Who Am I – A Journey Across Borders, Colors, and Hearts

by Hieuming

After years of wandering across different lands, I finally settled back in Taiwan for retirement. Like many others, I often return to my hometown during holiday, the Lunar New Year. But as the years go by, my parents have long passed, my siblings are aging, and old friends are nowhere to be found. Standing there, in the quiet of the village, I suddenly ask myself: Where do I belong now?

The house stands empty. The home that once echoed with laughter and warmth no longer feels like home. Because “home,” I’ve come to realize, isn’t just a place—it’s where your heart feels safe, recognized, and loved.

There’s a simple English phrase that plays with the word “I”: Who am I? The question seems easy, but for many—especially those who’ve crossed oceans—it’s one that takes a lifetime to answer.

When my son was twelve, he once asked me out of the blue,

“Dad, why wasn’t I born white?”

We were living in Virginia then, surrounded by children of all colors—white, black, brown, and golden. His question pierced me, not out of sadness, but because it revealed the fragile innocence of a child trying to understand where he fits in a world divided by color.

I smiled and told him, “Because your parents are Taiwanese. Our skin is gold, not white or black. If one day you marry someone with blue eyes, your child might be lighter than you.”
He laughed, and so did I. But deep inside, I knew this was just the beginning of his long journey toward identity.

America is a colorful mosaic: 72% white, 12% Black, 6% Asian, 1% Native, and the rest a thousand shades in between.
No single color defines America.

People say America is a “melting pot,” but I think it’s more of a garden — different flowers, different scents, growing side by side.

In Japan, tradition defines identity.
In Korea, diligence defines it.
In Vietnam, family defines it.
But in America, it’s individuality — the freedom to be yourself, even when no one else understands who that is.

As an immigrant, I’ve learned that to truly belong, one must blend without dissolving.
To keep one’s roots deep while letting the branches stretch toward new skies.

The Chinese brought their values of harmony,
the Mexicans their warmth and rhythm,
the Africans their strength and song,
and the Vietnamese — brought quiet endurance.

Identity is not a passport. It’s not a color, or a language, or even a birthplace.
It’s the gentle collision between what you inherit and what you become.

My children, born in America, carry both: the memory of rice fields they’ve never seen and the sound of English lullabies. Their hearts are bilingual.

And perhaps that’s the beauty of it — that we can love two places, two cultures, two versions of ourselves, without betraying either one.

When I was young, I believed I would one day return to where I came from.
Now, older and slower, I realize that “home” has multiplied.
A part of me lives in Taipei, another in Virginia’s suburbs, and another somewhere between — in that invisible space where memory and belonging meet.

We immigrants live in translation — between languages, between worlds.
Sometimes we lose the words for who we are.
But maybe, not knowing exactly who we are is the most human thing of all.

Today, as I watch my grandchildren grow up with names that sound foreign on both sides of the ocean, I no longer ask them to choose between Taiwan and America.
I simply tell them:

“You are both.
You come from many places.
And that’s what makes you whole.”

Because in this vast and changing world, to belong everywhere a little is better than belonging nowhere at all.