Last night Geoff, Mindy and I drove down to Bellingham, Washington for Jack in the Box. When I was ordering the lady, of Asian descent, asked me where I was from. I thought to myself "how the hell does she know I'm Canadian..."
I answered "I'm from Vancouver."
She said "China, Vietnam...?"
Immediately I knew it was one of those questions... Asians don't want to know your nationality... they want to know your ethnic background. (It was always like this when I travelled in Asia.) After a few seconds of resisting, I satisfied her curiosity and said "I'm from Taiwan." Really wanted to say again "CANADIAN damnit!" (For me, this is all too familiar and annoying). She is from Vietnam.
So Geoff, Mindy and I talked about it. Saying Taiwan, or Chinese is getting lame... how about something cool like "I'm from Mongolia"? Mongolia... home of Genghis Khan, a ruthless, bloodthirsty conquerer of Mongolia, China and to the Persian Empire. That's good enough for me.
But wait... Kazakhstan. People there still have Asian faces... I can be one of them. So I said Kazakhstan... Mindy thought it was halirious. I met a Vancouver girl at the International Affairs conference. She is of Kazakhstan descent and I was trying to emulate how she said it, without the North American accent. Kazakhstan sounds cool...
I am no longer Chinese, but Kazakhstanese... Kazakhstani... or is it Kazakh... whatever my people are called.
Posted by Jay at September 3, 2006 11:05 AMhaha, nice Jay, what about African???? You're that too, don't forget.
Posted by: Jonathan at September 3, 2006 02:10 PM