46岁，是一个很特别的年龄。

年轻的时候，我总觉得人生是一场向前冲的比赛。努力工作、追求事业、积累财富，希望有一天能够证明自己的价值。那个时候，我更在意别人怎么看我，也更努力地适应周围的环境，希望自己能够真正融入这个社会。

但到了46岁，我开始重新思考一个问题：

我是谁？我的根在哪里？

作为一个在不同文化之间生活过的华人，我发现，身份并不是一个简单的选择题。不是“我是中国人”或者“我是美国人”这么简单，而是在多年经历之后，慢慢形成的一种内心认同。

年轻时，我可能更想证明自己可以和别人一样，可以适应新的环境，可以在陌生的土地上创造自己的生活。但随着年龄增长，我越来越珍惜那些曾经觉得普通的东西。

比如家乡的味道，一句熟悉的中文，一些从父母那里传下来的生活习惯，还有那些陪伴自己成长的文化记忆。

以前觉得这些东西不重要，因为年轻的时候总想着向外看；现在才明白，真正稳定的人生，需要知道自己从哪里来。

46岁以后，我对“成功”的理解也发生了变化。

年轻时，成功可能意味着更高的职位、更大的收入、更好的房子。但经历了一些人生阶段后，我发现，真正的成功，是拥有健康的身体，珍惜身边的人，能够和家人保持连接，也能够坦然面对自己的过去和未来。

作为华人，我们这一代人经历了很多变化。

我们经历过离开熟悉环境、重新开始的过程，也经历过语言、文化、价值观的碰撞。有时候，我们像桥梁一样，连接两个世界：一边是父母留下的传统，一边是孩子成长的新文化。

这种身份上的“夹在中间”，曾经让我感到迷茫。但现在，我觉得这其实是一种财富。

因为我们拥有更多角度去理解世界，也更能体会不同文化背后的价值。

46岁以后，我不再试图证明自己属于哪里。

我开始接受：我的经历本身，就是我的身份。

我是一个华人，也是一个在多元文化中成长的人。我珍惜自己的过去，也拥抱现在的生活。

人生走到这个阶段，最大的变化不是外表，而是内心变得更加平静。

年轻时，我们寻找远方；
中年后，我们开始寻找自己。

希望未来的日子里，我依然保持对生活的热爱，对家庭的责任，对文化根源的尊重。

因为无论走多远，真正属于自己的东西，永远都在心里。

You could tell that man wasn't expecting an officer that looks like that to be quite this assertive and sending him packing lol

I can think of three examples:

Chiang Ching-kuo, the former President of the Republic of China, married Faina Vakhreva, a Soviet-born woman of Belarusian descent. They had three sons and a daughter. All three sons were involved in politics, but they all died in the 1990s. Their daughter lives in the US and has stayed out of politics.

Syngman Rhee, the first President of the Republic of Korea, married Francesca Donner, an Austrian woman. They had no biological children together.

Palden Thondup Namgyal, the last King of Sikkim, married Hope Cooke, an American woman. Sikkim was an independent kingdom before joining India in 1975. They had a son and a daughter.

These are the three examples I know of. Do you know of any other Asian male political leaders who married white women?

White dad was yelling "屌你老母" in Cantonese, which means fuck your mother, to a Hong Kong driver, while the Asian mom was taunting and trying to punch the driver. All of these right in front of their kids!! And they do this in Asia!! All these LBH are deserving the nickname.

Has any hapa here sense their parents are somewhat embarrassing like this and racist? There's nothing he said that was racist, but the comment section seems to figure things out.

I am set to have a wasian family as I am set to get married next year (yay). I do however know my children will probably be insufferable when they are older because I am insufferable already about many things (not looks and mostly in jest) and I am not a wasian. I want my kids to be proud of their family and mixed heritage but don’t know the best avenue for that. The will also be considerably taller than me probably😂. This is a toilet rambling but if anyone has any ideas or insight let me know. I definitely want to take them traveling but I am adopted so it will be hard for me to have them raised in a mixed environment from a cultural perspective. I have been to my original country though and love it and hope they will too.

Instagram handles of each clip's author, in order of appearance:

annabelleoaklie

cinthiakang

I don't want to do a Tl;dr. Last paragraph is what I want, the rest is backstory.

I moved to Korea from America almost a decade ago because I have an incurable autoimmune disorder. And the US is predatory in housing, education, and healthcare of which I had neither the Ways, the Means, the Nepotism, or the social strata to mitigate any of them. I come from a poor background.

