The seatbelt sign flashed off and I tugged my travel bag from under the seat in front of me. As I stepped off the airplane, my senses were assaulted with an excess of oddities. The world was brighter and sleeker, the air smelt obscenely crisp, and I had a hard time tuning out the loud conversations surrounding me. I fumbled at the cashier trying to identify the coins in my hand and yet everyone was moving so slow. I was convinced the world could see through my confusion as if the word \u201cforeigner\u201d was stamped across my head in bold letters. I had just landed in Canada\u2026which, according to my passport, should have felt like home. You see, I grew up in China. My father\u2019s job moved us to Hong Kong when I was six and I lived there all the way up until I went to high school in Shanghai. I loved it. And even though people regularly stared or called me names, I fully embraced my Chinese heritage. My friends knew to call me Asian because I would correct them if they said otherwise. On standardized tests, I would circle \u201cOther\u201d or \u201cAsian\u201d under ethnic background because I hated being called White. The biggest compliment would be from the friend who\u2019d say, \u201cRuth, you\u2019re more Asian than I am.\u201d or from the delivery man who\u2019d be shocked at my complexion after I spoke Chinese to him on the phone.<\/p>\n
I remember the first time I realized I was white. It was during orientation at college when all six hundred first-years were told to stand in a huge circle in the gym and asked to step forward if we identified with statements such as \u201cStep in if you\u2019re 18. Okay, step out.\u201d And so on. I think it was supposed to be unifying but once the leader hit ethnicity, my confidence buckled. \u201cStep in if you\u2019re white.\u201d I couldn\u2019t bring myself to enter the circle and I noticed my neighbors casting glances. \u201cStep in if you\u2019re Asian.\u201d I inched forward, and was painfully aware of the fact that I was the only white person in the middle. I backed out quickly. I kept hoping \u201cbi-cultural\u201d, \u201cmulticultural\u201d or even \u201cculturally confused\u201d would come up but they never did. That experience spiraled me into a year-long identity crisis where I wrestled with the fact that, while I felt Chinese, my own skin projected a different persona. I came to realize that even though conforming to preconceived notions might make others, or even at times myself, more comfortable; I was living a fragmented life. Instead, I have embraced my own complexity and have gained freedom to enjoy all that makes me unique. I am slowly learning how to be at home within myself\u2026and that means I can be at home anywhere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The seatbelt sign flashed off and I tugged my travel bag from under the seat in front of me. As I stepped off the airplane, my senses were assaulted with an excess of oddities. The world was brighter and sleeker, the air smelt obscenely crisp, and I had a hard time tuning out the loud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[63,286],"class_list":["post-12619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detroit","tag-detroit","tag-lines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/301"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}