“Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m a local” was the advice presented by Taiye Selasi when she spoke at TEDGlobal in 2014. I recently had the opportunity of watching her talk and I was incredibly moved with how important and valid this statement is to Macau in 2016. Of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, Selasi describes herself as a “local” of Accra, Berlin, New York, and Rome. Her major point in her twelve-minute speech was highlighting the concept of “We are local where we carry out our rituals and relationships but how we experience our locality depends on our restrictions; meaning, where we are allowed to reside based on passport, politics and government.” What I found interesting in relating her statements to Macau is that in a time of economic distress and financial concern, there has been a recent explosion of digital expression of love and pride for Macau causing me to consider our community’s rituals and relationships. Walking down our streets, you can immediately see that Macau is made up of a diverse population of cultures from China, the Philippines, Europe, Australia, and North America and all groups carry their own rituals and relationships from their places of origin. What you cannot tell from glancing at a person is how long they have lived in Macau and, specifically, whether they are local. When you ask someone where they are from, it isn’t the specificity of the answer it’s the intention of your question and when replacing the language of nationality with the question of locality that makes us truly question where our lives take place. “Human experience is notoriously and gloriously a disorderly affair” said Selasi in her TED Talk. Currently, the hashtag #Macau is sitting at just under 2 million posts on Instagram, the popular social media site having grown exponentially in the past six months following the growing interest of people, both locals and tourists, to tag Macau on their social media. Macau locals are also found to be promoting Macau with new websites and social media campaigns like LiveLoveMacau.com and AmericanInMacau.com that seek to attract attention as they attempt to brand Macau as their home that deserves international attention. So with our mixing pot of cultures here in Macau, with our rich history of Chinese and Portuguese customs, should we take the advice of Selasi? Should we be changing our question from “Where are you from?” to “Where are you local?”
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