Keynote Advanced

Ted talk transcript Unit 2: Who am I? Think again

0.11 Hetain Patel: (In Chinese)

0.22 Yuyu Rau: Hi, I’m Hetain. I’m an artist. And this is Yuyu, who is a dancer I have been

working with. I have asked her to translate for me.

0.33 HP: (In Chinese)

0.38 YR: If I may, I would like to tell you a little bit about myself and my artwork.

0.44 HP: (In Chinese)

0.50 YR: I was born and raised near Manchester, in England, but I’m not going to say it in

English to you, because I’m trying to avoid any assumptions that might be made from my

northern accent.

1.06 HP: (In Chinese)

1.15 YR: The only problem with masking it with Chinese Mandarin is I can only speak this

paragraph, which I have learned by heart when I was visiting in China. (Laughter) So all I

can do is keep repeating it in different tones and hope you won’t notice.

1.38 HP: (In Chinese)

1.43 YR: Needless to say, I would like to apologize to any Mandarin speakers in the

audience.

1.53 As a child, I would hate being made to wear the Indian kurta pyjama, because I didn’t

think it was very cool. It felt a bit girly to me, like a dress, and it had this baggy trouser part

you had to tie really tight to avoid the embarrassment of them falling down. My dad never

wore it, so I didn’t see why I had to. Also, it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, that people

assume I represent something genuinely Indian when I wear it, because that’s not how I feel.
2.29 HP: (In Chinese)

2.35 YR: Actually, the only way I feel comfortable wearing it is by pretending they are the

robes of a kung fu warrior like Li Mu Bai from that film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

3.34 OK. So my artwork is about identity and language, challenging common assumptions

based on how we look like or where we come from, gender, race, class. What makes us who

we are anyway?

3.57 HP: (In Chinese)

4.03 YR: I used to read Spider-Man comics, watch kung fu movies, take philosophy lessons

from Bruce Lee. He would say things like –

4.12 HP: Empty your mind. (Laughter) Be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put

water into a cup. It becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. Put it

in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

(Applause)

4.41 YR: This year, I am 32 years old, the same age Bruce Lee was when he died. I have

been wondering recently, if he were alive today, what advice he would give me about making

this TED Talk.

4.59 HP: Don’t imitate my voice. It offends me. (Laughter)

5.07 YR: Good advice, but I still think that we learn who we are by copying others. Who here

hasn’t imitated their childhood hero in the playground, or mum or father? I have.

5.24 HP: A few years ago, in order to make this video for my artwork, I shaved off all my

hair so that I could grow it back as my father had it when he first emigrated from India to the

U.K. in the 1960s. He had a side parting and a neat moustache.

5.46 At first, it was going very well. I even started to get discounts in Indian shops.

(Laughter)
5.56 But then very quickly, I started to underestimate my moustache growing ability, and it

got way too big. It didn’t look Indian anymore. Instead, people from across the road, they

would shout things like –

6.11 HP and YR: Arriba! Arriba! Ándale! Ándale! (Laughter)

6.15 HP: Actually, I don’t know why I am even talking like this. My dad doesn’t even have

an Indian accent anymore. He talks like this now.

6.23 So it’s not just my father that I’ve imitated. A few years ago I went to China for a few

months, and I couldn’t speak Chinese, and this frustrated me, so I wrote about this and had it

translated into Chinese, and then I learned this by heart, like music, I guess.

6.49 YR: This phrase is now etched into my mind clearer than the pin number to my bank

card, so I can pretend I speak Chinese fluently. When I had learned this phrase, I had an artist

over there hear me out to see how accurate it sounded.

7.06 I spoke the phrase, and then he laughed and told me, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great, only it kind

of sounds like a woman.’

7.14 I said, ‘What?’

7.15 He said, ‘Yeah, you learned from a woman?’

7.19 I said, ‘Yes. So?’

7.21 He then explained the tonal differences between male and female voices are very

different and distinct, and that I had learned it very well, but in a woman’s voice. (Applause)

7.42 HP: OK. So this imitation business does come with risk. It doesn’t always go as you

plan it, even with a talented translator. But I am going to stick with it, because contrary to

what we might usually assume, imitating somebody can reveal something unique. So every

time I fail to become more like my father, I become more like myself. Every time I fail to

become Bruce Lee, I become more authentically me.

8.22 This is my art. I strive for authenticity, even if it comes in a shape that we might not

usually expect. It’s only recently that I’ve started to understand that I didn’t learn to sit like

this through being Indian. I learned this from Spider-Man. (Laughter)

8.47 Thank you. (Applause)