Returning to my original identity: Wang, Chien-Mei

Last week the package my mom sent to me was delivered, so I received a notice saying it's ready to be picked up. However, when I showed my passport and that piece of paper to the person in charge, he took a look and asked, "Can you ask Ada Wang to come?" I was like..."eh, here she is, standing right in front of you".

and then i realised the problem, because it's my English name, Ada Wang written on the paper but it doesn't match my name on the passport: Wang, Chien-Mei. Even though I've tried my best to explain the situation, he still didn't accept it and asked me to come with someone who has a swedish personal number. I even wanted to ask if I named what's in the package, would he let me claim it. In the end I did get my package through Helene's help, this small accident just got me seriously consider if I should use my Chinese name instead of an English name, although it does represent me in some way, since quite some people only know me as Ada.

People might ask, why you chinese always have an English name. (Btw, i even got a Russian name when I learned Russian.) I don't know actually, maybe it's easier to get into the culture when learning a new language? but my case is just because it's always difficult to explain how my name should be pronounced, 'cause its spelling can really mislead people to pronounce it not right, but since it's how it's spelled on my passport I can't really do anything about it.

A small lesson on Chinese names. Chinese names usually consist of 3* words(characters), and family name is always in the front. Take my name for example: 王建玫 (Wang, Chien-Mei), 王 (Wang/wang2/) is my family name, and 建玫 (Chien-Mei/jian4-mei2/) is my first name. it's usually the 2nd word causing most troubles. In Taiwan we have our own phonetic symbols, which I personally love a lot, but I do think "Hanyu Pinyin" (phonetic system used in China) makes more sense when talking about writing Chinese in roman alphabet. I should really write more about Chinese language, so far I don't see many people doing this (or just I don't know...), it's after all a very cool language (both speaking and writing) and apparently a lot of people are interested in learning more about it. when I took the TCSL program, we always said how big the demands are and how big the market is. It's about time to really do something about it.

*it can also be of 2 or 4 words(characters), but especially in Taiwan the majority is of 3. More people in China have their names of 2 words, like a very famous Chinese singer, 王菲 (family name: 王/wang2/ and first name: 菲/fei1/); and when it's 4 words, it's usually 2 words for family name and 2 words for first name, a Taiwanese singer, 歐陽菲菲 (family name: 歐陽/oh1 yang2/, first name: 菲菲/fei1 fei1/) Rarely do the Chinese have their first names more than 2 words. Because Taiwan has been Japan's colony for about 50 years, people may have a name of 3 words, but with family name of 2 words instead of 1 as usual, 金城武 (his family name: 金城 /jin1 cheng2/, which by the way is a quite common family name in Japan (in Japanese it's pronounced as "Kaneshiro" though) and first name: 武 /wu3/).

**the spelling I used with /___ / is not always hanyu pinyin, I just use what I think closer to what it really sounds like (ex. 歐 in hanyu pinyin will be "ou", but I think it can mislead people to think about ou like in "you" or "ouch" whereas it sounds more like "oh"), and the number refers to the tone of each word.

(pls feel free to correct me if there's anything incorrectly put in the post)