Being Chinese but not being seen as Chinese in China is one of the deepest contradictions I have experienced.
I speak the language. I eat the food. I know the culture—the customs, the jokes, the unspoken rules. But when I walked down the street in Shanghai, people stare. They ask, ‘Where are you from?’—and when I say, ‘I’m Chinese,’ it’s often met with confusion or disbelief. Because I don’t look like what they expect.
I’m Black and Chinese. My face tells a story that doesn’t fit into their script of what it means to be ‘zhongguoren’—to be Chinese. And in that gap between cultural identity and racial expectation, I often feel like I’m floating—never quite landing. It’s strange to be made to feel like a foreigner in your own culture. It’s like your roots are being questioned even though you know they run deep. But Chineseness isn’t just in phenotype. It’s in the history that shaped my family. It’s in the values I carry. It’s in the cadence of my Mandarin. It’s in the chinese historical ...