Miss M goes to China at Anti-Racist Parent - for parents committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook

Miss M goes to China

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Amber

Before we traveled to China to adopt our younger daughter, I expected that a white mom carrying an obviously Asian baby would attract a lot of attention from the locals. In the city where we met my new daughter L, few Chinese are even aware that international adoption exists. In addition to the laminated cards provided by our agency that explained that we were adopting our daughter, we were ready to answer any questions that would accompany the stares we certain we would receive. What we didn’t expect is that no one noticed our youngest daughter because they were so busy gawking at M, our four year old.

“Hallo!” they shouted as she walked down the street.

“Oooh, piaoliang! (beautiful)” Old ladies cooed as they stroked her cheeks. In Chinese, they commented on her light skin and her large eyes.

A group of school children on a field trip surrounded M shouting “hallo!” and “How are you!” while trying to grab her arms and pat her back.

It almost became a little ridiculous. Random strangers on the street stopped us and asked if they could take M’s picture. Twice we were asked to take a picture of the stranger standing next to her.

“This must be what it is like traveling with a celebrity,” my husband said after the fourth or fifth time we were approached that day.

At home in the Midwestern US, we have occasionally had run-ins with overly enthusiastic (usually white) strangers who seemed just a little too interested in our biracial child and her “beautiful eyes” or whatever false compliment they choose to mask the fact they are staring at her. This almost always when she is accompanied by both her father and me, which makes her biracialness more obvious, I suppose. Most of the time, we are fortunate to go through our days with relative anonymity.

Not so in China.

Almost everywhere we went, M was faced with comments and compliments about her appearance. At the beginning of the trip, we thought it was just because she was a child and clearly a foreigner. Once we joined our travel group, we noticed that the other siblings in our group (both older Asian adoptees and white children traveling with white American parents) received a little attention, but not nearly as much or as consistently as M.

Eventually, my husband and I conceded the attention was because of M’s blend of white and Asian features. It is no secret that many Chinese have adopted a standard of beauty that is influenced by the pervasiveness of western culture. I don’t think M was attracting so much attention because she is objectively attractive, M received so much attention because large, round eyes and fair skin are fetishized in China.

Early in the trip, M seemed to enjoy the attention, but by the end of the trip, she was clearly very uncomfortable. The last straw came with four old ladies in the Guangzhou airport. They leaned over the huge pile of suitcases I had placed in front of M to give her some privacy and proceeded to dissect M’s appearance in Chinese. When M angrily shouted “Bu yao! (don’t want!)” at them, I stood up and chased them away. We spent a lot of time on our trip trying to find the right balance between being polite guests in a foreign culture while also shielding M from attention she clearly didn’t want.

When I asked M what she would miss about China, she only said “Mama, I am so glad to be going home to America. I won’t have to talk to any strangers there!”

Amber is currently underpaid and overworked as the full-time parent to two daughters. Amber blogs about motherhood, adoption and life in her Midwestern, multiracial family at American Family.

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American Family » odds and ends on 08 May 2007 at 8:54 am

[…] I forgot to mention I had a post up at Antiracist parent last week. It was about M’s experience in China. […]
American Family » Ooops. on 04 May 2008 at 8:54 am

[…] mixed-race kids get in China. I am not sure why this qualifies as news, but it was a familiar topic to […]

Comments

Katie wrote:

Wow - same thing happened to me when I went with my mom to Korea. She’s 1st-gen Korean American, and I’m biracial with my other parent being Eastern European Jewish assimilated White. Lots of compliments based on my “big” eyes, etc. How problematic.

Also just found out that my mom got that fold sliced into her eyelids before she emigrated to the US. I was incredibly disturbed by that.

