Unit 21

Identity Crisis

With industrialization and modernization, more and more people are confronted with the problem of identity. The most interesting example is that of a so-called "banana", which refers to an American who has an Asian face but holds Western values. In the US many banana children complain that they cannot explain to their young friends in the kindergarten why they cannot speak a word of Chinese and practice Kungfu although they look exactly like a Chinese.

In Shanghai, there now live a group of people from abroad. They look no different from the locals and speak fluent mandarin or even Shanghai dialect, but when it comes to writing the Chinese characters, they are almost illiterate. Jack is such an example. He runs a bar at the Changshu Road. Born in Shanghai, he moved to Los Angeles at the age of two with his parents. With his family, Jack spoke two languages: English and Shanghai dialect. But he never learned to read or write the Chinese words, which he find mysterious and difficult. "To be frank," he said, "Every time I signed a contract, I would pretend to read its contents carefully, but actually I understood no word of it." From time to time, he will fly to the US as he does not feel Shanghai is where he came from. "But when I am in the States, I feel that's not my destination either," he said.

At the De Gaulle Airport in France, there is a Swiss man who has been living at the waiting-room for 11 years because he lost his passport during a travel. He was refused entry into several countries. He lived upon being interviewed by the mass media. But when at last, he was allowed to return to Switzerland, he refused to leave the airport. His reason is very simple -- "I am very sure who I am. I need no acknowledgement from outer influence", he said during an interview. For this reason he is honored by the Western media as "the Hero of Identity."

As the Internet becomes more and more popular, the problem of identity becomes more serious. In a virtual world, people can have many identities. One can have different emails registered with different alias. In the Internet chatroom, even one's gender is hard to determine. It seems that in this global village, people are saying hello everyday to each other without knowing whom they are talking to.

What will be the next crisis of identity? With the development of cloning technology, it might be: who is the real "I"?