Awkward Encounters of the Asian Kind

Exactly 36 years ago today, I immigrated to the United States. So the news I read this morning about President Trump signing an executive order that appears to bar immigration from Muslim countries is hitting particularly hard. The act itself is inhumane—and its parallels to historical prejudiced laws that blocked Asians from immigrating in the late19th century has me thinking. Fuming is more precise. Terrified to be honest.

Today is the anniversary of when I met my parents and brother for the first time. I was seven months old, the plane I rode from Seoul landed in Seattle where my connecting flight took me to Kansas City, Missouri. When I think about what would have happened if upon my arrival to the US, I was detained at the airport, my heart breaks for all the refugees who were airborne when Trump signed the executive order last night.

Where were those people headed before Trump aborted their journeys? Are they holding on to hope, or has it slipped away from them? Can they hear the protesters who showed up to the airport in support? Do they know that millions of Americans wish they could apologize for the ignorance and stupidity of President Trump?

I was on my way to pick up a “Pussy Grabs Back” poster I had printed at Kinkos this morning, when my eyes started welling up with tears. It’s not that I’ve been in denial since the election, it’s that my M.O. tends to be emotional detachment. My body does this self-preservation thing without my heart’s approval. It has its advantages and disadvantages.

I started thinking about all the messages of sexism, racism, and fear that Donald Trump spews out, and how as a person, the person who is being inaugurated today, he will undeniably make decisions for our country guided by these isms that do not represent we the people, but he the politician. He lost his moral compass along the way at some point and has been too cowardly to ask for help or seek to be a better, more compassionate version of himself.

I didn’t cry this morning. My anger about our sexist, racist president turned on me and crushed my heart instead. I was left feeling hopeless, and I know that’s a dangerous place to be. It’s paralyzing. There’s too much grassroots organizing needed for me to stress eat at every all you can eat buffet in this country. SO, in an attempt to avoid eating my way through the next four years, I’m going to shed light on a bright spot.

I’m reminding myself that progress doesn’t come in four year cycles, and it doesn’t all start or stop with a single administration. As terrible as the current state of politics in this country is, overall, compared to the 90’s when Margaret Cho’s “American Girl” show didn’t last more than a season, we are now living in an America where shows like Master of None and Fresh Off the Boat exist, AND…

I started watching Elementary recently and am partway through season two. Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson warms my heart. Besides the fact that the Watson role is traditionally played by men in every other Sherlock Holmes adaptation, Liu is Asian! It’s so rare to see an Asian on t.v. playing a role that doesn’t lean on Asian stereotypes. We’ve come a long way people.

I was 20 when the Charlie’s Angel’s movie with Liu in it as Alex came out. She was smart and sexy, because Hollywood doesn’t do just smart women. I’m 36 now and although Liu as Watson is still both smart and sexy, there’s way Way WAY less emphasis on the sexy. Plus I have yet to see Watson do a slo-mo hair flip. She’s stylish and any extra sexualization is due to the biased lens of the viewer.

It might seem like a stretch, but I see the evolution of how Asians are portrayed in movies and on television as a reflection of the progress this country has made when it comes to race and stereotypes. Yes, we still have a long way to go, lots of work to do, but hasn’t it always been that way? And we’ve gotten this far. So, even though I’m sad today and wish the tears would flow to carry away my heartbreak, I do know that progress is possible. I plan to be a vocal and active participant in ensuring our country’s democracy is sustained. I have to, to survive and thrive.

I found myself being zero offended when a woman I was meeting with yesterday used the term “Oriental.” I found this article, which summed up my sentiment.

I have one staple dress that I bought five years ago at Uniqlo in NYC; I wear this dress often, because I don’t give myself a lot of options when it comes to wardrobe—I prefer to have an essential handful of items I can grab off the rack in my closet and not have to think about whether I actually like the dress/shirt/pants/whatever or not. This works well for me because I don’t care if people notice I wear the same outfit several days in a row (I do change my undies, for any Type As reading this and stressing).

