.

Now, people claim the identity.
Now, people borrow the aesthetics.
Now, people want the symbols, the medicine, the philosophy, the mystique.

They want to talk about Traditional Chinese Medicine.
They want to romanticize herbs, balance, longevity, and wisdom.

And I say this with clarity and grace:

Thank you for wanting to learn.
But understand this our culture is not new.

Traditional Chinese Medicine was not created for trends. It was shaped through centuries of observation, discipline, balance, and survival. Through dynasties rising and falling. Through famine, war, migration, and resilience.

This knowledge was passed hand to hand, generation to generation long before social media made it fashionable.

Our culture has never needed validation to exist.

From Survival to Sovereignty

As I grew older, something shifted.

I stopped asking where I fit and started claiming where I come from.

I embraced my ethnicity.
I embraced my story.
I embraced being a Chinese-born Canadian not divided, but layered.

I learned that identity does not have to choose sides. It can hold both history and homeland. Both ancestry and future.

What once made me feel different is what made me strong.

Legacy Is Taught, Not Trending

Now, I teach my daughter who she is.

Not with shame.
Not with confusion.
But with pride.

I teach her that her culture is rich.
That her history is deep.
That her ancestors were thinkers, builders, healers, warriors, and visionaries.

And through KNg Dynasty, I teach it forward.

KNg Dynasty is not about aesthetics.
It is about ancestry in motion.
About honoring where we come from while standing boldly where we are.

We do not dilute culture to be accepted.
We do not soften history to be palatable.
We do not turn legacy into a costume.

This Is Not a Trend. This Is a Lifestyle.

Being Chinese is what made me.
It shaped how I see the world.
How I lead.
How I endure.
How I create.

My culture is not a phase.
It is not a trend cycle.
It is not something to put on and take off.

It is a lifestyle.
A lineage.
A living history.

And if you are drawn to it learn with respect.
Study with humility.
Honor the roots before wearing the crown.

Because culture is not something you borrow.

It is something you carry.

👑🐉
KNg Dynasty
Legacy over trends. History over hype. Bloodline over buzz.