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ARTICLES:
Eurasian Experience
Not Alone Anymore For years, Chinese-Indonesian-Australian Catherine Cook felt alone in the world. But after discovering the Eurasian community online, she realized that there was no longer a need to classify herself. By Catherine Cook September 2002 I have been aware of the whole Eurasian network on the Internet for about a month. Before that I was floating along in a lonely rowboat that was slowly leaking as years went by. In response to the inevitable question "what are you?" (which I think is the most goddamn annoying question in the world): I am not anything, do not identify with any particular religion, culture, or race. I have a Chinese-Indonesian mother, a white Australian father, was born in Indonesia, can't speak Chinese (save for the necessary dim sum vocab), can speak some Indonesian, have lived in nine cities and 20 houses in 21 years. I am constantly blown away by the similarity and empathy I feel for everyone who writes here. I have found other sites and can't believe I went through 20 years without knowing that I am not alone. It is a lonely place. I grew up in Australia with Western friends, my high school friends were mostly Westerners. Yet at university I hang out more with Asians because there are mostly Asians in my classes. I'm going out with a Chinese guy from Brunei now. Life never ceases to surprise me. Why am I writing this? Because it's a cathartic experience and boy it feels good to get some stuff off my chest. For example, I am in the process of planning a 21st birthday for myself. My parents are working in Jakarta at the moment, and might move to Bali again soon. I made several attempts to write out a guest list for dinner at a nice restaurant, but it made me so confused. I have a table of my immediate family: mum, dad, older brother, boyfriend, his parents and his brother. Then a table of high school friends (all girls, because I went to a private girls school in a snobby suburb), then a table of uni friends who are 80% from Malaysia, Singapore or Indonesia. For the first time ever, I asked myself: who did I identify with more? Due to the crazy, time-consuming nature of my classes, I have very little time to sleep, let alone have a social life. So I rarely ever see my high school friends, who all live in the Western suburbs (I live over the river). So I only see my uni friends because I practically live there. I started to wonder: would I be embarrassed to have a birthday party that I wasn't comfortable in? What if I mixed up all the tables? Would the social vibe collapse? My point is, this is something that I have dealt with my whole life. Who am I? Do I need to classify myself? Everyone else seems to. I went out for dinner tonight at a Swedish restaurant and there was a two piece Western band. They were requesting songs from people and surprisingly, they started playing a Chinese song for some Chinese tourists. I had no idea what the song was, but my boyfriend told me. Then the band called out to me to start singing the song. I said no. They kept pestering me and said that I should know it because it was a famous song by a well-known Chinese female singer. "But aren't you Chinese?" they asked. Finally I replied, "No, and I don't speak Chinese." We laughed it off, but yeah, it hurt. I have dark brown hair, brown eyes, whitish face, tanned body, slender, strange eyes, and could generally be described as an exotic beauty. I read an article on EurasianNation about a girl, Anita, getting stares from people. God do I know how that feels! Especially with a Chinese boyfriend, people try to put the puzzle together. When I'm with my family, oh the fun people have staring at my white dad and tall Asian mother, handsome brother who pulls in all the girls, and me. I sometimes take my grandma (my dad's mother) out to afternoon tea. She's 92 and tiny. There's me holding her hand up the stairs and could people be a little more obvious when they stare at us? Grandma has never had a problem with her daughter-in-law being Asian. She said that as long as her son loved her, then she would love her too. Food-wise, I'm a pig and I eat anything. Being with a very Chinese boyfriend has accentuated the differences between Asian and Western cultures. We have had many difficulties coming to terms with issues, differences, and other people. We have been together for 14 months now, and I know his friends said at the start "don't go out with an ahmo." (Ahmo means white girl.) I sometimes see other Eurasian-looking people around Perth and we have a quick eye contact, nothing dramatic, but it's like, yeah... I know who you are... a quick recognition, something like that. I'm not an alien, but am sometimes treated like a freak, a novelty, a punching bag, a piece of gossip. I have actually started to take Mandarin lessons so I can talk in Chinese to my mother-in-law in her native language. I love reading other people's life stories about their mixed culture experiences. Even though I don't know them, I do know how they feel. I'm not a messed up person, suicidal or severely depressed from the way I was brought into this world. I wouldn't change anything about my life, where I've been, who my parents are. When my children eventually come into this world, I don't want them to be so alienated as me. I don't want my daughter to have a guy get with her at a dance, and then later say to his friend that he would never go out with a "chink." Life is what you make of it, definitely, but knowing you are not alone makes it that little bit easier. Thanks for listening. About
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