so I was talking to chris from brown about dating, etc, and we got to talking about being asian. it’s a topic I haven’t spent much time thinking about for a little while, and talking to him got me thinking about it again.
(on a side note, A magazine really did merge with Click2Asia. grrr.)
I am a 21 year-old Chinese-American woman. I have dark eyes, dark hair (with blond highlights), and a “yellow” complexion. I’m relatively short — about 5’1.5″, and I weigh about 115 lbs, give or take a few (haven’t weighed myself in a while, so I really have no idea.) I wear glasses. I speak mandarin. I eat my food with chopsticks. eating tripe is no big deal to me. my parents tell me stories of their childhood, and I’ll chuckle along with them. i can understand the way they think, why they think the way they do, and to some degree, share those opinions as well. It’s strange… it even extends to food preferences. in a lot of ways, my sister just doesn’t “get it.” my sister is 15 years old. she’s a normal american teenager, and because of this, she clashes with my parents more than I did when I was growing up. she complains about the food we eat, preferring pizza to pepper/salt squid (I’ve no idea how to translate this. sorry.) We are on different wavelengths in many many ways.
So what’s this “Asian” business about? maybe I’m just disjointed, or I come from a stranger background than most people. What does it mean to be Asian? to be an Asian American? I can’t get past the business that being “asianized” is as simple of bobbing one’s head to spacey techno music while sipping boba through thick straws at relaxtation. it’s just not so simple. and does that sort of activity really justify people segregating themselves off from other cultures? doesn’t that just perpetuate those stereotypes of asians? and what are these “Asians” banding together anyway? to be honest, there’s a wide spectrum of how asian a person is/can be. I’m sure a bunch of them are just too far removed from their asianness that they band together with similarly culturally de-asianized people, and redefine asianness for everyone else. is that what it’s about?
we have at least 4 different student groups comprised of “chinese” students. we have the Association of Chinese Americans, Chinese Student Association, another for Taiwanese students, one for people from Hong Kong.