The Banana Between Worlds

They called us jook sing. Bamboo that grew hollow in the middle. A banana. Yellow on the outside. White on the inside. I heard those words a lot growing up. Not always in cruelty. Sometimes jokingly. Sometimes casually. Sometimes as if it was simply fact. But when you hear it enough as a child, it starts making you wonder where exactly you belong. Because I was not born in Hong Kong. I was not born in China. I was born in Montreal.

And if you know Montreal, then you know it is its own world entirely. People think all of Canada is the same. It is not. Quebec has a culture of its own. The French language. The pride. The accents. The energy. The tension between cultures sometimes. The way people look at you first before they decide if you belong.

Growing up there meant learning quickly that language changes how people treat you. If your French was perfect, doors opened softer. People smiled warmer. You were accepted easier. If it was not? “Go back to where you came from.”

Imagine hearing that while standing in the only home you have ever known. Imagine being told you do not belong in a place where your memories were made. Then imagine going back into your own community and being told you are not Chinese enough either.

That is the strange space many children of immigrants learn to survive in. Too Chinese for one room. Not Chinese enough for another. That is the jook sing experience. But the older I get, the more I realize something: We were never hollow. We were layered.

I grew up navigating Franco culture, Anglo culture, and my own Chinese culture all at once. I learned how to code switch before I even knew what the term meant. One version of me spoke one way at school. Another version spoke differently at home. Another version appeared around elders. Another one came alive around friends.

And somehow, all of them were still me. I am Toisanese. I am Teochow. I speak Cantonese, English, French, Mandarin, and even a little Spanish. My life has been translation. Translation between generations. Translation between cultures. Translation between identities.

People do not realize how special that really is. There is something powerful about carrying multiple worlds inside of you.

I grew up hearing Cantonese tones bouncing through the house while French echoed through the streets outside. I learned respect through Chinese culture, survival through immigrant culture, adaptability through Canadian culture, and resilience through every room that questioned where I belonged.

Chinese culture itself is ancient. Rich. Layered with history, sacrifice, wisdom, medicine, tradition, family honor, and survival. We carry thousands of years inside our bloodline whether people acknowledge it or not. And yet, children like us often grow up feeling like diluted versions of our own people. Not fully this. Not fully that.

But KNg Dynasty taught me something important: Fusion is not weakness. It is legacy evolving. The “K” in Knauls. The “Ng” from my maiden name, 伍. Two bloodlines. Two histories. Multiple cultures. One dynasty.

I am no longer ashamed that my story sounds different. I no longer apologize for my accent shifting depending on who I am speaking to. I no longer feel embarrassed that my identity cannot fit neatly into one box for people to understand comfortably. Because the truth is, multicultural children become bridges.

We learn empathy differently. We hear emotion differently. We survive differently. There is beauty in being able to sit at multiple tables and understand the language of each room. Even now, I still hear the word banana sometimes.

But it does not sting the way it used to. Because bananas grow in clusters. Strong roots. Connected. And maybe being jook sing never meant hollow at all. Maybe it meant we learned how to grow through every environment we were planted in. That is not emptiness. That is adaptation. That is survival. That is dynasty.