{"id":53537,"date":"2026-05-19T09:09:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53537"},"modified":"2026-05-19T09:09:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T01:09:45","slug":"she-rejected-her-chinese-heritage-as-a-child-now-she-leans-into-it-through-her-novels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53537","title":{"rendered":"She rejected her Chinese heritage as a child. Now, she leans into it through her novels"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Growing up in the suburbs of Glasgow as one of only two Chinese children in her primary school, Eliza Chan rarely questioned her identity. Although her thick Scottish accent is the first thing you would notice about her, she says it was simply \u201cnormal\u201d to be stopped on the street in her small town and asked where she was really from.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of those childhoods where I don\u2019t think I realised what I wasn\u2019t until other people told me,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n

Chan, 41, admits that this caused her to go through a phase of rejecting her Chinese heritage entirely \u2013 wanting only to be like her Scottish friends, bristling at the \u201cweird\u201d Chinese language and turning her nose up at the food<\/span>. At university, something shifted.<\/div>\n

Surrounded by students from Hong Kong and Malaysia at the University of Edinburgh, she was ambushed by regret: a wish that she could speak more Cantonese, an ache at being unable to read the characters well enough to join a karaoke session.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"Eliza<\/div>
Eliza Chan (right), the youngest of three, and her family pictured in their home in Glasgow, Scotland. Photo: courtesy of Eliza Chan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI am who I am,\u201d she says now. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t make me less of either side. It just makes me different, and that\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in the suburbs of Glasgow as one of only two Chinese children in her primary school, Eliza Chan rarely questioned her identity. Although…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2071,107,2382,8458,9054,8127],"class_list":["post-53537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-child","tag-chinese","tag-heritage","tag-leans","tag-novels","tag-rejected","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}