Learning from Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a great and splendid thing. Today I was looking up "Tagalog" since I recently came across this video of Cebuano prisoners dancing to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," and I wanted to know more about this language that's been so heavily influenced by other languages.

As usual, I couldn't help myself from clicking on link after link, and I learned some interesting stuff along the way.

1. The Philippines is home to the largest Eurasian population, with over 2.5 million of us. The United States trails in at a distance second with around 700,00, and, to my surprise, nay, shock, China is ranked third with over 660,000. That means China has more Eurasians than Japan as well as Thailand and Singapore. I find this highly suspect, although I assume Hong Kong is included in China's figure, and, perhaps more significantly, they're including the numbers of part-European minority ethnicities of China. Incidentally, the Philippines is also home to the world's second-largest population of Americans (behind only the U.S. itself). Sudden fascination with the Philippines; I'm not sure why.
2. Furthermore, an American sitcom that ran in the late '60s to early '70s by the name of "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" featured a half-Korean, half-white protagonist. The character was played by a Eurasian actress by the name of Nancy Hsueh, but after a year was written out of the script because the portrayal of the character's relationship with a white man spelled an interracial relationship on television, which was apparently too controversial and, in fact, offended some people.

Linked Article for the Day

Are Immigrants and Refugees People of Color?

Color Lines by Rinku Sen

"I spend a lot of time with immigrants and refugees from the global south who are not only unfamiliar with the term, “people of color,” but quite hostile to it. Last summer, while I was training immigrant and refugee advocates on racial justice principles, a Somali woman and a Vietnamese man told me that they didn’t relate to the label, and indeed, didn’t think their struggles had anything to do with race. They were Somali and Vietnamese, and they were immigrants. They were disinclined to spend much time figuring out the racial dimensions of anti-immigrant rhetoric or how to make common cause with U.S.-born people of color, especially Blacks and Latinos. I gave the group a little lecture about how identities change through a combination of what happens to you (the external) and how you react to those events (the internal). It can be hard to accept, but a new context demands a new identity–being Indian became far more important to my family here than it was in India, where language, region, religion and caste mattered more. The American context demands an understanding of the country’s racial history and hierarchy. Luckily, the human spirit is flexible enough to hold existing identities while adding elements that help us adapt."

The Boxes

As a foreigner living in China, one of the first questions you hear from people you've just met--Chinese and other foreigners--tends to be "Where are you from?"

And this isn't that secret-code-where-are-you-from question that many Asian Americans, mixed Americans (and probably plenty of other non-white folks in predominantly white countries, too) hear that really means "What are you?" or "What's your ethnic makeup?" The asker here is usually genuinely asking where you, yourself, is from.

And for some reason I have trouble answering that question. I always have. When I went off to East L.A. for college, I had trouble answering that question with "Malibu" for fear of the judgment. My standard answer eventually became "I grew up in the Valley but went to high school on the Westside." Not that the vagueness really hid much, or that saying one is from "the Valley" is really much less embarrassing than saying one is from "Malibu" when you're going to a school many of the students affectionately (or not-so, as the case may be) refer to as "Ghetto State." If it came out that the asker was actually inquiring into my ethnic background, I didn't have so much of a problem answering that.

Now, when people ask me, I'm able to simply say, "The States" or "L.A." without having to further specify, save for relatively rare occasions when I run into people who have lived or been to L.A. before. But now I'm finding it hard to answer that question for another reason. Most of the foreigners here, I sense, view me as simply another white foreigner. On the other hand, my dark hair and eyes seems to give many Chinese people the sense that I am not American. Lately, I've taken to answering the question with another question: "What do you think?" or simply, "Guess."

Rarely do people guess 美国人 (American). Oftentimes I hear French or German for whatever reason--but I've also heard things like Middle Eastern, Korean, Arabian--and sometimes people have even asked, "Are you Chinese or foreign?" or have said that I "look Chinese." But that's rare. The confusion, it seems, can sometimes be boiled down to a prevailing notion that Americans all have blond hair.

Once they're done guessing, I usually tell them I'm American ... and then quickly follow it up with "... but my mother's Chinese. I'm mixed." It's become automatic, this need to inform. Surely it's acceptance-seeking in this land where my ability to speak the language is still severely limited. My vaguely quasi-Asian appearances are the only thing I have to go on. Still, this seems to be a satisfying answer to many people, explaining both my "foreign" appearance and my dark features. The other week the guy at the bun shop down the street was like, "Yeah! I knew it!" when I said that. I didn't realize that the revelation of my ethnicity would make somebody so happy.

