The other day a local Chinese graduate student expressed shock that I was a graduate student (rather than an undergrad). This has happened at least four or five times after six months here. They (mostly local Chinese girls) think that I look extremely young, which is strange since I thought all Asian people looked a bit younger than their age (although statistically speaking that assumption is completely incorrect given that we make up the majority of the human race). I express this confusion to them, and they respond that I have a baby face. I have deduced my baby face to one or all of the following three reasons:
1. I am short with a large head, resulting in baby-like head-to-body proportions.
2. Twenty-two years of smiling has given me permanent face-muscles that creates the illusion of baby fat.
3. I wear a clip in my hair (to push back my bangs) much in the fashion of modern day four-year old girls.
I have concluded that I am essentially the Justin Bieber of Asian girls sans the sexual magnetism (no pedo). (More on the topic of Justin Bieber later.)
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Third culture kids
A somewhat over-used term for kids who went to an international school. (And by international school, I don't mean the collection of schools that are not located in the US). It never really occurred to me that I was a third culture kid until I got in a heated/entertaining argument with a true international student about my "internationalism" and how I lack it (no hard feelings, timotius).
This epitome disturbed me. To put it gracefully, third culture kids are weird. I'd like to think of third culture kids as "mutts", but instead of being a conglomeration of different races/nationalities, we're a mixture of different cultures/non-cultures usually under a facade of one race. I say non-cultures because our international school environments essentially put us in the middle of an empty field (quite literally for Shanghai American School) and educated us in a strange bubble (in reality, a gated community) without any fundamental identity to unify us.
This identity crisis has plagued me ever since I arrived in the US for college. Most of my friends have seen the by-product of my identity crisis in the form of me being afraid of white people. Mostly white men. Arriving back in the states for college, I was instantly nervous around these strange types of gents, with thoughts running through my head like: "wow he's tall" "wow he's hairy" "wow I don't know how to respond to you singing a capella tunes while eating a half eaten pork-rib".
Although my fear of white people has somewhat subsided, now that I am in graduate school, it's a completely different story. For those of you who have ever had remote contact with grad students in the US (mostly in technical fields, not being racist, just a fact) you would know that departments throughout US universities are filled with local Chinese students. Meeting them has provoked much confusion from the locals. Their initial belief is that I am local Chinese, but once I speak English in class, this changes their minds completely. Then they think that I don't know a word of Chinese and they start speaking English with me, albeit with much difficulty, where Chinese would actually be the simpler choice for both of us, provoking an awkward string of interactions that I would prefer to avoid. This has been one of my more stressful relationships to deal with in graduate school, largely because it makes me so much more aware of my identity crisis, and how I don't feel as Chinese as I would like to.
I am ethnically Chinese, my parents grew up in Shanghai, I went to elementary-middle school in Philadelphia, and I lived in Shanghai for high school but never went to local school, hence the near-illiteracy and awkward Chinese phrasing. Since I spent high school in China, I missed out on American high school, and this period of life is pretty critical in forming the way you carry yourself, the friends you make, life philosophy, and food taste. High school at SAS has rendered me with no driving skills, no proper taste in current music (stuck in the 90's pop scene), and no comprehension of what fitted-jeans truly are.
It's strange, being stuck in a situation where it is difficult to conduct myself with most people I encounter. With age, I have learned to simply be a generic form of myself with new people: pleasant, laughing at most jokes/non-jokes during uncomfortable situations, and polite. This may be cliche, but perhaps globalization will make more of us confused third-culture kids, and we will no longer feel like outsiders in most situations. (Similar to how globalization will make half-Asians a super-race full of beautiful people. More on this thought later.)
This epitome disturbed me. To put it gracefully, third culture kids are weird. I'd like to think of third culture kids as "mutts", but instead of being a conglomeration of different races/nationalities, we're a mixture of different cultures/non-cultures usually under a facade of one race. I say non-cultures because our international school environments essentially put us in the middle of an empty field (quite literally for Shanghai American School) and educated us in a strange bubble (in reality, a gated community) without any fundamental identity to unify us.
This identity crisis has plagued me ever since I arrived in the US for college. Most of my friends have seen the by-product of my identity crisis in the form of me being afraid of white people. Mostly white men. Arriving back in the states for college, I was instantly nervous around these strange types of gents, with thoughts running through my head like: "wow he's tall" "wow he's hairy" "wow I don't know how to respond to you singing a capella tunes while eating a half eaten pork-rib".
Although my fear of white people has somewhat subsided, now that I am in graduate school, it's a completely different story. For those of you who have ever had remote contact with grad students in the US (mostly in technical fields, not being racist, just a fact) you would know that departments throughout US universities are filled with local Chinese students. Meeting them has provoked much confusion from the locals. Their initial belief is that I am local Chinese, but once I speak English in class, this changes their minds completely. Then they think that I don't know a word of Chinese and they start speaking English with me, albeit with much difficulty, where Chinese would actually be the simpler choice for both of us, provoking an awkward string of interactions that I would prefer to avoid. This has been one of my more stressful relationships to deal with in graduate school, largely because it makes me so much more aware of my identity crisis, and how I don't feel as Chinese as I would like to.
I am ethnically Chinese, my parents grew up in Shanghai, I went to elementary-middle school in Philadelphia, and I lived in Shanghai for high school but never went to local school, hence the near-illiteracy and awkward Chinese phrasing. Since I spent high school in China, I missed out on American high school, and this period of life is pretty critical in forming the way you carry yourself, the friends you make, life philosophy, and food taste. High school at SAS has rendered me with no driving skills, no proper taste in current music (stuck in the 90's pop scene), and no comprehension of what fitted-jeans truly are.
It's strange, being stuck in a situation where it is difficult to conduct myself with most people I encounter. With age, I have learned to simply be a generic form of myself with new people: pleasant, laughing at most jokes/non-jokes during uncomfortable situations, and polite. This may be cliche, but perhaps globalization will make more of us confused third-culture kids, and we will no longer feel like outsiders in most situations. (Similar to how globalization will make half-Asians a super-race full of beautiful people. More on this thought later.)
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