I’ve anticipated the opening of Uniqlo’s Denver store since they announced it a year ago. Today is the grand opening and I stopped by this morning to bask in the wonderfulness that I’ve found clothing from Uniqlo to be. I was startled but not surprised to see so many Asians in the store, I actually felt like I was transported to NYC or LA. I did spot one older white guy who looked a little uncomfortable, he was scanning the scene and the look in his eyes was of worry. Where did all these Asians come from? I heard languages besides English being spoken all around me and at one point I counted and the ratio of people of color to white people was 20:1. It occurred to me that all these Asians and myself were in the know about how amazing Uniqlo is—ahead of the curve of consumers; I felt a sense of camaraderie, I imagined everyone in the store was there because they too, love the quality of Uniqlo’s clothes that elevate them from cheap fast fashion.

There was a couple standing in front of me in line for the fitting room. They were speaking some language I couldn’t understand or identify because I was raised in a white family and I’ve done little to learn about any of the Asian languages. The woman and kids behind me were speaking Japanese, which I recognized, because there’s something distinct about the intonation of that language that is familiar to me. Plus, that is the language white people speak to me most often when they want to strike up a conversation. I guess I’ve developed an ear for it over the years. Thanks white people!

As I stood in line for the fitting rooms, I started to feel my adoptee-ness flare up. I was surrounded by Asians speaking their mother tongue and I couldn’t understand a thing. I wondered if they thought I could understand them, because I have absolutely no gauge of whether or not I pass for looking like I speak any of the Asian languages. I mean, obviously white people are convinced I can, but I always wonder about other Asians. Many times I feel like there is some aura that surrounds me, that outs me to Asians, that indicates I was assimilated into the world of white people since I was a baby.

The couple in front of me were talking to each other—still in the language I couldn’t identify or understand, and then they both looked at something across the room. I looked over too, partly because I was curious about what special promotion item they might be eyeing, but also to try and trick them into believing that I could understand what they were saying. I don’t know why I did this. It’s as if I was back in school on the playground, laughing at a joke I didn’t understand; scared to admit I was an odd one out. An odd one indeed.

I feel like the name of this art gallery is painfully submissive. Just A Hint of Asia, because us Asians don’t want to be threatening and lose our “positive stereotype” (NO STEREOTYPE IS POSITIVE) status.

Because more than a hint would be a menace to the white people who live in this small mountain town. Too much exotic Asian, no thank you! Just give us enough to feel like we have diversity in our lives and we’ll call it good.

Because more than a hint would require the gallery owner to give out mandarin oranges and buckets of Asian Zing wings from B-Dubs.

Because more than a hint would break the archetype of mysterious, stoic Asian.

A raging party is the last place I’d expect to be approached about my Korean adopteeness. Yet, I can now check that off my list! Oh wait, it was never on my list. Even though I’m 35, I continue to be amazed at the lack of tact people have. What made a Wash Park mother think that I’d want to talk about my connection to her eight year old Korean adoptee during a Halloween Party? I have absolutely no idea. Not that I live by rules that tell you what’s socially acceptable to talk about in any given circumstance (although I do tend to refrain from toilet talk at the dinner table--mostly because thinking about poop while eating makes me want to gag), but there was something about her choosing to focus and obsess over talking about that single aspect of my identity that was a real buzz killer.

I hate fulfilling the quiet Asian stereotype, yet that’s exactly what I did yesterday during a community partner meeting. I go to these health equity learning series events, each one focuses on a different topic. Yesterday’s topic was racism. There’s always a video of a speaker who’s an expert on the topic, then discussion.

Among the 17 or so of us, there were two African-American women, several Latinas, a majority of white women, and myself. No men. After we watched the video, the white facilitator started us off with a prompt, asking for general reactions to the idea that there is institutionalized racism in many of the systems we interact with each day.

I found myself needing time to process the complex information and implications of what the speaker shared as the older white woman to my left turned to me to share her thoughts. Before she could finish, the facilitator told us to wrap up—it felt like we had no more than one minute to broach the subject.

