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Travel Journal: Finding my place as a Singaporean Chinese abroad
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The Singaporean writer – seen here with her daughters on a trip to Japan – reflects on being mistaken for a Chinese national abroad.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF SOH WEE LING
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Soh Wee Ling
JAPAN – “Please wait a moment,” the Japanese store assistant tells me as she fetches her colleague, a Chinese national.
I am looking at kitchen towels in Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten’s flagship store in Nara and hope to buy the one it has been making since its founding in 1716. But my attempts to communicate with the store assistant in English have failed even after resorting to the in-store translation gadget and Google Translate.