Posted 02 May 2007 at 9:37 am ¶
Jessicahtx wrote:

My son is black and we, his parents, are white. From the time he was a tiny baby, people have touched his hair and his face and made comments about how gorgeous he is. It literally happens at least twice every time we go out, even just to the grocery store for 30 minutes. Most of the time the comments are about his eyes and his hair. Although neither of his firstpaents are mixed-race, he has light brown eyes and long-ish hair that is considered to be “good” (an adjective that makes me cringe when I hear it) because it has a looser curl I have to wonder sometimes if white people notice him more and feel more comfortable approaching us and touching him because he is with white parents. By far, the people who make the most comments about his mixed-looking features are black. Many people want to know immediately if he is mixed and when I say no, they are shocked. Some people have gone on about how lucky he is . It freaks him out when people say “gimme those eyes!” I have to tell him no one is going to take his eyes. It can feel very intrusive. I am working on ways of teaching him how to answer the questions and set boundaries on his own. I have a hard time doing it myself, though.

Posted 02 May 2007 at 2:29 pm ¶
Kim wrote:

Jessicahtx: ” Many people want to know immediately if he is mixed and when I say no, they are shocked. Some people have gone on about how lucky he is . ”

Wow. That is …disheartening, and unacceptable, no matter who it comes from.

Of course, I find it doubly disheartening that the objectification would come from Black people, themselves so often used to being stared at and held as outsider, or exceptional.

There was a thread here a few months ago about responses to such intrusive comments and inquiries which you may find helpful, if for nothing more than a way to laugh for a moment. (Had you participated in that thread?)

Posted 03 May 2007 at 9:40 pm ¶
Liz wrote:

Amber,
You brought back so many memories of when I lived in Guangzhou. No one told me before I went about how some Chinese use skin lightening creams and think lighter skin is more beautiful. Before I lived there, I’d thought it was only an issue in the African-American community. But, I will say that I got constantly stared at, people wanted to take pictures with me, people wanted to touch my hair all the time, and I was constantly told how beautiful I was. I sometimes think it was just because I wasn’t Chinese and so I looked so different from everyone else. But given that your daughter was singled out in this way, I’m sure there’s definitely more going on.

Posted 04 May 2007 at 4:05 am ¶
Jill wrote:

I am white Canadian and my husband is Chinese. I just had to read your post to him. We have been living in Canada for a few years now and he wants us to return to China. I keep asking him to think of our daughter (born in Canada) and what her life would be like there. We already get stared at enough in Canada and I know that Miss M’s experience would be my daughter’s experience as well. There is no way I would subject her to that everyday. We will return to visit family of course but I just can’t agree to live there again!!

Posted 05 May 2007 at 10:57 am ¶
AmericanFamily/Amber wrote:

Jill,
For what it is worth, I think it really depends on what part of China you are in. When we were in Shanghai, we had no problems. When we were in a smal southern provincial capital and Guangzhou, M garnered a lot more attention.

We hope to have the opportunity to live in Shanghai or Beijing sometime in the future. I am hoping that by the time M is 7 or 8, she will have a much better understanding of why people approach her so often and be able to help us decide how to handle it. Despite the hassle, we think it would be a great opportunity for our kids to live in China.

Posted 05 May 2007 at 7:41 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:

We are an American-Austrian-Ethiopian interracial family living in Vienna, which is a pretty lilly-white place. For us, the stares have really decreased with time, as we have grown more comfortable and close as a family. I fell in love with our daughter the moment I met her, but I think it takes time to begin letting go of (and confronting) the anxiety and racism in oneself. When that happens, I think you telegraph it to strangers.
Of course, there are extreme situations and locales….

Posted 06 May 2007 at 2:31 pm ¶
Lucy wrote:

“overly enthusiastic (usually white) strangers who seemed just a little too interested in our biracial child and her “beautiful eyes” or whatever false compliment they choose to mask the fact they are staring at her.”

Um, maybe she just has beautiful eyes. Why is it automatically a “false” compliment?

I comment on beautiful children that I see because I always like to have someone tell me that my baby is beautiful (even though I already *know* she is!)

Posted 08 May 2007 at 9:38 am ¶
jenney wrote:

great post as always Amber!
My kids get the same thing when we are in Toronto. They are like mini-celebrities in my family’s very chinese community. Asian people stop us on the bus, on the sidewalk, and just about anywhere. My son has more white features than my daughter. I have had a few chinese people come right out and say my son is better looking b/c of his tall nose and big eyes. They always follow with “too bad she has a chinese face”. I was shocked at first.