Large group discussion ensued, kicked off by a young white attendee, carried on by comments from the facilitator and one of the white women who organizes the events. One of the Latina women shared, then another. I kept silent. Partly because as an introvert, that’s how I roll. Also because I really wanted either of the black women to share their thoughts, mostly from a place of wanting a richer conversation made up of more voices, but also because I was tokenizing them in a way that I did not feel proud of.

One of the black women raised her hand and talked about how every day, she tells her son to be careful. Every day when he leaves the house, she worries. She asked the group, “Do any of you have to do that?” Nobody responded. She went on to say that we can talk about these things, but unless you are actually live it, you don’t know. “Driving while black, breathing while black.”

The white organizer responded by commenting that no, she could not know exactly what it felt like to be the parent of a young black man. And then in what I think was an attempt at parent solidarity, she said she did have a daughter. She then asked, “As a white woman, what can I do to help?”

I find these conversations about race important. And necessary. And incredibly messy at times. Without a skilled facilitator present, I find the conversation usually switches tracks constantly and ends up going around and around in a circle.

I raised my hand to speak and was acknowledged—there was an order to these things and the facilitator indicated that my turn would come after the woman who she pointed to first. More people jumped in, responding to the woman who spoke before I was supposed to. I was passed over. I didn’t push or feel moved to speak up for myself.

I was hyper aware of the edge the group was navigating. One woman slipped and stepped into the language of “these people.” As in, “These people need to advocate for themselves.” Another woman called her out on it, saying that it was important to be aware of the language we use. She apologized twice while she shared this opinion. She didn’t want to offend anyone.  

I’m startled but not surprised when people are racist haters against Asians, to my face. Like this past weekend, when K and I were listening to a mushroom expert’s lecture. The woman knew her mushroom stuff, no doubt. As for her knowledge about Asians, she needs to keep her day job.

Besides comparing yellow mushrooms to Asians, her jabs at Asians (which she called “The Asians”) had to do with how sex crazy Asians are, with all their aphrodisiacs. When she was talking about Cordyceps sinensis, the fungus that grows on caterpillars in Tibet and eventually kills the catepillar, she mentioned that the fungus is used as an aphrodisiac by “The Asians” like “a lot of things are.” This got a laugh from the crowd. I wondered if part of the charm for people was the fact that the mushroom expert was 60+ years old. Sympathy laughs? I wish.

She went on to share how “The Asians use big shovels to dig up mushrooms and kill the  mycelium” of a certain type. I got swept away in her generalization and mentally recalled the other three Asians in the audience who I noticed before the talk started. I imagined the four of us with giant shovels, wearing conical hats, wreaking havoc on a hillside of mushrooms, laughing wildly with our Oriental cackles and super slanty eyes.

I find it annoying that I feel bad/guilty/sorrynotsorry about the angry outburst I had earlier this week when K and I were hiking in Zion National Park.

It was hot. Really hot. Did I mention we were in the desert?

As we made our way down from the upper Emerald Pools back to the trailhead, a women mumbled something as I passed her. I heard her say to K, “No speak English?”

The woman was European-American looking. My stereotypical guess would be that she was from Anywhere USA, aka the suburbs. I turned around and drove my death stare into her head as I said, “I SPEAK ENGLISH.”

She proceeded to ask us vague questions (“How much longer?”) like a child might inquire during a road trip. “TO WHERE?” I demanded clarification, anger and impatience setting the tone of my voice.

Ignorant to my agitated verbal cues, the woman continued on with her line of questioning, as if K and I were forest rangers. She possessed the same tone I’d encountered when working retail—entitled and put out that we were not answering her questions to her liking.

Nevermind the fact that K and I noticed ~75% of the people we encountered speaking languages other than English (it seemed many people were visiting from various European countries) and that the woman’s inquiry of my (and possibly K’s) ability to speak English was absolutely justified. The shit that got under my skin was her condescending broken English. “No speak English?” God dammit lady, just say, “Do you speak English?”!!!

It’s as if the accumulated rage I’d built up over the years from watching people make fun of the way Asian characters talk on t.v., in movies, and real life bubbled up and out of me, scalding that woman.

