Heritage

By Alicia Liu, aged 17

“Are you from the South?” by South, the friendly store-owner means the South of China. Southern girls particularly have a reputation for being fine China. Girls hailing from the South, where the misty mountains and clear waters have been the muses of Chinese poet and painters for millennia and the four seasons blend into a never-ending spring, are associated with beautiful porcelain skin, softness, and gentility. Although her assumption is wrong, I am not offended. In fact, I'm happy.

But I shake my head. “Or else you are Korean? Japanese?” I shake my head again, and answer “I’m a Northerner; my parents are both from Beijing.”

“Oh really! But your skin! So smooth and white! How did you get it like that?” I giggle at her torrent of exclamations.

“No, no, I don’t know what you're speaking about; your skin is the same as mine!” Yellow undertones leak from her skin, presumably browned by years spent running in Beijing’s unforgiving summer sun. It’s not the same as mine. But courtesy is always more preferable than truth.

I do know what she is speaking about. Every morning, the first thing I do is slather on a layer of sunscreen. Then I wait 15 minutes and layer on the thick white foundation before powdering my face with shimmering dust. Some days I can’t help but feel like a cake.

That night, as I take my icing and sugar and cream and reveal the bumpy, yellow sponge hidden inside, a feeling of triumph and superiority envelopes me, and I smile smugly at myself in the mirror. It’s Friday night, and I vow to go to Sephora to buy the all-new 3-in-one skin care paste (Brightens! Smoothens! Clarifies!) and the blush that promises to bring out the whiteness of my skin, before Monday.

“And you don’t have any Beijing accent at all!”

“Oh, I grew up in a foreign country, so I don’t have an accent.”

My accent is as thick as those shirtless old men playing Chinese chess that you start seeing everywhere if you stray deep enough into the Hutongs, but I augment it with the slightly-off phonetic tones of those new to Chinese.

***

Monday arrives, and I’m eager to try out my new purchases.

As I repeat my routine of layering on products, I think fondly of my trip to Sephora. The salesperson congratulated me on the clarity of my skin, and I gushed about the shade of her lipstick in return.

Another highlight was when she noticed I didn’t need help reading the English labels of cosmetics. Curious, she asks whether I speak English.

“Yes, I’m Canadian. I only came to China in middle school to study Chinese.”

“Oh! I see.” The smug feeling of superiority overcomes me again. She lavishes me with more attention than other customers and is easily persuaded to comply when I ask for gifts at checkout, despite my purchases not meeting the required price.

But after I had breakfast (pancakes with butter, drizzled in maple syrup mailed over by friends in Canada), and give myself a final check in the mirror, I notice things have gone wrong. The foundation did not stick entirely, and the yellow is peaking through like a dangerous usurper. Rather than making me appear whiter, the blush makes me look like a clown.

I freeze, physically unable to move or leave the house. I can’t face anyone like this, much less my classmates. I race upstairs, remove the new product and repeat my old routine.

The teacher reprimands me for being late to class, but I only feel gladness that my skin is white, smooth and clear as ever.

***

In English class, we discuss James Baldwin. Our homework was to read a passage and come prepared to talk, but many people forgot. My teacher took myself and the only other student who remembered out of the class so we can discuss while the others catch up.

The other student is a new girl who arrived just a few weeks ago, and as the class ends our conversation goes from James Baldwin to personal background. The teacher is delighted to find out that the new girl and he are from the same area of Canada, and I listen to find space to join the conversation. But they’re from the Toronto region while I’m from Vancouver, and the names of rivers and parks they discuss sound as if they’re from another planet. But my face lightens up as I hear the name of a familiar restaurant branch, and just as I am about to jump in with a witty remark, my teachers apologizes.

“Oh, I’m sorry! We’re getting completely off-track here! It’s just some Canadians sharing Home.”

Oh. I know I mentioned, both in writing and in person, that I’m Canadian to my teacher. It seems that he forgot. The remark that I was about to make dies on my tongue.

“No, not at all! I don’t mind.” I smile brightly, and he nods and smiles back. It seems inconsequential that Canada is home for me as well now. 

If I had the wavy auburn hair and eyes the color of the frozen lakes, maybe they would’ve asked where I’m from, and then it would’ve been three Canadians discussing home instead of two.

I feel a little unsettled the rest of the day, but when I arrive home, I find that my dad has returned from a trip to Japan, bringing a bag full of the strange beauty gadgets with him. The limited-edition Nike sneakers I ordered three days ago also arrived. My uneasiness dissipates, and I rush upstairs to try my new products and shoes.

