As an Asian-American Abroad

When I travel abroad, I tell people that I was born and raised in Boston when they ask me where I am from (this is a particularly common question in Turkey and China from what I have experienced in my travels). It’s been almost expected for people to ask me where my parents are from too since my thick, long black hair and dark brown, almond-shaped eyes aren’t featured that much at all in Hollywood films (which are very popular with Turkish people and everyone else around the world). I tell people that my parents are Chinese immigrants specifically that my father came from Hong Kong and that my mother came from a Southern province. Later, if conversations go further or when I stay in touch with someone, I explain that virtually no one related to me still live in China and Hong Kong and that my parents and relatives have been living in Boston and New York for a long time now, and that I’ve touched so many cultures that I can’t say that I know the Chinese culture extremely well, much less even feel partial to it. I don’t favor the Chinese culture over others (but it’s not to say that I have no sympathy for the Chinese. I do feel a connection to the Chinese in some way in terms of my vague familiarity with what the Chinese believe in, value, and don’t value) and I also feel really bad when a Chinese person or Chinese-American is murdered in America and proper justice hasn’t been served (such as the 1982 Vincent Chin murder in Detroit and the 2013 unsolved case of the mysterious death of a Chinese-Canadian tourist, Elisa Lam, in Los Angeles).