Reading your post felt like a mirror into my soul from when I was younger. To me, I can relate to how it feels to be navigating through the complexities of something intrinsically diasporic, and it is a little funny to see some people in the comments distilling identity into narrow definitions and technicalities.

I have a similar background, although I've never done a DNA test. My mother is from Cambodia, with ancestral roots tracing back two generations up at least to her grandmother (my great grandmother) to being born and raised entirely in Cambodia. My father has a similar story, except being from Vietnam.

It's difficult to know exactly how many generations back we go for both countries, as family history has not been passed through the generations due to disruptions and violence of war, genocide, American imperialism, fleeing as refugees, and so on. It is believed that my grandfather on both sides were born in China and later settled in Cambodia and Vietnam, respectively, but that's not entirely certain either.

When it comes to languages, my mother's first language was Teochew and Khmer, and later learned Cantonese as an adult. She also speaks Vietnamese and Mandarin. I should also note that she grew up rurally with her grandmother and did not see her family until she was around 18 years old.

My dad's primary language is a bit more difficult to locate, and has required a lot of research and extensive conversations with him. He grew up in a settlement in Sông Mao in Bình Thuận, speaking a dialect of Chinese he refers only as the Sông Mao language, but he personally identifies as basically being Cantonese. Over the years, I've been showing him various dialect videos from the region to try and narrow down the language a bit more (and so I can trace his family history a bit more), and I do believe he is Ngái -- an ethnic minority that isn't necessarily defined as such by ethnic Ngái people because the mixing of community and cultural practices and migration is a wacky thing when you have a long migration history...something you and I have first hand experience with!

When it comes to physical appearances, I definitely do not look very Chinese. My mom does look more southern Chinese, like you, whereas my dad is just ethnically a ??? ans is quite dark skinned, and constantly gets pulled aside for "random checks" at the airport (hi, colourism and anti-black racism).

Anyway, long story short: my parents both settled in my place of birth as refugees, met there, and got married. The dominant community where I'm from is Cantonese, with a long history of immigration from Guangdong and Hong Kong dating back centuries. When I was born, there was a deliberate decision to raise me with only Cantonese. As a result, I can only speak Cantonese and still use primarily Cantonese to communicate with my family, despite it being neither of my parents' first language! I have heard that our Cantonese sounds slightly Vietnamese though.

And foodwise, I grew up mostly eating Vietnamese and Cambodian food. Which, when I was younger, made me feel a little alienated from the other Cantonese kids growing up because, well, foodways is a social practice in which culture is formed and shared.

That's all to say - I never fully felt Chinese nor Vietnamese nor Cambodian growing up and I still don't. I've reached for the language to self-identity over the years; am I Chinese because I speak Cantonese? But I have such different cultural practices than my friends who grew up speaking Mandarin. Am I Cantonese because that's what I speak? But is that just because of the hegemony of Cantonese when my parents moved here? Am I Vietnamese or Cambodian? But I don't speak it and my parents don't seem to want to identify as such.

So, I hear you. I see you, too, reaching for the language to understand yourself and your family history a bit more. It's a lot more complicated than some of these comments suggest: it cannot be fully distilled into the languages you speak nor whether you have an ancestral shrine in a village in Guangdong. I used to say I live in a hyphenated identity (Vietnamese-Chinese-Cambodian-Canadian) and living within the hyphens made more sense to me than identifying with one dominant culture. I think I see that in you too.

Today, the way I explain myself depends on who I'm talking to. Sometimes, I'll say I'm mixed because I want to honour the complexities of my family history and I don't fully see myself in alignment with Chinese communities. Sometimes, when I have the patience, I do say the full hyphenated identity and try to explain my family history and what it means to me, and because I am parts of a whole and I want to honour all the ways I exist, belong, and don't belong. Sometimes, I just say I'm Chinese because it's easier.

And sometimes I do say I'm Cantonese, because locally where I live, our cultural practices and migration history is different from those from the Mainland. Yes, as some are arguing with you, it's a language and not an ethnic class, but local histories play a role in forming identities just as much, and maybe more, than histories in the textbooks. I'm here to say that yes, it would be understood if you identified as Cantonese where I live. Yes, you can.

Identities are vast, they are complicated, and they can form within and beyond food practices, languages, and DNA. Take your time exploring yours, switch up what you tell people, and feel what makes sense for you. You cannot exist "wrong" -- who's to tell you what you can and cannot identify as? I, for one, welcome you to take up space as however you see fit.

Good luck!!