White Supremacy in Asia
Hannah Chen
Excited to enter Hong Kong’s notable amusement park, Ocean Park, my younger sister, our family friend, Andrew, and I waited for the train that would soon guide us to the heart of the rides. As the train came into our view, the magical music you always hear in amusement parks hummed in our ears as a large group of mainland Chinese tourists clustered behind us. Mandarin was shouted into our ears, and as I turned around to glance at the constellation of people, I noticed that each person held a phone, flashing their cameras in our faces.
Why are they taking photos?
My sister, Erin, and I scrunched our eyebrows before looking at our friend Andrew, a Caucasian male who was visiting us from New York City. It clicked: they were taking photos of him. Before we entered the air-conditioned train, one person even asked to take a photo with Andrew. He gladly rejected the offer.
As the train doors opened, we stumbled inside, and I ushered Andrew and Erin to stay close by my side. They looked around the train as well, not quite understanding what had happened just before. “Why did they do that?” Erin asked us, and Andrew and I were silent for a moment.
I shrugged, my brain numbed out of things to say. “I don’t know.” As a seventh-grader at the time, talking to a sixth and a fourth-grader, I was left speechless. Confused, I searched for different reasons why some Asian tourists would want a photo with my friend of all people - but there was no clear answer.
When I first moved to Hong Kong, move abroad from New York, I was ecstatic to see people who look like me. I was going to be surrounded by Asians! This was going to be so interesting! Despite visiting Korea each summer to visit my grandma, I had never had the chance to be surrounded by Asians. I couldn’t wait to see a country filled with dark hair and brown eyes.
Yet that feeling was, actually, the opposite of what I experienced. Attending Hong Kong International School for the first two years of middle school, I was surrounded by a diverse group of kids, many who were locally from Hong Kong and others who move every few years. Nonetheless, this diversity took no toll on teaching many students how to “react” to this mix of very different types of people. Instead of Asians, like myself, being in the majority which would usually be seen as “normal”, I quickly learned it was the opposite. When doing stereotypical Asian activities, like participating in robotics or enjoying math and science, were seen as boring and plain; though in truth, these were just people’s interests formed to shape the “Asian stereotype.” American or Caucasian backgrounds made you look cooler and provides one with the ability to hang out with certain people. No one did anything about this stigmatization against Asians at an international school, the place one would least expect discrimination to exist in.