“I’m Japanese-Canadian.”

“Irish-Spanish.”

“Australian-African”

“Egyptian-Chinese” a.k.a Bobby Chin

Heritage. It may be the most popular topic known to mankind. Okay, I exaggerated on that one. But it is interesting to know where we originated.  People are obsessed on telling others their heritage! They go on and on til their early ancestors if they can. I’m guessing they’re proud of it. But there’s nothing wrong with embracing our uniqueness!

Here’s a funny story, when I was in a kid I didn’t know I was mixed blood til I was 13. Yes, THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. I always thought I was a pure-blooded, fast talking, Hinava-lover Kadazan and hey, it was on my identification so what the heck! There was a lot of identification paperworks involved during my registration into middle school and of course I had to handle it since I was not a primary school kiddie anymore.

Long story-short, I stumbled upon my mom’s birth certificate and there I saw! She’s Ilocano (Filipino)! After that, I asked her a lot of questions. Ranging from my grandparents to my grandparents’ parents. My lolo is half Spanish and half Chinese whereas my lola is Filipino.

I was like, “Mama! Are you Filipino?!”

And she replied , “YA LAH!”  

You can only imagine how flabbergasted I was!

Hahaha now that I think about it, I was so naïve and unaware of my surroundings when I was young, err..  it’s quite embarrassing!

Retaliating from that blush-worthy flashback, my dad is, of course Kadazan. Kadazan is an indigenous ethic tribe in North Borneo, Malaysia. And no, we do not live on trees nor do we eat bugs or residing on a deserted, undeveloped island as many ignorantly assume. Well, not anymore that is.

Okay so here’s the interesting bit, there’s this family tree book called ‘The Descendants of Aki Bolusun & Odu Piai', a very meticulous book written by Richard F. Tunggolou which happens to be my family’s distant relative. It shows that people with these certain surnames including ‘Totu’ was descended from a Chinese man called,

“Chin Ah Sam from who was said to have originated from China, probably Fong Tshin District, in Guangdong Province in Southern China. He married a Kadazan girl called Piai.”

There after they had several children one of them was my great, great, great, great grandfather. And get this, my family name was supposed to be ‘Tundakang’ but since the government that time changed my grandpa’s children surname to ‘Totu’ due to some unknown reasons and so that’s it! But even in the olden days, it’s not a rare thing for our ancestors to change their surnames since there was no government ruling over North Borneo that time! Interesting huh? So in the book it shows who our lost relatives are and ironically, they’re not that lost after all! We just didn’t know we were related!

So the moral of the story is (well, for me), don’t find a husband here! Or else I might end up marrying my second cousin or something! Hahaha kidding!

What’s your heritage? 

♥,

Evelyn supposedly-be-Tundakang Totu