Lunches with my dad always serve up some sort of reminder of the two cultures my family represents. My dad’s wife and I can’t communicate much because she primarily speaks Mandarin. Meanwhile my mother is mistaken for Yoko Ono when we go to Arlo Guthrie concerts. My 90-year old grandmother was raised in China as a boy for the first ten years of her life because her family didn’t want her to be discriminated against. Back in the states, back in the now, none of my generation in the family speaks Mandarin fluently. A year ago my cousin married a tall, blonde Brazilian woman. My sister, called a “serial dater,” by my mom, has been dating White boys since high school. My other married cousin is raising two Eurasian daughters.

It may seem that I talk about “Yellow Fever” a lot, but I’m really just slapping a facetious label on an interesting pattern. I pursued Ethnic Studies because I’m fascinated by cultural theories that I could apply to everyday life, and there is no such interpersonal relationship that does not involve some sort of intercultural interaction.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to become aware of the Asian and American hybrid-ity throughout my generation of the family:

October 21, 2006

Realization of Love and Race

Sometimes it takes a smack in the head for us to see something as it has always been. Other times, it just takes a random string of thoughts inspired by nothing in particular. For me, it took such a random string of thoughts some 22 years after…birth for me to see that my generation in the family – of siblings and cousins – has predominantly had relationships with people outside of the Chinese ethnicity and Asian race. In fact, even though statistics on interracial relationships show a stronger proportion of Asian female to Caucasian male couplings, my family actually shows strong cases on both sides, with both of my Asian male cousins being in committed relationships (either en route to being married or already wedded) with Caucasian women.

It seems as if only Twin and I have been in semi-serious relationships with Asians. Chinese Twin with a Korean girl from Singapore and Chinese Mayka with a Pilipino boy from…Hayward. (…)

For most other Asian diaspora, this isn’t a big deal. But it has been something worth wondering for me. I’ve thought about it on numerous occasions since I last “discovered” it about two weeks ago, and I cannot help but to think of what it will lead to for me. Will the pattern be repeated by Asia and Twin? Am I destined to fall in love with a man outside of an Asian race? Was I ignoring all of this while looking into interracial relationships involving Asians in all my Ethnic Studies classes? What does it mean for me? Does it mean nothing? – Because I can deal with that. Does it mean I’m fighting something by trying to preserve an Asian core when, in comparison to others, my own connection to my Chinese roots is not that strong?

In general I put too much value into the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I know that I don’t have control over things like relationships and love. But still, looking into what my family represents makes me wonder if I’m headed for that path, too. As if knowing the probability of another Mei descendant getting involved with a Caucasian can actually be calculated or even worth anything. As if strength of compatibility percentages will suddenly hover over the head of every man I see, telling me whether I should take a chance or not. Or telling me that dating Asians is a waste of time.

I joke around with a semi-serious tone telling people that “I’m not here to cure anybody’s Yellow Fever.” And now this realization. It overturns my world.

If someone had told me five years ago that I would be spending so much time with a blue-eyed boy with three super English names, I’d say, “You trippin’.” When Bongo asked if he could call me his “Little China Girl” I said yes, as long as I could call him “Pretty Fly for a White Guy.” That, my friends, is compromise. (Pop music lyric allusions to David Bowie and The Offspring, respectively.)