Pretty much everyone I’ve met so far has said one or more of the following things to me:
You have a lot of white hair. They see it mainly in the sides of my head, where it’s shorter and more obvious. It seems like most people in my family dye their hair black, so my grey stands out, even though I’m youngest.
Are you dating anyone? This is usually followed by, “Are there any girls are after you?”, which is a sort of way of figuring out if you want to date, or just don’t have the option.
Is your Tai Chi teacher white? Except instead of white, it’s “guai” or “ghost”. This is the only question I resent, because I feel like I have to defend the fact that he’s a competent teacher, even though he’s a “foreigner”.
You’re a handsome boy. The word for handsome in Chinese — “leng” — is the same word for pretty when applied to girls. This one is good. I like this one. More people need to say this to me.
Aren’t you cold? It’s getting very hot and somewhat muggy, so I’m wearing as little clothing as possible. This is in contrast to everyone else, who are still wearing scarves and coats.
Do your tattoos come off? Although the literal translation is more like “Do your tattoos wipe off?”. Many people here don’t know how tattoos work, which is understandable, since they’re so uncommon. Related to this is, “Did you draw it yourself?”. This question surprises me, because the character was drawn by arguably the most famous Chinese calligrapher, Yan Zhenqing, and is so beautiful and perfect and far beyond something that I could have done myself.
lei ho leng ah, zai!
cute. i wish more of my family said this to me too. i only get ‘fei lui’! :P not cool.
Hahah…if there’s one thing I’ve never been called it’s “fei”. Always the opposite for me: “tai sou”!
interesting cross-section of questions. in one branch of my family there was some hair coloring so the youngest was whitest-haired. There’s some sort of sci-fi story seed in there somewhere…
I wouldn’t be surprised…it seems like every concept has been done by the Twilight Zone already.
I would hardly call you a “boy” because you are far from it. But handsome, most DEFINITELY. There is something about you that just draws me in.…and this is a good thing! :)
I think the word “boy” has a little different connotation in Chinese, cause it can mean son too. Either that, or it’s something that the more elderly refer to younger men.
Speaking as a white taiji teacher, this is the type of discrimination that “we” often face from the Chinese community and it’s both stupid and also understandable.
Stupid because you can’t judge an expert of any kind unless you personally have enough skill to tell if they have some idea of what they are doing.
Understandable because I admit that if I had ever wanted to take hockey lessons as a lad and my would-be teacher was a recent Chinese immigrant who couldn’t speak much English that I would have gone elsewhere for instruction and probably without even watching him skate.
Prejudice is a powerful driver in humans and isn’t restricted to caucasians. Consequently, I haven’t had many Chinese students over the years but those few that I have had tended to appreciate what I could teach them martially as much as I appreciated their dedication and enthusiasm [thank you in particular to “James” in taiji and “Tony” in bagua, if you ever read this].
The hockey analogy is a good one. I was going to use basketball, but I realized that Yao Ming probably broke the Chinese mold on that one.
It was an uncle who’s studying Chinese medicine who suggested that I start learning Tai Chi. Admittedly, the first question I asked him was, “Can it be from a Caucasian person?”.
Yessirree, Lucy, Jeff is definitely a looker!
Absolutely!
If we put these opinions on a graph and extrapolate the data, I’m sure that we would see the entire world agrees. So it must be true!
Haiyaaaaa! Ho lengah. LOL.
But Jeff, you know what they’re asking about the tatoos, right. They’re probably in shock you actually did that to yourself…and the grey hair thing is such a dumb issue. My husband is plucking and I keep trying to get him to stop because I love silver hair. To his Korean culture, they think you’re just looking old.
People are definitely a little surprised when they see the tattoos. I wonder if I got my family name instead, whether they would feel differently.
Nope, they still think only gangsters get tatoos. Putting your family name on might be worse!
You’re a handsome guy ;) Tattoos are awesome, I have one myself, which my family doesn’t know I have, almost 5 months now and they still don’t know, which is good.