Other foreigners, on the other hand, when they find out I am half-Chinese tend to respond with disbelief. "You really don't look like it," I've been told. "Your parents are Chinese?" somebody asked me the other day, after I told him that I was ABC, "too." (He had brought up the term first, when we were talking about another ABC here, who, this person claimed, "didn't count as a foreigner.") His response suggested I didn't know what "ABC" meant.

Which puts me in the position of racial spy, meaning I'm privy to plenty of -ist remarks from white foreigners about Chinese people.

This is in sharp contrast, actually, to those encounters I had in college, when I was regularly asked "what I was" because to many of my schoolmates (the white population was under 10 percent), though I seemed ethnically ambiguous, I didn't look white, apparently.

At any rate, this semi-rant was inspired by an interview I just ran across with one of the candidates on America's Next Top Model, or whatever it's called. I only ever saw episodes from the first season of that show, but I do still have a soft spot for U.S. pop culture and read up on it from time to time (I did also recently buy and proceed to obsessively watch all three seasons of Project Runway). Apparently there was a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian model named April Wilkner on the second season of ANTM, and that was who the interview was with.

In it, she says, "Well, first, I just want to say that I’m very proud of my Japanese heritage, and I had no issue with being seen as half Japanese. My problem was that a lot of people were trying to put me in this box of being 100% Asian, and neglect the other half of who I am, and that’s what I kind of didn’t like. They were trying to put me in this box, and I just wanted to be myself, and that means all sides of me. I guess maybe they had a problem with me wanting to be myself, rather than just to fit into that little category they wanted to create for me, which was ‘The Asian Girl.' I am Asian, half-Asian."

I'm feeling I'm in a reverse situation. Nobody's ever called me Asian, meaning that just as April feels identifying as 'The Asian Girl' denies aspects of her identity, identifying myself as simply "American" (which here seems to equate with "Caucasian") seems to deny the Chineseness.

I've always felt it sort of odd to just throw that out, though (I'm from L.A.--but I'm half-Chinese ?) as if it's not relevant to the actual question, and/or it shouldn't be relevant to anything and/or it's a thinly disguised attempt at grabbing some ethnic cred, but ...

Traditionally, if you ask in Chinese about somebody's hometown, they'll often answer with their father's. This is a point I'm not extremely clear on, but I read about it somewhere, and it seemed to explain why on more than one occasion I've asked somebody where their hometown is they'll tell me a city; I'll later mention it, and they'll say, no, I never lived there, or something equally confusing. So maybe I'm not that far off by bringing up my mother's hometown.

on thinness, or what somebody else wants me to be

biTCH no. 8961

There’s 黑哇 standing by his van. I wave out cheerily as I pass by. I just finished my last day of class, and I’m on my way home.

"你好！” he shouts out. “哦，小真。你长胖了！”

“是吗？” I reply, genuinely surprised. I look down and pat my stomach. I’ve been running recently, though it’s true, not nearly as much as I had been last summer. But I didn’t think I was becoming noticeably fatter.

“是我的感觉！你觉得呢？是因为你每天吃肯德基、麦当劳？”

“不是！” I scoff. The truth is, it’s been years since I’ve eaten KFC or McDonald’s (well, other than a handful of times I ate McDonald’s ice cream).

But I laugh it off and carry on my way, commending myself for my assimilation. It was only just over two years ago, after I’d been here a year, when one of my male acquaintances had said to me (in awkward English over MSN), “Every time I see you, you are getting fatter and fatter,” and I had gone into a rage.

He was preparing to go to the UK to study within a few months, and I told him he’d better read up on the culture of English-speaking people before he went so he wouldn’t make any such social faux pas while he was there.

“But I consider you as my friend,” he said. “That’s why I thought I could say that.”

Not really. I can’t think of any friend I’d want to hear that from, unless—and this is a big unless—I had specifically asked them. I can’t imagine any of my friends in the States offering up that commentary, unsolicited.

I could, however, imagine my mom saying that. Because she has. More than once. (And, in fact, the only time she told me I was “nice and thin” was after I’d been snorting cocaine on a daily basis for a couple of months and eating once every three days.)

Today, the more I thought about how I’ve changed, and how describing people here as “fat” seems more like how I would perceive somebody saying they’re tall or short than it is like saying they’re unhealthy and/or unattractive, the more I became annoyed. Until hadn’t just shrugged it off, and it became a big part of my day.