“I feel like I’m blind,” I told the staff at Whole Foods. I pointed him to the shelves upon shelves of vinegars (apple cider, white wine, red wine, champagne, basamic, cane, malt...) and told him I didn’t see any rice vinegar.

The second he responded, I realized my mistake. Rice vinegar is an ASIAN THING. “Oh, you know what? I don’t think they’ve finished moving all the vinegars over here. It may be in aisle 10. I’ll go look, I don’t want you to have to walk all the way over there if it’s not there,” he said. I knew why he didn’t want to send me over to aisle 10 if rice vinegar wasn’t there. And it wasn’t to save me the steps. He was afraid that if there were no rice vinegar, he would have sent the Asian lady to spend time in the land of segregated “Asian Foods.”

Why is it that “Asian” and “Hispanic” are food sections? I’ve never seen “Italian,” “Middle Eastern,” “Indian” or “German” labels at the top of aisles. Wouldn’t it be more accurate for grocery stores to tell you what foods are in each aisle instead of the race of people who supposedly eat or make the items?

I dropped in to the art room at the youth center on Colfax this past week and was relieved to escape spreadsheets and supervision for some quality time with melty beads. The room was packed. Every seat in the room taken, an overflow of kids were sprawled out on the floor in the corner. Dozens of little kid fingers carefully selected brightly colored beads from paper plates  and placed them into patterns on little nub covered animal and flower shaped bases. Every once in a while a kid would exclaim, “Ugh!” if their beads got knocked off the nubs of their shape from someone bumping into the table or the clumsiness of their own fingers causing the tiny cylinder beads to scatter.

I was recruited by one girl to go around and find all the blue beads I could find for her dolphin shaped bead project. So I did. And I realized being a worker bee for that girl was way more fun than being a worker bee for The Man.

As I scavenged all the blue beads I could find, two girls I’d never met before struck up a conversation with me. “Are you going to be here forever?” asked one of them. I quickly turned on the kid translator in my brain. It registered Are you a new staff person who works here? while simultaneously the part of my brain that likes to interpret things literally imagined me leaning against that table in the art room FOREVER, not moving, hair and fingernails growing long, maybe I’d even start growing a beard, eventually I’d grow a hump on my back and then I’d turn into a big pile of wrinkly skin.

“No, I’m just here for the day,” I told her.

“Are you Mrs. Wong?” her friend asked.

“Yeah, are you Nurse Wong?” the first girl added.

I was feeling playful, I was feeling free. I found myself swept up in the kid energy filling that art room and wanted to pretend to be Nurse Wong. I imagined telling the girls about all my nurse adventures, healing injured Doozers down in Fraggle Rock and making it rain Sponge Bob band-aids in schools across the country. I decided it would be awkward if the next time they visited Nurse Wong at their school, they reminded her of all these fantastical stories she told them. She might send them home with a diagnosis of delirium.

I’ve been professionally developed a lot lately. Most trainings in my field start out with participants introducing themselves and the trainer establishing group guidelines or asking for everybody’s input on how they want to hold space together for the remainder of the training.

At the beginning of a recent training I was at, the trainer had three things listed on flip paper that they wanted us to talk about during our introductions. There were:

Name

Title/What you do

Where you were born

For people unfamiliar with trainings, the third one may seem irrelevant or like a big leap from the second item. Typically, the idea is to “break the ice,” get people comfortable with each other, talking about something besides what they’re at the training for, in hopes of creating a learning environment where they feel comfortable and can then soak in all the information and leave at the end of the day, professionally developed.

The third prompt had the exact opposite affect on me. Maybe that’s why when I stood up to introduce myself to 27 strangers, I omitted it. Before I could sit down though, someone from another one of the circle tables in the hotel conference room shouted out, “Where were you born?!”

“OH, Seoul Korea,” I added, as if the third prompt had really just escaped my mind.

My lack of just saying my birth place to begin with ended up making a moment that emphasized the very fact about myself that I wanted to keep on the down low. I should clarify here that the reason I resisted sharing this information is not because I’m ashamed of where I was born. Really, I was concerned with people approaching me to ask questions that I could answer on behalf of all the people of Asia. Yes, I was afraid of becoming the TOKEN ASIAN in the room.

