Friday, April 25, 2008

Am I Chinese?

Today was the day for the long awaited meal with Britton. Both of us being us being so busy with work and the such, we havn't have a chance to hang out and catch up for about 4 months. Its sad how many things keep you busy in NY . It was a nice sushi meal at my favorite Japanese restaurant (Tsushima; 47th and btw Lex and 3rd).

The restaurant was pretty quiet. There were two other tables, one of which being a chinese couple. At some point towards the end of our meal, the guy is this couple saunters over to my table and says to me "I overheard part of your conversation ... are you chinese?"

I wasn't really sure why he was coming over to ask, but I calmly responded "Yes, why?" He then grunts back to me, as Britton recalls, "I thought so ...", gives me a very angry look for a few seconds, then returns to his table, where his girl is giving me the same angry eyes, taking over his shift as he sits down.

Britton and I are pretty much in shock. I went back through our past conversation and found three things I said that might have ticked off this guy enough if he misheard me:

  1. In chicago, I saw an event hosted by the UChicago CSA which was pro-China, saying the olympics was about the games, not the politics. I asked a random asian girl taking pictures why they were marching (being unsure if there had been some protests they were trying to counter or something), and she went to tell me about something called the "olympics" (which she used air quotes to show me) and all the related debate. I thought it was kinda stupid how she didn't understand my question and thought it was ridiculous how stupid she treated me.
  2. I mentioned how I didn't think i'd be attracted to any girl who didn't speak good english, saying how I had met some very physically attractive chinese girls who I immediately thought were unattractive once I realized they didn't speak great english.
  3. I talked about my upcoming trip to Tokyo/Seoul/Shanghai and how useless i'd be because i didn't speak any asian languages.
Now none of these stories are really that offensive to anyone else but myself. But for some reason I greatly offended this man, as well as his (My!) people. Possibly, I was clearly not asian enough or talked negatively about my people in some accidental way. Regardless, it was pretty scary to get confronted by an angry chinese man. We didn't really feel it appropriate to get any dessert, as they kept looking over at me and it was pretty much just awkward.

Any thoughts on what I did wrong?

1 comment:

Scott Charles Caplan said...

My money's on #1. Btw, "a random asian girl taking pictures:" the one unintentional stereotype dropped in your post.

On the whole Tibet/olympics thing, did you see this: http://tinyurl.com/6cyrp9 (the text is no longer up, so you need the google cache).