I stopped looking at flights and glanced at the two passports lying beside my laptop. I picked up mine. It was black, with a silver fern on the cover, and seemed exactly the sort of document that ought to be useful in a situation like this. <\/p>\n
\u201cRight,\u201d I thought. \u201cWhere are we going?\u201d <\/p>\n
The passport was less helpful than expected. It confirmed that I was a New Zealand citizen, gave my date of birth and contained a photograph that looked enough like me to get through immigration. But there was nothing under: <\/p>\n
Country to go back to when instructed. <\/p>\n
So I tried to work it out myself. <\/p>\n
China was the obvious candidate. I was born there, and for many years, whenever someone asked where I was from, \u201cChina\u201d was the easiest answer. <\/p>\n
Then I moved to Singapore, where I lived for years and became a permanent resident. Later, I moved to Sydney, and then to New Zealand. That was when the answer started to get complicated. <\/p>\n
When I arrived at Auckland Airport from Sydney, an immigration officer looked at my Chinese passport and asked where I was from. I hesitated. <\/p>\n
Sydney? Singapore? China? <\/p>\n
He was probably making conversation. I was conducting a census. <\/p>\n
Eventually I became a New Zealand citizen and changed passports, and something interesting happened: the questions mostly stopped. When I travelled to China, I stood in the foreign-passport queue. Being classified as a foreigner in the country where I had been born felt strange at first, but my passport showed no sign of an identity crisis. <\/p>\n
Coming back to New Zealand was easier: Citizens. That way. For once, nobody needed my life story. <\/p>\n
Then, while waiting for a flight to Shanghai at Auckland Airport, an older gentleman sat down beside me. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, where are you from?\u201d he asked with a smile. <\/p>\n
Ah, the familiar question again. Rotorua? Or did he mean where I was born? <\/p>\n
\u201cActually, you must be a Kiwi.\u201d <\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t even answered, and my passport was in my bag. How did he know? He must have seen the confusion on my face because he pointed at my jacket. <\/p>\n
\u201cKathmandu.\u201d <\/p>\n
I looked down, then noticed he was wearing one too. We both laughed. <\/p>\n
After years of visas, passports, permanent residency and citizenship, apparently my national identity had finally been settled by outdoor clothing. <\/p>\n
I returned to the passport. On the back was a map of New Zealand, and I looked at the islands for a moment before remembering the headline. <\/p>\n
\u201cGo back to your own country.\u201d <\/p>\n
Back. <\/p>\n
That was the problem. <\/p>\n
Where are you from? could mean birthplace, nationality, hometown, last address, or simply an attempt to make conversation. But go back came with instructions, and instructions required a destination. <\/p>\n
China? I was born there, but I no longer held a Chinese passport. <\/p>\n
Singapore? I had once been a permanent resident, but that was years ago. <\/p>\n
Sydney? Surely one year did not qualify for deportation rights. <\/p>\n
I was running out of countries. <\/p>\n
Then I noticed another black passport beside mine. My daughter\u2019s. <\/p>\n
I opened it. She was born in New Zealand, which should have made things easier. Instead, I found myself travelling backwards through her family tree, across countries and generations, looking for somewhere to send her. <\/p>\n
I stopped. <\/p>\n
What was I doing? <\/p>\n
I looked at her passport, then mine. Two black covers, two silver ferns. <\/p>\n
Then I realised something embarrassingly obvious. The man in the headline was a New Zealander. So was the person who told him to go back to his country. <\/p>\n
I looked at my passport. It seemed almost amused. <\/p>\n
\u201cAha,\u201d I laughed. \u201cThat one.\u201d <\/p>\n
Then I put the passport down and clicked \u201cConfirm\u201d on our flights to China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I stopped looking at flights and glanced at the two passports lying beside my laptop. I picked up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[806,28949,4444,17515,2881,191,1345,141882,4188,17768,117,111,43,139,69,38715,180,6923,35111],"class_list":["post-565002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-as","tag-chen","tag-chinese","tag-experience","tag-explores","tag-here","tag-home","tag-lifang","tag-living","tag-means","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-rotoruas","tag-shares","tag-what","tag-zealander"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}