The Yellow Fever Debate

Sh!t, I thought to myself, another Yellow Fever Creeper. I totally asked for it.

Class was out for the day, and I asked a classmate if I could see his tattoo, which was just peeking out from under his t-shirt sleeve; my curiosity had been grating at me for a while now. He bared his shoulder to me and proudly proclaimed that it was a dragon, although it's not done yet.

I asked why he got a dragon on his shoulder and what his tattoo means to him, and his first response was a rather curt, "Just personal reasons." Then after maybe a second, he seemed to be a little sheepish, and he added, "I've just always been really interested in Asian culture and stuff. You Japanese?"

Ugh. I got asked "Êtes-vous japonaise ou chinoise?" (Are you Japanese or Chinese?) nearly daily in France by the ickiest of guys, who were even creepier than their North American counterparts, and I was always tempted to snap, "Connard! Chuis cambodgienne!" (Idiot! I'm Cambodian!) to mess with them a little.

I'd never get a tattoo myself because I'm too chicken sh!t (why subject yourself to unnecessary pain?) and I don't think they're very classy, which is also why I've threatened to beat my best friend if she really gets one (she wants a snowflake for Snow Patrol and supposedly because winter is her favourite weather). However, I always like to ask people about their body art because it says a lot about them, there's often a very interesting story involved and also because I'm nosy like that.

In my experience, people's tatts either are very personal and mean something profound...or they just got it for some silly reason (like it looks cool or they were going to the parlour to accompany a friend, etc.) so when someone nosy like me asks such a question, they scrabble to find an excuse. As it turned out, my classmate wasn't really a Yellow Fever Creeper, but just another boy who got a tattoo for reasons he had to make up to me on the spot. Phew!

Those of you who know me know that I have a lot to say about Yellow Fever. I think it's gross and weird and actually, it's a form of racism. Getting fetishized and harrassed and disturbed by awkward, strange men is almost as bad as getting beaten up or discriminated against in more conventional ways by bigots. The effects of obsessive adulation and hatred are both bad. Sure, there are women out there who exploit Yellow Fever to their advantage (see Bai Ling, Tila Tequila and Zhang Ziyi) but I'd much rather have to work to make my own living than to work on a man to support me.

So imagine my surprise when one day, my grandpa said to me, "Yan, if you want to marry a white man, you should find a husband in Asia - an expat. That way, you can be sure that he truly appreciates and loves your culture!"

First of all, I don't necessarily, as my boy Ramir puts it, prefer "white meat." Hotties come in every colour; why limit yourself? Secondly, that pretty much means that my grandpa thinks I should marry the big granddaddies of Yellow Fever Creepers! Guys who are so obsessed that they physically move themselves to a whole different continent to be surrounded by little lotus flowers! Ew, ew, ew.

Then my mom promptly told me that I'm a jerk. What's wrong with a guy who appreciates my culture? Some people prefer blondes over brunettes, tans over pastiness; what's wrong with having a preference for golden skin and dark eyes?

Cosmos help me, but I couldn't think of a retort. I couldn't think of a reasonable argument. But to even consider dating people who "Konichiwa/Ni hau!" me on the streets, who follow me around parties telling me how much they love dim sum, who change into red shirts when they hear I'm Chinese because "Chinese people LOVE red, right?", who want to talk to me about anime and manga and want to take me to Cosplay parties, who want to drink sake and smoke opium in my pagoda...

...I just...I just can't!

For my follow up post on Yellow Fever, click here