Yellow Fever

Something is profoundly different than last year. I don't know if it was the fact that not everyone is in the same dorm anymore and the dorm I live in is a 24 hour quiet zone. Well, that could be it. We have to call to make plans and that involves an elaborate process of at least...Well rounding up people and all getting answers is never easy when it involves phones or electronic devices. So that's very complicated and all we're trying to do is meet for dinner. Dinner was usually, no in fact it was always at 6 pm, but now it's sometimes 5, sometimes 6. It changes almost from day to day. People aren't in the same classes anymore, well a few, but not many. Everyone is on their different paths and maybe this is what happens to pretty much all people in college. Maybe, I don't really know.

Another thing. Maybe...the relationships? I don't really want to go into that anymore than necessary. I'm sick of talking about how I feel of relationships and feeling like I have to defend or explain myself when it comes to the future regarding love, marriage, children and relationships.

And let me get something very straight, I am very curious about yellow fever. I am curious. I want to know, because as a person of Asian descent, I feel obligated to know. I have been a victim of yellow fever, so yes, I am suspicious and wary of white men who date Asian girls, because as much as a white man can be interested in a beautiful woman who happens to be Asian, white men can be simply attracted to her because she is Asian. Both are equally as possible. I know I am not attractive to Asian men and the chances of me dating an Asian man let alone marrying one are very slim. Very slim. It is more likely I will date or marry a non Asian, and most likely white. Am I complaining? No. I am stating a fact.

I am happy when I see couples that resemble my parents, because it is rare to see an Asian man with a white woman. It is far more common to see an Asian woman with a white man, almost as much as it seeing white couples or Asian couples. Come to my town and see what I mean. Or look at all of my parents' biracial couple friends. Fact. No complaints. Observations.

I'll have you know that I hate preferences, but I cannot project my feelings on other people. I don't want to, so understand when I say I hate preferences that's because I can't understand them. I have no preferences when I see a man who I find attractive. I love people as much as I hate people. Mostly because of our tendencies to be...well, human. I hate being human as much as I love it. I find men attractive, but race is something that I note, but I am not attracted to one race more than another. Everybody has the potential of being beautiful to me and what helps more is when I get to know the guy and see what's on the inside. Sometimes, most of the time in my past, I have found guys who were "average" to be even more attractive to me, once I got to know them. Or I've found them to be empty, to be full of yellow fever.

Forgive and forget. You hear that sometimes, and yes I'm becoming more aware which should make me forgive, but it's not really making me forget. Obviously, it's doing the opposite. Sarha says that she hates it how people immediately assume that a guy has an Asian fetish/yellow fever when you see an Asian woman with him. Well you know what, that's not what comes into my mind when I see ANYBODY. I just see a couple. I don't analyze much. I usually think more when something has stimulated my thoughts on the latter, which makes me recall and remember. I joined APISA. I should be thinking about this sort of thing, because it's something the club wants to talk about and frankly, this is a hot subject. Yeah, it gets everybody going. All sides.

My piece. I resent being like for being Asian. I really do. My identity as an American and as an Asian is something that I have fought and struggled and cried and hated over my entire life. Yeah, I just noticed how I feel like everybody wants to throw themselves out on a table and compare who suffered the most. It's no fucking contest. It's all truth, fact and fiction. Everybody lies according to House M.D. and my Professor in Beginning Fiction Workshop pointed out how selfish people are writing about themselves directly and how much people lie or omit. She's not completely right, but she's certainly the furthest thing from wrong. People suffer and people lie. People tell the truth. And they leave some of it out for not reasons necessarily to make themselves look better, for many reasons.

But this is me. I was adopted. I was not uprooted, but my roots are in China. I am technically a first generation woman of Chinese descent, but do I feel it? No. Do people acknowledge this? Not always, because I don't tell every living soul. Can I speak Mandarin or any Chinese dialect? No. And believe me I've gotten enough crap about it. My family, my family's friends, my friends, etc. I am fucking Asian still. I'm still Asian no matter how little or how much Chinese I know, culture or language. My hair may be brown and I may have freckles, but I am still Chinese. It doesn't matter how little I know or if I choose to learn, I am still Asian and I am still Chinese. I am not always proud of China or feel connected to my other Asian friends' families, their way of thinking and doing things especially when it comes to dating, relationships, convention, tradition and race.

I'm still Asian.

When a boy told me that he liked Asian girls more than any other race, I thought that was weird. I didn't understand him. My friends didn't understand me. But then I noticed how he kept wanting all of my Asian friends. He was like a hummingbird with too many flowers. He kept hovering from girl to girl, not leaving any of them alone. One of my friends at the time understood and was also disturbed, the others simply disliked him because he white. I didn't grow to dislike him because he was white, frankly now that I remember, he may not even consider himself white, but he's certainly more white than I am, no matter what fuckers tell me I'm trying to be "white" or I'm trying to be "less Asian." I disliked him, because he liked me because I was Asian and that was why I was attractive. I hated him, because of reasons I've already detailed again and again. My darker memories from middle school.

And yellow fever? It's not something to be disregarded, because I keep running into it again and again. I see it in films, in shorts on YouTube and I hear my friends complain about it. I am confronted again and again with being a "beautiful girl", but then people want to know "what are you?" And based on my answer, I become more beautiful.

Well FUCK THAT. First of all, I am not beautiful. Yeah yeah don't self hate. I am not self hating. I admit, I hate what I see, but no always. I am content with myself most of time, but I am not beautiful.

I am becoming more aware of marginalization and my Asian pride is slowly coming out in myself. I feel like for the first time I may have an identity that nobody can take away from me and I may be as comfortable as I've ever have been in my whole life. Everybody has insecurities and demons that possessed them in their life. Mine are no different and yours are no stranger. I'm not saying I'm more fucked up than anybody else was or I suffered the greatest.

I'm just feeling angry. I feel angry, because I want more than anything to be simply accepted as a human being. I don't want people to judge me based on appearance and certainly not because of race. I hate it when I hear stories from my friends, complaints from my Asian friends about guys calling them "exotic" or simply hooked, because of what they are and not who they are. Those men I met one night after Daniel's party at the train station. He said I was beautiful. But he asked what kind of Asian I was.

When you want to see as a human being rather than porn category, let me know.