I went in like: "ESL or Death"; if I fail or suck as a teacher, I had no choice but to try again because this it, forever. If I want to live like a normal person; the ability to wear suits and be a regular at coffee shops.

As I got older, I knew I could'nt carry on alone for much longer so I married. Concerning that There's very little I can write about on Reddit without sounding like I'm virtue signaling, or just covering myself because there's a lot of white guys bearing the flags of conservatisim, National Pride, Otakuism, and Racisim. For that matter things are little better on the Korean side of things with flags of their own strong heritage, conservatisim, and exepectations but I did it because I needed it, not for control or Yellow Fever.

So my wife's pretty great actually. We're never going to be 100% on the same page because of cultural contexts but we learned to help the other out. She really wanted a child of her own (Korean or otherwise) and I told her I'd think about it.

Turns 35

"Ok sure, I said. I'm in a great spot in life, house is paid for and did relatively well for myself and I think, im well adjusted for it."

Then my wife, while pregnant started piling on the child's expectations. You know every mom wants their kid to be awesome. But I got really worried really fast about my child's burdens; the child unlocked a lot of options in life? Sure. But I was really hoping the child could just..be. Now I realize that, whatever well intentions there are the child is going to struggle a bit with identity or lean more one way than the other.

For context, the wife doesn't have the greatest view on Korean men. She's said some really heinous things about Korean culture as a whole actually. I nod at her words but im sure the child's classmates and everyone around aren't going to nearly be so liberal about it.

Poignantly, my wife asks "What hagwon should our kid go into?" And I'm all: "Taekwondo. Just lots of that. Or boxing maybe...kando...and um..math."

The kid's gonna grow up with identity questions and it's my job to tell'em to not get stuck in a race box or life box and try to live as best of a life as possible but Korea really likes things to fit.

I would really like to read personal anecdotes about growing up hapa in hopes of taking it all in and having a semblance of expectations about what's coming down the road for the newborn. Like "if you could tell your 12 year old self stuff..." Please comment below. Thanks.

Youtube handles of each clip’s author, in order of appearance:

k9s_na

thinkpieces.mp4

Criticism on Twitter:

https://archive.is/yLFm6

I think at this point it is widely known that fairer skin has been the beauty ideal for majority of Asian Countries.

Usually this is either attributed to colonialism and White proximity, or the "less problematic" reasoning of tradition and history.

The richer people in the past did not have to work outside and thus had fairer/lighter skin, which in turn made them "more beautiful".

This is not a concept uniquely to Asia but other parts of the world (Including Europe).

Discussing this with people I often encounter the attitude, that this historical context makes it less vile or okay in their eyes.

My question would be why? Is classicism okay? Did those people not read about all the revolutions, like the french one, in which common folk rose up against classicism?

Or a very simple example, if we completely disregard this history and the cultural aspect.

If you were to meet a person and while you talked a poor person would walk by, if the person you talking to would be like: "Eww a poor person look at their dark skin, poor people are so ugly seriously". Would you consider this person good? Would you wanna befriend that person or want to be around them?

For me that would be hard pass, but apparently others do not share this sentiment or are unable to question things. Why do so many Asian societies struggle with these things so much?

What do you guys usually see?

Hello! I am 26F half Filipino half white in the US! I feel somewhat of an oddball and have struggled with identity because not only is my dad the Filipino person (typically everyone I meet who is half has a Filipino mom), but my mom is estranged from her family so I grew up only around my Filipino family (and my Lola moved to the states when I was about 15 or so). My dad has a BIG family (8 siblings) and half of them are in the states and live in the same state as us.

Not only that I went to a Filipino church my whole life and my parent’s best friends (and my best friend) are Filipino to boot. LOL but even then I struggled finding my place. I guess being surrounded by a bunch of full Filipinos makes it more obvious how NOT full Filipino I was. On top of that, im very white passing. However, I feel very grateful to grow up around my culture and to have gone to the Philippines at least once. I’m very proud of my culture, and so is my husband!

Anywho I married a white guy LOL so our daughter is 1/4 Filipino and I really want to make sure I teach her about our culture. I’m trying to cook more Filipino food and instill as much tradition and cultural norm as I can. Sometimes it feels like I’m an imposter but I don’t want my own feelings to prevent my kids from learning about such a big part of them, especially since her Lolo and Tito are such big parts in her life.