Posted 08 May 2007 at 9:53 am ¶
DS-L wrote:

Yes - totally relate her. Once my youngest son (then only 3 1/2) cried when some gawkers started to touch him and stand next to him to take his picture at the Great Wall. They could not stop touching the boys (bi-racial) and when our daughter was with us (adopted and full Chinese) she got no attention. Sigh.
DS-L

Posted 08 May 2007 at 12:13 pm ¶
AmericanFamily/Amber wrote:

Lucy,
If her eyes were truly so very beautiful to the casual observer, why would we get exponentially more comments when she is accompanied by both my husband AND me? When M and I are out alone, she rarely garners a second glance.

Believe me, after having this happen for the past four years, it has become incredibly obvious which compliments are sincere and which ones are because people got caught looking at her/us a little too long.

Amber

Posted 08 May 2007 at 12:16 pm ¶
Kimm wrote:

“No one told me before I went about how some Chinese use skin lightening creams and think lighter skin is more beautiful. ”

Yeah but aren’t the Chinese surprised to hear that Americans use skin darkening creams and lay out in the sun for hours slathered in oils because we think darker skin is more beautiful?

Beauty is so subjective and culture- (and subculture-) based. I don’t know. Maybe M’s eyes are exponentially more beautiful to people from a culture that values big round eyes, especially set in a face that’s both familiar and exotic. My Korean mother goes on and on about my daughter’s wavy brown hair — the kind of hair that she imitates via chemical processing.

Posted 08 May 2007 at 2:08 pm ¶
March wrote:

We have the same reaction to my daughter. We are living in Yokohama, Japan. My husband is Irish and I”m Argentinan (he’s a redhead, I’m dark skinned and dark haired).
She is blonde and very white.
We cannot go anywhere in Japan without her getting a lot of attention from strangers that want to touch her and comment on her looks.

I’d say it’s not only the Chinese, but all the Asian that place a lot of attention to traits other than the typical Asian faces.

Posted 09 May 2007 at 6:43 am ¶
db wrote:

I’m a little concerned that you think compliments M receives in the US are “false compliments.” When I’m in the grocery store or out going for a walk, little kids always make me smile. I often make comments about how beautiful they are or something like that. I say it to kids of all races with parents of all races.

Posted 10 May 2007 at 2:09 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:

DB: yes, but are the people turning to M and Amber ALSO complimenting those kids of light and dark skin tone? Or just those ambiguous folks in the middle? Do they compliment all kids, or are they pulling the “I’ll compliment the kid and then the parent will tell me what they are/where they’re from” game?

Even if someone thinks honestly that “mixed children are so beautiful,” it’s a “positive” sterotype and dare I say fetish that parent of mixed kids, parents of TRAs, and TRAs/ multiethnic people themselves are usually quite familiar with. I think we just have a finer tuned “BullS**t-o-Meter.”

There are genunine compliments out there, sure, but don’t make a comment about me and mine while on a fishing expedition, or cover your “surprise” with unspecific “admiration.” Only commenting on visibly ethnic features, or on those that differ from the parent(s) are a dead give-away. So is following the compliment with a “Where did (s)he get those…” question.

Posted 11 May 2007 at 8:19 am ¶
Kari wrote:

We just returned from China and our 3 year old bio son got A LOT of attention (blonde, blue eyes, etc.). I’ve never seen such a large crowd gather just to watch a kid eat a chicken nugget. He is usually fairly shy around crowds, so I don’t think he liked it too much, but it was OK. The only time it really bothered him was when someone picked him up and said she was going to take him away. (I wasn’t there when this happened - he was with his daddy).

We were expecting my husband (6′5″, red-head) to get a lot of attention, but he really didn’t. People were much more interested in the kids than in us.

Posted 19 May 2007 at 7:32 am ¶
Julie wrote:

What you report is nothing new; unfortunately most Asian cultures highly prize European features above their own. I’m full Vietnamese and I know this firsthand. My cousin and I are often praised for our large eyes with creases, a feature prized by Asians because of its rarity. She, however, is considered the most beautiful in our family because of her long straight nose and oval face. My mom even told me once that “Your cousin is gorgeous because she looks mixed. She doesn’t look like most Vietnamese.”

Posted 21 May 2007 at 8:40 pm ¶