The Cultural Hyphen (continued)Finally I made it back to my table. I sat there next to my brother. I noticed some old Chinese women pointing at me. I ignored them and went on eating. Later on while I was walking through the crowd, I pretended not to see those same old women again. This time I overheard some of their conversation. They made fun of some of the Caucasians and African-Americans, the "foreigners" who were here as friends of the family or as spouses of other family members. It never really bothered me until now because I never really paid any attention to what was going on. Caucasians had always been referred to as "Lo-fans" or "Fan-wi-lo." I never gave much thought to the meanings of any of these phrases which, directly translated, mean "white barbarian" and "white demon." It even made me more ashamed of "My Heritage" when I heard them refer to African-Americans using the Chinese word for charcoal. But then they referred to me as a "Jook-sing."
The next day, I was happy to be back in familiar territory. I was hanging out with my friends like I always did. I told them of my adventures from the previous day. They were astounded to hear that I was not used to eating rice all the time. We went to a 7-11. I bought a soda and we all went over to watch the people who were playing video games. A guy turned away from the Street Fighter II machine and looked at me.
"Awwww man!! And I was doin' good!! This guy's probably gonna kick my butt!" I left the mini-market rather quickly. When I got outside, I bumped into another guy. It took him five seconds to raise his hands over his head and scream....
"WHOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
"Man, don't mess with him. You know all these Bruce Lee types."
It was very sobering for me to realize just how alienated I was. Automatically I became a video game wiz and an expert martial artist who eats rice with chopsticks every night. I started to think of my entire life. How many times people assumed I was a math genius, how many times I have heard...
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