Step 5: Try to Take Chinese.
Step 5: Try to Take Chinese.
Be bad at it. Have a more Asian friend offer to tutor you on Simplified Mandarin. Feel embarrassed. Don’t think about it for a while until you see a photo of the family cemetery shrine in Hunan Province and learn the symbol for your family name is simple and become fascinated by the line strokes. Think about getting it as a tattoo.
Find a used copy of The Tao of Pooh at a bookstore in Boulder, Colorado, surrounded by the whitest people you have ever seen. Read it on the airplane. Decide you will tell people you are a Taoist. Find out three years later from a second cousin that your family back in China are Buddhists.
Consider a yin/yang tattoo since you’ve always loved the symbol. Graceful. Peaceful. But worry you look too white and people will think you’re a basic bitch. Get reminded that if you get a tattoo you can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery because the Nazis branded everyone with serial numbers. Worry about being buried and start to have a panic attack and are not sure if it’s your claustrophobia or if you’re just afraid of people living without you or if you really don’t know about the afterlife and you are worried you’re not taking advantage of life enough right now.
Don’t get a tattoo.
POEM SERIES: How to be Hapa in 10 Easy Steps or Less!
PUBLISHED IN THE FALL 2021 ISSUE OF CALL ME [ BRACKETS ]