After everyone introduced themselves, the trainer commented, “Well, it sounds like we have people from all over the United States...and Korea.”

I turn 35 this year, and for the past several years my fellow 30+ friends and I have taken to adding, “30+!” after sharing stories of turning in early on a Friday night because our feet hurt or preferring to play card games with our partners over hanging out at a bar.

I’ve found comforts in 30+ life that make me look forward to growing older. I know that as a woman, I’m expected to resist aging or showing signs of aging because the general understanding is that my worth is based on my appearance, so when that transforms into something outside the very limited definition of beauty, it’s time to either start with the surgeries and removal of “age spots” or be excluded from the male gaze that I’ve been taught is an indicator of my value. I’m not buying that bullshit or the age defying night cream it’s served with.

Instead of pouring my income into the predatory and manipulative so called beauty industry, I’ve started investing in my own health. I read a book recently that had a lot of real talk in it. I appreciate real talk. After digesting what the book had to say about diet and lifestyle, I started to make a few changes in what I eat and how stressed out I allow myself to get over work. And I took my first ever wheatgrass shot...30+!

K and I tried to go on a Saturday evening to a coffee and juice bar to take what would be the inaugural shot for both of us. Whereas 10 years prior, I would have been across the street at the Park Tavern, taking shots of whiskey, I was now replacing pouring poison into my body with pouring the equivalent of 5 lbs of raw organic veggies down the hatch.

We were denied. The juice bar was closed for the night. Oh, the inconveniences in 30+ life! We tried again a few days later, and the bartender informed us that the machine was broken. We successfully ordered our first shots of wheatgrass at another juice bar across town. I loved it, K not so much. For me, there was a sweetness and garlicky taste to it, followed by a tingling sensation in my arms and a noticeable jolt of energy. Kinda like taking a shot of espresso, but the wheatgrass’s high lasted much longer.

Like, days longer. My constitution post wheatgrass shot was markedly different than my pre self, who had trouble getting out of bed in the morning and felt like stupid January was going to last forever and stupid cold weather and chapped lips would never go away.

My post wheatgrass self had encounters that felt more like a game show than awkward interactions due to my Asianess. As I was walking in to the Walgreens on Alameda and Federal, I saw two men standing outside of the store, asking passers by for money. I braced myself for both their ask and for any comment they might make.

“Hey sweetheart,” one of them said. I gave him a nod and courtesy smile as I walked by.

“Are you Japanese?” he asked.

“No,” I replied.

“Korean?” he guessed.

“Ding, ding, ding!” I ringed. Not angrily or annoyed as I would have pre wheatgrass, but excited and genuinely, because Korean was his SECOND guess, as opposed to Chinese or Vietnamese. I thought about how the world is getting older and wiser, and felt hopeful...4 billion+!

The next day I went to the dry cleaners and the woman working there asked me, “Are you Korean?”

“Yes,” I told her.

“Me too,” she said.

My reaction to racist things people say ranges between forgiveness and I’d like to tear your fucking face off. Most times it falls somewhere in the middle. Kids and those with mental disabilities tend to trend toward forgiveness whereas entitled and mean people summon the other end of the spectrum.

I was at a board meeting this past weekend for the small non-profit theater that I like to support when I’m not at my real non-profit job. Full disclosure, our board is far from what you’d imagine a board of directors to be. We don’t meet in a conference room at a long table while sitting in big cush chairs on wheels. We meet in a little room off the back of the theater company’s costume storage house where the walls are decorated with things like an awkward family photo from one of their plays and a pair of Fruit of the Loom underwear with a penis painted on them (from another one of their plays). At least that’s what was on one of the walls during the last meeting when I had to listen to a woman carry on about her kids and how her family “went viral” on Halloween. 

I admit, I am not a warm, fuzzy, touchy-feely person. This is especially true when I’m at work or in meetings, even if said meeting is for the most casual board of directors in the universe. I don’t want to hear about your fucking kids. I want to get down to fucking business. If it’s not on the agenda, I don’t give a fuck. I feel strongly about this, as my excessive use of expletives suggests.

