CHIPANESE FOREVER

[hi_bye]

have any of you been with me to an asian restaurant / grocery store / out in public period? if so, then you know that i invariably get asked what my ethnicity is (as if it's anyone's business). some think chinese, i've gotten thai or some other southeast asian variety before, but mostly i get asked if i'm korean. okay, i can understand how my

Comments

[sandieshewrites]

"How does that work?" What kind of comment is that? Are they referring to the war between China and Japan? Despite my quarter Japaneseness, I'm pretty clueless about this subject.

My potluck roommate in the dorms was and exchange student from Japan. She was half Japanese and half Chinese...and she didn't tell me until we knew each other really well. Before that, she only told me she was Japanese because in Japan it was shameful for her to be mixed. She even has two different names to conceal her mixed identity. One is a Chinese name which she uses when she lives in China, and the other is a Japanese name she uses in that country. She also told me not to tell my Japanese grandmother that she was part Chinese. I feel bad that she still feels like she has to live in secrecy...but I never quite got what it was all about.

[aka_imelda]

Most of the countries in Asia have been at war with each other at one point or another over land, goods, etc. Except for Thailand which usually just rolled over and did whatever the conquering country wanted. Usually, China came out on top until the 20th c. Because of the centuries of fighting, there's a lot of deep seeded prejudice that still lingers today, especially among the top three nations - China, Japan, and Korea. The prejudice seeps out in little ways - arguments about who really invented sushi or who is innately smarter. It's kind of like racism in the US, but different. Does that make sense?

[sandieshewrites]

Gotcha. I should have asked you in the first place! Ms. Asian Studies major.

[hi_bye]

haha, that's it exactly! actually, my dad likes to claim that everything came from the Chinese. pfft. even the internet...

[hi_bye]

wow, that's weird. i can understand where your roommate was coming from though. i got really odd reactions when i went to japan and told people (after they asked) that my dad was chinese and my mom was japanese. to me, it's more ethnicity than nationality, and i don't think it's a big deal in any case. but what do i know.