New Reply

Post a Reply

Thread: Overseas " Chinese Bananas"

Title: (100 characters at most)

Content: ( 3,000 characters at most, please )

You can add emoticons below to your post by clicking them.

[quote=CHYNAGYRL,246612]LEOPOLD,
I did feel discrimination when I was growing up in Saskatchewan.  Thirty years ago, there were few Chinese in my prairie town, so the kids at my school had lots of nice names for me.  My last name was "Chou" which means "cauliflower" in French, so they called me "cauliflower". every day.  Then they called me "shrimp" too because I was short.  My parents kept dressing me in clothes my grandma sent from Taiwan (big boxes every Christmas).  They looked very *unusual* and too fancy compared to the clothes the other kids wore.  Some people thought I was weird because I dressed differently...

And my parents were very strict, so other kids could not identify with what I told them about my home life.  THEN, then were my lunches.  I threw away my lunch almost every day, without telling my mother.  She would pack sandwiches with Chinese fillings -- that all the other kids would ask me about "What is that?".  One time I shared my dessert with my white friends, and they said, "Hmm... That tastes like sawdust."   It takes pretty thick skin to grow up as a minority in a white community.   That changed when I went to university though... then there was Asian fever in Canada...  These days, lots of people are interested in Chinese culture, and Chinese people are seen as a wealthy and high-profile ...

The first wave immigrants (from Hong Kong) had a lot of money so they built a lot of Chinese businesses and shopping malls here..  but the second and third-wave immigrants (coming now) from mainland China are kind of poor (unless they used to be government officials) so they are struggling...  but in any case I feel very comfortable in Toronto and Vancouver... because of the large communities and multiculturalism over here.[/quote]

characters left

Name:

Get a new code