The difference this time was rather than being angry and annoyed with the weight-evaluator, I was angry and annoyed at myself. For not having gone running as much as I “should” have been. For eating a lot when I’m not even hungry sometimes. For always wanting to eat dessert. And then for being annoyed that I care. And then for having dated those guys—there was more than one! In fact, every one except one or two—who at some point or another expressed their desire, some more directly than others, for me to lose weight. It doesn’t help that I have a penchant for dating skinny skinny boys. Hyrum: “You have a big ass,” he’d said after we’d been together almost a year. Nghi, squeezing my back: “You know, Jen, you’d be really hot if you lost this.” Cui Zhong Ku: “You’re very strong.” Mike: “You should lose weight.” Xiao Fei: “You should play some sports.”

Fuck that! And fuck that feeling that I now have to carry around with me all day. And even when I try to go run, I’m just going to think about it and get pissed off. Because, like, that’s not even the reason I started running, really! The only thing that truly motivates me to run is the thought of my parents in their 50s with already rapidly declining health, and the fear that I’ll become that if I don’t start establishing exercise habits now, in my mid-20s, for the first time in my life.

I have body issues. I have body issues. I have body issues. I am the average American woman. This shit is deep. And lame. And I guess I haven’t progressed in my assimilation, in fact, ‘cause I’m still getting worked up over being called “胖.”

Some larger women are viewed as sexy. They’re called “curvy” or “voluptuous,” and in order to qualify for that category of sexy/desirable, they have massive breasts. I, apparently, have a robust midsection, but no breasts. Such an utter lack of breasts that Chloe likes to grope my chest in admiration and wonder, and asked me if it’s OK if she refers men who complain about her small breasts to me.

“Sure, no problem. I’ll kick ‘em in the nuts,” I say.

I didn’t get a petite “Asian” body. I just got little “Asian” boobs.

My pants just keep getting tighter, and I haven’t been on a date in over a year.

And most of all, it’s fucked up that I have to get so worked up over this that I have to write about it and be tempted to call up my friends to bitch about it, but no, I’m going to hash this out on my own ‘cause what’s anybody gonna say that could make me feel better now anyway? “You’re not fat!” Well that’ll just seem like a big fat, try-to-appease white lie now. “Why does it matter, anyway?” Yeah, I’m glad you with your set of cock’n’balls can so easily be so consciously developed as to think that, but for the rest of us, thanks for the complete absence of any practical help whatsoever.

And what's perhaps most fucked up is that all of this body-image and weight and desirability gets equated with self-worth. That, for me, is the underlying issue here.

On Racialicious there is a posting of this two-part documentary, produced by Asian American students at Columbia University on body image in the Asian American community. Some of the comments are interesting, but, in a word, depressing. All of it.

I am not conforming to any of these standards, and for some reason that's bothering me. Something about being here and not seeing myself as a completely Caucasian person (like there's some sort of exemption made because everyone knows white people are bigger), but being too big to not be.

Time for ice cream! Jesus.

Over Post-Bangkok Blues

Upon returning from Bangkok, I was pretty cranky. Perhaps the worst culture shock I've experienced in my three years outside the States. It might have to do with the fact that the week I spent in Bangkok with my pregnant friend (who has given birth to a healthy boy) was probably the most luxurious week I've had in ... a while. We spent the entire time walking from air-conditioned soda shop to air-conditioned gelato shop, drinking cold beverages, eating lots of delicious Thai and western food, and, of course, ice cream.

So perhaps it's not surprising that when I got back to the dirty 'du, it was quite the contrast. Central AC doesn't seem to exist outside of the highest-end shopping malls (which I've never set foot in), there is certainly no gelato shop that I know of here, and I tend to walk a lot faster when I'm walking alone. But I was mostly re-bothered by the staring. And then, because I was allowing it to bother me, I was getting annoyed at myself. I'd have to say the vast majority of people don't even notice me, especially if I'm walking with my head down, or, if they do, don't respond to it. So it's not even that many people who take an obvious good look, but some of those who do make it so obvious (body swiveling 180 degrees, neck craning) that I couldn't help but cringe.

But it's been a few weeks, and I'm over it again. Chengdu's been my home for the past two years, and I have recently decided that it will continue to be for at least another year. Because while people here might stare, I've worked at learning how to speak Chinese and can now communicate reasonably well, and a lot of people are just out and out friendly once that barrier is broken through--which is something that was really pointed out to me during my stay in Bangkok, when I really couldn't communicate beyond getting food.

Next, I just have to figure out how to get a visa...