I have always been skeptical of the term “global citizenship,” partly because it’s thrown around so much (especially in campaigns at secondary or higher education), partly because it seems to reduce the complexities of being an immigrant, an outsider, or an expat. It seems to ignore the sometimes painful realities of living with cultural conflict, or inequalities at various levels. For me, part of being a “global citizen” – as much as I resist the term – means acknowledging incommensurability. Throughout the two years of my experience as a Laidlaw scholar, I have learned how to appreciate that incommensurability, as well as how to make meaningful connections in spite of it.

I spent my first Laidlaw summer doing archival research on the former India Museum, based on the collections and records of several British museums and institutions. Research is what first drew me to the Laidlaw Scholars program, and I loved looking at old records and digging for dates. This was also my most significant exposure to the aftermath of colonialism, where lots of natural specimens and cultural products were looted and collected in the name of cultural exchange. With much of the India Museum collections shipped and later dispersed among the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and the Kensington Museum, their origins from the British colonial period become almost naturalized.

During my Leadership in Action experience in Malaysia, I made my way to Kuching, where I visited Sarawak Museum, similarly established under 19^th century British rule. Rather than a simple, straightforward museum, I saw the Sarawak Museum, like the India Museum, as a monument and testament to the late British colonial/early independent state history for the modern states of India and Malaysia. The Sarawak Museum stands witness to the clash between the British quest for knowledge through natural specimens and ethnography, and the redefinition of their collections as belonging to Malaysia.

This view of history interests me because it is social history. What are the forms of knowledge, and what are the institutions that sponsor and disperse this knowledge? What do we know, and how do we know what we know? Most of the adults I talked with while in Sarawak, Malaysia for my LiA remember how the school system has changed throughout the years. Textbooks in English became bilingual textbooks in Malay and English, and certain historical stories were forsaken for others.

In Sarawak, the East Malaysian state that I visited, people speak Malay, English, Mandarin (and dialects of Mandarin), as well as Iban and other indigenous languages. The native Iban, Chinese and Malay communities composed the local population. It was the first time I had been in a space that was not white-dominated, or homogenous like my home community in Beijing. Culture is such a rich subject, and I came to the conclusion that one can never adopt a “culture-less” perspective. I can be open, but I can never be neutral. It is better to acknowledge my own standpoint than aspiring to be “objective,” whatever that means. I am also grateful to Amy Somchanhmavong, my advisor and mentor from the Cornell Laidlaw Program, for her suggestions and insights on this point.

Lastly but not least, I have learned first-hand the many forms leadership can take. People become leaders through hard work and good work. Sometimes it’s about charisma, but most of the times it’s about hard work and commitment. And they never do it alone. They do it with friends, with colleagues, with mentees, everyone around them. What I appreciate about Laidlaw is being part of a group of people, and being pushed to make new connections in a new place. During my stay in Sarawak, I got to learn first-hand how faculty and students from the University of Technology, Sarawak engaged with the local Foochow community as well as Iban and Penan communities further inland.

Bringing community engagement into higher education seems to be a global phenomenon. It seems straightforward when you think about it: colleges as institutions are naturally isolated from their environments, and the myth of elitism and selection makes it difficult for individual students to connect immediately with entire communities. Moreover, communities thrive by their own logic. It’s not a given that any organic community would readily benefit from an exchange, a volunteer program of some sort with any university.

I learned about the importance of ethical engagement and how it takes place. Both parties start from a place of mutual benefit, a kind of sharing in the stakes instead of a monetary trade, or an exchange. What’s critical to this process is local relationships, either established or nascent ones. Having a contact person from the community makes it easier to build trust and hold both parties accountable.

During my stay in Sibu, my contact person, Dennis Cheng, very kindly introduced me to his friends, who then introduced me to their friends, a few of whom I interviewed for my project. Being in conversation with people was a much different experience than reading about the same subject. It goes back to how we know what we know. When I talk to people, the basis of knowledge is their lived experience. At times that is much more critical and valuable than what scholars have concluded in books and papers.

Speaking of books and papers, another question that I have been reflecting on is what warrants scholarship. There are quite a few papers online, but sometimes I still struggle to find quality resources, especially when it comes to indigenous knowledge or history. This frustrates me perhaps because what I see firsthand, on the ground, doesn’t seem to match what I search up online or in scholarship. It reminded me that a part of real experience will always remain undefined, in the present, and embodied. That part of real experience is only accessible via people, which is also a critical component of community engagement as a whole.

What ethical engagement looks like may be different for different people, depending on their relationships with the place they’re in. I had never been to Malaysia before, but by virtue of speaking Mandarin, I was able to talk with many Foochows and their families. It was a curious experience, being not quite in-group, not quite an outsider. I thought of the way Asian-American identity becomes invisible in a homogenous Asian society. I had been in France for a semester as an exchange student, and I wondered if people could really tell white Americans apart from white Europeans, or if white Europeans stood out in America. Passing is always so interesting and so political. In a new social environment where identity was theorized differently, I had to confront the ambiguities of my identity head-on.

For the most part, I take joy in discovering commonalities across cultures. Shared ground. Certain spices or flavors I’m familiar with, or certain ways of celebrating and socializing. It’s grounding to be able to recognize rose apples, or bamboo salt. What is hard is acknowledging difference – how to acknowledge difference without drawing out the distance between one person, one culture and the next?

I don’t have an answer, yet, apart from being fully present and fully honest. Because I started my time in the United States as an international student, I will inevitably be a “global citizen” in the future. One final note on that front. I wish to channel my energy into a space that does not feed into the nation-state model of the world. The power play of geopolitics is not to be ignored, but it is so often a hegemonic space for militaristic muscle. I want to pay more attention to the generative potential of regional identities, which lend more to building common ground, rather than breeding hostility. I see that as a responsibility for those of us who are familiar with the framework of nation-state politics.