For most part of my upbringing being moderately privileged East Asian, skyscrapers and office buildings, white collars and working classes is my culture that I know. I would not have thought how absurd it is for that to be a culture, until I realize my entertainment, lifestyle, clothing, all are influences from outside of the place I call home, or identify as my heritage. My hometown has got local artists, but I praise Western celebrities. We have local teachers, but we want foreign education. The thought of this all to be for the “better” has been engraved in our mind since birth, and it only make sense that foreign means better, until I realize it’s a matter of social class. More topics of reclaiming heritage is appearing recently, somehow becoming a trend, and undoubtedly is a common interest that unites people and reform community. It is an approach for a lot of us that feels lost or inadequate to desperately find something of our own, through disrupting the stability (foreign influences) given to us by revisiting our heritage and recreating these cultural images which represented a time of lower, and less privilege. Which also became some sort of counterculture for this generation, which was the prominent culture of the past.

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Understanding that I wanted something that can be called my own, because I have been living under influences of someone else, and I do not truly progress, but only follow. But also understanding that we do not truly belong to the heritage we had not lived but only known about. Hence coming to a point where I realize in order to break out of the plateau of growth, we have to reform something new yet authentic to us. Not constricted only inside cultural or ethnic boundaries, but perhaps new communities that could share the same values, that could truly define us as a generation.