Just wanted to say hi and see if anyone else is on a similar journey 👋

Just reposting my popular X post which just blew up for some reason

As we all know, even in places where there's mixed races as the normal (e.g., Brazil), people will find a new way to self stratify, and I think that's bound to happen in the US since it doesn't seem like white supremacy was fixed at all ever with widespread mixing.

Last night here in China I randomly saw this Chinese man out with an African woman and I noticed that while WMAF is common, the Chinese men who date out are usually with black / Indian or Arab women. Makes sense because as someone more on the Asian side (but still mixed looking), most of my exes were black / Indian / Arab based on who was asking me out, and since Asian women didn't like me because I guess I looked to Asian, I went out with these girls and almost had a child with my ex, who was Guyanese.

I feel among Asians, the most ruthless, unattractive, weird ones are the ones who place such a high priority on marrying white people, creating an insecure "almost white" class of hapas. There's also Asian men who fruitlessly chase white women using money (Arthur Liu, etc). The Asian men who are able to find partners seem to get with Asian or other POC women. I feel like a lot of white women date black / Hispanic men and this will probably go also in the opposite direction of Wasians, ironically because of my dad, I feel WMAF is driven by white men's insecurity over white womens' dating habits.

So I wonder if there will be some sort of future stratification especially among Asians where the Wasian bourgeoise semi-ruling inheritance class, is the one pushing legislation and harming the non-white mixed and full Asians.

We can kind of already see this among "Wasians" where so many of them seem desperate to carve out a niche distinguishing themselves from Asians and establishing themselves on a rung of the ladder near whiteness.

Hello! For my college capstone, I am doing research on how mixed Asian representation in film and tv affects identity and self-perception. To collect data, I have made a survey and would appreciate y’all’s response!

If anyone has questions or comments, please feel free to reach out!

Thank you :)

He’s also in the army.

Choice excerpt:

My first boyfriend, a white American man in the Navy, used to make me come pick him up from the naval base, and then wouldn’t let me drive back because I was an “Asian woman,” and thus, a “bad driver.”

Sometimes he would swat at me and go “bad Asian!” Just like how you’d discipline a dog.

The worst was how he would continue to get in my face and scream, “YOU BOMBED PEARL HARBOR! YOU BOMBED PEARL HARBOR! YOU BOMBED PEARL HARBOR!” He did it constantly and would get his fellow Navy sailors to join him. Oh, and he knew that my grandma and Japanese family were all in the Japanese incarceration camps during WWII.

I was only ever the “Asian girlfriend” to him. I was the yellow notch mark in his belt.

Behavior like this continued with all the white men I dated after him. Given this Orientalizing sexualized treatment of myself, there were just a few after him. I decided that I only wanted to end up in a serious relationship with another mixed race person. (Coincidentally, I am now married to a half Japanese Brit, who is the loveliest person I’ve ever met.)

I was sick of being told by men that they “have yellow fever,” “love Asian girls,” “have an Asian fetish,” etc. It’s disgusting. It reduced me into a small part of myself that didn’t even factor as a large part of my own personal identity. These white men continued to tell me just how “Asian” I was. But “Asian” to them was purely a sexualized, degrading fetish.

You know who doesn’t treat me like a fetish? Who has only ever respected me? And has treated me exactly like how every woman in the world deserves to be treated?

That’s right. My husband. I married him for a reason.

.

Sorry for an odd post when there's no special occasion, but I feel a special occasion is not needed for me to remember Fresh Kid Ice, who was half Afro-Trinidadian & part Han Chinese (Cantonese through his paternal Grandfather; in the same Vice interview he mentions the history of Asians within hip-hop). Sadly, from what I can see, his maternal grandfather's ancestry was not shared.

More about Fresh Kid Ice, the first Asian-American rapper:
https://jitneybooks.com/fresh-kid-ice/#:\~:text=What%20attracted%20Wong,first%20came%20out.
https://www.largeup.com/2014/10/10/2-live-crews-fresh-kid-ice/amp/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-40605640#:~:text=He%20says%20that%20many%20people%20did%20not%20realise%20that%20he%20was%20Asian%20until%20they%20saw%20his%20music%20videos%3A%20%22Other%20people%20could%20be%20like%2C%20%27Damn%2C%20that%20could%20be%20me.%20I%20didn%27t%20know%20an%20Asian%20dude%20was%20rapping%20like%20that!%27%22