***

With night air whooshing past my ears, I raise my head to look at the moon. Its light shimmers through the leaves of the artificial forest planted on the roadsides to dance on the reflective surface of the new sneakers. My feet pump the bike pedals up and down, and the moonlight comes alive, like silvery fish in a glittery ocean of white. How beautiful.

I’m going to the local 7/11. I tell myself it’s because I ran out of yogurt, but really, it’s because I could no longer resist the temptation of donning the new shoes, and the longing for experiencing the surge of pride of people staring at them was almost becoming a physical urge.

As I brake and slip off the bike, I find empty space instead of the usual group of youths smoking in front of the store. Annoyed that there’s fewer people to appreciate my shoes in their full glory, I walk in, hoping to find better luck inside the store.

That did not happen. There’s only one sad patron at 7/11 tonight: an old man standing in front of the section of alcohol. Not anyone of interest. I decide to buy the yogurt and get out of there.

But as I check out, I see that he is still standing there, seemingly conflicted. As I exit the store, I stop and take a look.

He’s wavering between an eight or a fifteen RMB of èr guō tóu, a cheap Chinese white spirit. His hands reach for the fifteen RMB bottle, grasps the bottle, but then puts it back onto the shelf. Then he paces back and forth and takes the eight RMB bottle one before returning it to its place again. I wonder how long this has been going on.

Feeling charitable, I take a bottle of each off the shelf and bring them to the cashier. Expectedly, when I return, he’s still there. 

I hand the bottles to him. Unexpectedly, he swears.

“Tā mā de!” The words rip through the air.

The way his voice tilts up at the first two syllables, blending them, and then slows down and drawls out at the third, its exactly the way my grandparents would’ve said them. He hails from the Hutongs of Beijing as well.

He hurls the bottles. They burst open, the transparent liquid drenches my shoes, and shards of glass lodge themselves in the fabric. My mouth gapes O in a speechless surprise. As I observe him, I realize he can’t be older than forty, but his ragged clothes and mud-caked skin caused him to look older. He gives me a glare of such primeval hatred that it chokes my soul and time and everything stops around me.

His eyes are as dark as coals but colder than any icy blue depths of the arctic ocean.

He leaves, but the ice stays. That look pierced through all my disguises, cutting to the deepest part. I feel the sharp coldness staining my core and everything I’ve so carefully constructed slides off as if they have their foundations overeaten by that ancient ice.

I look at my shoes and my carefully selected outfit. I look at the mirror in the corner of the store, and a stranger peers back. I don’t recognize her white face anymore. Who is this imposter?

 I feel as raw as the day I was born.

And then revolt hits, and I hate myself. I feel my innards are attempting to split themselves apart and separate escape from their embarrassing casing. I can’t wait to wash off the makeup and rip off the shoes and clothes. I want to call my grandma and speak to her in the voice that I hid for so long.

***

That night, I returned home and took a hot shower. But no amount of water could release me from the shells of pride, transformed into cages of shame, that I’ve built over 17 years; no amount of steam can melt away the ice that stains my heart.

I threw away all my bathroom counter full of disguise and box all the shoes that I’ve worn for only one week anyway and expensive clothes.

The only thing that separates me from the man who was troubled by a 7 RMB difference is an arbitrary movement of fate that caused me to be born in my family, and his in his. Otherwise, we are the same.

I don’t know why it took me 17 years to see my heritage.

It’s true that I grew up in Canada. The city I grew up in was not Vancouver; it’s Richmond. An immigrant town with a majority Asian population, most of whom were Chinese. But everyone assures themselves they are Canadian. Was it this that taught me being Chinese was something that should be hidden?

But ironically, maybe coming to Beijing pushed me even further from who I was. When I moved to Beijing, I began to obsess over reminding everyone that I grew up in Canada, and for that, I was better and deserved special acknowledgment. But growing up eating maple syrup pancakes, corndog and poutine does not overrule five thousand years of history and does not make me a part of the country that I’m not.

When did I make the discovery I would receive priority treatment if I trade my Beijing accent for a Western one? When did it become a habit? Why do the Chinese take being called Korean or Japanese as a compliment? Would a German girl experience a rush of glee if she’s mistaken for a Swede?

It took me 17 years to understand the years that matter and the things that don’t, to stop denying that things that I am and stop parading around as the things that I’m not.

We are the crumbling Hutongs and the Forbidden City; we are and the ruins of Yuan Ming Yuan and the pulsating neon lights; squat toilets and skyscrapers. We do not have white skin. We are not Starbucks. We are not the Sanlitun bar street. We are poverty and wealth, chaos and beauty. And it’s time we stop hiding it.