ABSTRACT
In this auto-ethnographic essay, the author analyzes the social and cultural condition of being raised as an Anglophone ethnic Chinese in the postcolonial city of Singapore. With English as the common language in the newly independent, multi-ethnic society, the author grew up in between different script-worlds, which are reflected in the diverse linguistic components of her hybrid full name. Speaking primarily English and yet subject to the official education policy of learning Mandarin Chinese as an ethnic Chinese, the author learned to listen in Hanyu Pinyin, rather than to decode Chinese characters. This interlinguistic mode, she argues, expresses the wider conditions under which ethnic Singapore Chinese identities were crystalized in an increasingly Anglophone environment.
