"Go to back to school. Then you'll learn some English and understand what I'm saying."
A man said this to me the other day, with absolutely no provocation.
I’ve been spoiling for a fight ever since. Normally I can ignore the “Ni hao” and the “Can you speak Asian?” (I’m sorry, no, but do you speak Caucasian?) and the times my best friend’s boyfriend would call me flat-chested and say “I smell spring rolls— oh wait no, it’s just Cass here.”
Rolling with my friends’ ethnic jokes? I can do that. Sometimes. But right now I’m fighting a sugar hangover and hating on the heteronormative paradigm, and there’s too much cranky in my system to play nice. The next bigot who incorrectly assumes I’m an international student, and therefore easy prey, will find me getting ghetto Asian gangster on their ass. And then I’ll correct their grammar."
I immigrated to NZ from HK when I was 7 years old. I was fairly young and growing up in NZ, I was always aware of my skin colour. I'm talking about the type of awareness that caves into a sense of inferiority and a total downsize on the old self esteem. Looking back, I can't contribute these feelings to the racial tension because as a child, I was insanely shy and insecure to begin with and to be honset, I find it hard to remember any specific racial incidents that made me feel this way. I moved with my family to Oregon when I was 17 and I did my undergrad there for 4 years and worked for another and it was here, in the States that I shed my shyness, grabbed a bit of the american assertiveness (a good thing for me) and quickly became unaware of my race in a way that once impedded me. To you, this might sound bad, to forget that you're what ever ethnicity you are but to me, it is not all black and white. To me, I am not forgetting that I'm chinese. I know fully who I am but being chinese should not take over who I am. I'm not sure if readers can relate and that is fine if you can't but it is hard for me to judge how far I need to explain myself.
I never knew how much I've changed in Oregon until I moved back to NZ for my Masters degree. It was a double culture shock. There is something about NZ that I can not explain. It is as if I've acquired a bit of my old insecurity and my new self is battling with the old. I am again, aware of my race and my outgoing side has been sucker punched in the face, twice. The social contrast is so big that now I thought of how I never felt a racial divide on my own part when I was in Oregon. I was Tiffany, loud, scientist and Chinese. Now, I saw myself as Chinese, Tiffany, Scientist, awkward. Some times I'd like to think it's all me but I can't help to think the environment affects me. It does. It totally does. Don't get me wrong, my kiwi friends are insanely awesome and I love them to death but you do have to make more of an effort to become friends than you would in my American experience. An american friend of mine, whom I met in NZ was working in the same city I was living in. He has since moved back to Portland as well and we talked about this very topic. To my relief, it was not just me. He's an American caucasian and he said that it was so difficult for him to make any friends, he found NZers to be more conservative socially despite them being "friendly". I agreed with him and sometimes think that people would think that we're crazy for contradicting ourselves in one whole sentence.
Whilst in Dunedin, NZ, I recieved two different types of bigotry. One was the outright "Go home you asians!" screams out of driving cars, the usual bottle throwings, the pumping of the gas to threaten to run you over when you're legally walking across the street. The other is more subtle, it has good intentions but is not considered PC. This type irks me but the good intentions over ride their narrow mindedness. These type of irks include " Your english is good!", "Konnichiwa!" (This one can be used in the outright way, of which I have experienced) and "Hooow doo youu like Newww Zealand?". The latter sent me crying to a bathroom. My last two year stints in NZ has made me come to terms with the fact that there will always be a small percentage of people that are like this, even though I have not encountered such experiences in Oregon, it does not mean they do not exsist. I'm lucky enough to have experienced both sides to know not to be bitter, scared or angry. (I am sometimes but not for long, for it is not I with the small capacity to accept diversity) It also makes me so very thank ful for all the lovely friends that I have made in NZ that proves to me that my new self is still very much intact.
This concludes this month's heavy post.
