Discover Top Posts Tagged with #half-chinese

Oh look it’s me

#me #half-Asian #half-chinese #Eurasian #chinesegirl #model #photography #portraits #canon #cali #California #Southern California #SoCal #half white #half german #reds #dresses #lookbook #bitebeauty

What’s in a name?

So, okay. I am fully aware no one has any reason to read this, but I wanted to write it. Because I think it’s important.

I have two names. A lot of half-Chinese people do (clarification: I am half Singaporean-Chinese, ie. nationally Singaporean, ethnically Chinese). Both are on my birth certificate, both are legal names, etc. Here’s why I’m talking about this: my “English”, or more accurately, my western name, sports my father’s surname (he’s Dutch). I don’t have a problem with this, despite the old patriarchal values inherent in the fact that it doesn’t also sport my mother’s surname - in fact, my mother found an English name phonetically similar to her surname, and that’s now my middle name. All well and good.

What isn’t well and good, in my view, is my Chinese name. Now, I adore my Chinese given name. It has power and life in it. My Chinese surname, however, is a problem. You see, when I was born, my mother decided she wanted to respect my father’s family, and his position as my father, and so went through great bureaucratic pains to give me a Chinese surname that was derived from the first syllable of my father’s surname. I have always been floored by her determination and ability to logistically get that done, and her understanding of and devotion to social symbolism. What I don’t like, however, is that my Chinese surname now has no meaning beyond being another version of my western surname. And I already have a western surname.

What I don’t have, currently, is a nominal link to any Chinese heritage or root whatsoever. I have cousins whose surnames are the same in English and Chinese - the surnames of their ethnically Chinese fathers. While their mothers aren’t present in that name, their ethnicity is. Mine is missing. My mother’s surname is common. It has a long affiliation with a certain clan and when I rock up to family reunions with no link to it, I feel completely disconnected. What ultimately gets me is that the thing that took the place of my nominal tie to her lineage is not the nominal tie to another surname, another clan, another history - it is a tie to a western history. No clan, no ethnic meaning, just my dad’s name, again.

So this is going to change. Right now, my Chinese name isn’t on anything but my birth cert - not on my passport, my identity card, nothing. Probably because my name is long as f**k to begin with. But I do not give a single fuck. I belong to this lineage and my other parental lineage has had enough gifting with my official surname. Beginning from the second I reach home, my Chinese surname is my mother’s, and every passport and identification will carry it.

The kicker for me is: my mother’s last name is Lim. It means forest. My father’s? It means motherfucking abalone. You guys.

#asian #eurasian #half-asian #half-chinese #chinese #names #naming #identity #identity politics #rant #halfie #mixed #mixed race #mixed kids #mixed kid problems #mixed race politics

I’ve been pondering for a while the fact that there isn’t a name for being half-Chinese. Half-Japanese people call themselves Hafu, and half-Hawaiians call themselves Hapa, but there’s no half-Chinese name, to my knowledge. So I just thought of a word that describes my mixed ethnicity of White + Chinese = WhiCh, as in witch! I am a full-blood witch, because the only way to be this is to be both White and Chinese! Perhaps some people may not want to call themselves witches, but I find this very exciting.

#WhiCh #half-chinese #white and chinese #mixed race

So the other day, I went shopping with a friend at the local mall. We went into this Asian store, and the shop manager/owner (idk what she was) was Chinese. So the lady starts to talk to us in Chinese, I am the one who ends up responding because my friend is Korean rather than Chinese. The lady was so disappointed that I was the one who responded that she completely ended the conversation and left to go back to the cash register. I don't think I've ever seen anything so deliberate in my life. I guess once again, I don't look a bit Chinese at all.

#half-chinese #hapa #hapa problems #eurasian #me #chynna probems