I listened to this dominant talker brag about her kids and family like they are the fucking Kardashians, while wondering if the others listening actually cared or were just better at pretending than I was. I also became more aware with each passing second, that this woman is exactly the reason why I don’t like meetings. Because unlike parties, where I can just walk away from someone being annoying, at meetings I must remain a captive audience until the end. FUCK.

And then it happened. She was talking about how packed one of the recent productions was, how people were sitting on the floor with pillows, “You had to mash people in like the Japanese” she said.

Or did she say pack? I remember her saying pack. Or maybe that’s just my wishful alliteration thinking. I noted the comment in my phone immediately, so auto-not correct is a possibility, but even so, the second part of her comment is what alerted me.

Like the Japanese.

“Excuse me!” came a voice through the open passenger side window of a car, while I was on my evening walk. It sounded like the owner of the voice might need directions.

I turned around to find an older man, elbow hanging out the window, cigarette dangling from his fingers. “I was just betting money that you’re Korean,” he said.

“Oh yeah?” I answered, calculating how threatened I felt. Zero threatened I decided. It was still light out and I was on a busy street. Plenty of cars around as witnesses, in case this man jumped out of his car and grabbed me, throwing me into the back to take me to a lab to confirm my Koreaness. 

“Yeah, somethin’ about you is Korean” he explained.

I wondered what it could be. Was it the giant grey hoodie I was wearing, accentuating my petite Asian frame? No. That was MADE IN HONDURAS. Was it the black, straight leg, where’s the flood sweatpants I was sporting? No. MADE IN INDONESIA. Was it something in the way that I moved? I wasn’t skipping down the sidewalk, Gangnam Style, so no.

“Hmmm” I replied, knowing that our conversation would soon be over once the stoplight turned green. “You bet money?” I inquired.

He seemed tripped up by this. He started to stutter and repeated, “I was just sayin’ there’s something about you that’s Korean.” Did he think I was going to demand a cut of the money if I told him I was Korean? If I had a penny for every time a dude wanted a pat on the back for correctly guessing my ethnicity, I’d have a good chunk of change. Probably not as much as this guy was going to win if I confirmed his hunch.

K and I recently hosted a houseguest from Japan. He was one of the men K knows from the small but worldwide network of puzzle box makers. K met the man from Japan about a decade ago, and his visit to Denver was the first time I met him myself.

In preparation for his stay with us, I cleaned the house, as per usual. I also pulled out our sofa sleeper (which still fills me with amazement every time I witness the metamorphosis of our IKEA corner sofa into a double bed). Then came the angst-driven preparations, such as setting out a wash cloth in addition to a bathroom towel for our guest, and breaking out the nice silverware that K and I got as a wedding gift, and until this moment, had never used.

It occurred to me that each of these unnatural preparations I was making might be interpreted by our houseguest as THE AMERICAN WAY. I never use a wash cloth. Did offering one to him make it seem like ALL AMERICANS use them? And the forks I unwrapped from their packaging seemed gigantic compared to the ones K and I normally use, so would our houseguest think, “Jesus Christ, these Americans really know how to shovel it in.” 

I prepared dinner for the evening he arrived and even second guessed my selections (black bean burgers,oven baked mac and cheese, and tomato salad). K mentioned our guest might not be that in to cheese. Was I setting him up for a gut bomb by serving mac and cheese (that I assumed he would not refuse because, you know, Japanese house guests are so polite that they don’t turn away offerings from their host)?

Upon their arrival from the airport, I greeted K and our houseguest at the front door. He bowed his head to me and I mirrored his gesture. After thanking K and me for having him in our home he looked at me and said, “You look Asian.”

Yes. Yes I do. And many times, that is the extent of my Asian identity. I was raised by white people in the midwest. I had American friends growing up. I did American things like curl my bangs in the 80’s and watch My So Called Life in the 90’s. I am American through and through, no matter how much people I meet want to shove me into the “Asian/Pacific Islander” box.