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As an individual born and raised in Hong Kong, and given my grandmas from both sides of my parents were also born in Hong Kong, which is quite rare in their generation, I always claim to be a Hongkonger. Since my grandma on my Mother’s side is from the Tangs – one of the five great clans of the New Territories in Hong Kong, I spent my whole life living in either Yuen Long or Kam Tin, and because of that, I got exposed to a lot of traditional Chinese culture, or more accurately – villager’s customs. That explains why I sometimes self-identify as one of those Weitou people (圍頭人) – Cantonese-speaking indigenous inhabitants of Hong Kong, although technically I am not qualified to be identified as one of the clan’s members. Regardless, I am considered part of the “majority” of the society in Hong Kong, since I am ethnically Chinese apparently.
In a society, like Hong Kong, that categorizes people based on ethnicity, my primary classmate, Gurung, was, and is still probably referred to as the “ethnic minority”. Since they are the second or third generation of Gurkhas soldiers stationed in the Shek Kong Camp, Gurung was also born and raised in the same neighborhood as I do. My mindset was programmed to believe one to be either an insider or an outsider, so I was never taught to find common ground, in terms of identity, between Gurung and myself.
The concept of identifying myself as Asian never, or does not significantly exist until university. The idea of “Asian” finally started to establish when I consciously seek common ground with my South Asian or Southeast Asian classmates of different backgrounds. Later I realize I begin to identify myself as “Asian” more often when I get to meet people from different continents.
Asian thinking another Asian is not Asian enough
Two months ago, I went to a friend’s place in Markham for a barbeque to enjoy the last bit of summer in Toronto. Our group is very Asian because all of us are with Asian heritage and we all carry a bit of Asian in our lifestyle – whether we were born and raised in Canada, born elsewhere and moved to Canada at some point, or born in Canada but moved somewhere and moved back to Canada later. Of course, there are times I think they are just very Canadian or White and forget they are also Asian.
Roughly speaking, Asians are just people of Asia to me, so each of us who is sitting in this backyard is Asian at least on a superficial level. I can’t recall how exactly this topic came to the table, but one of us suddenly told another person with a Laotian heritage that “You are not Asian enough”. I wasn’t surprised about the statement because I realized some people I met in Toronto will agree with her not long after I moved to the city, but I was quite surprised that an (East) Asian would actually think a (South) Asian is not Asian (enough).
This might be an exclusive and rare example, but a person who was born and raised in Mainland China and has been living in Canada for more than 10 years is actually thinking this way. This makes me curious how other people in the West or with the influence of the West would define “Asian”. How does society in the West defines “Asian”?
In the UK for example, Asian or Asian British is one of the ethnic groups, which includes Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and any other people with an Asian background. However, in day-to-day life, the word “Asian” is most frequently used to refer to Indian subcontinent people whose ancestry could be traced to South Asia.
Whereas the United States is quite the opposite, as the word “Asian” is commonly referring to people of the Far East. In the States, Asian is a racial category instead of an ethnic category. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam” is defined to be in the race of Asian. But in fact, anyone can define their race in the U.S. census questionnaire based on their racial and national origin or sociocultural groups.
For sure, the racial categories in the U.S. census questionnaire are just reflecting a social definition of race recognized in the country, with no attempt to define any race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. But “social definition” can always be biased, and issues are usually systemic.
Generally speaking, “ethnicity” describes the culture of people in a given geographic region. This includes their heritage, religion, customs, and the language they speak for example. Whereas “race” is a concept of dividing people into groups based on various sets of physical characteristics and the process of how a society pins a definition and social meaning to those groups.
Some Asian are legally white, but “technically” Asian
In the context of the U.S., the Asian category is something built up over time based on the kinds of immigrants the U.S. excluded from entering the country. Starting from 1882 until 1917 when the U.S. Congress created the Asiatic Barred Zone, Asian immigrants like the Chinese and Japanese could not become U.S. citizens, but Middle Easterns can, because they were considered “white”. Still, Middle Easterns from Iran, Afghanistan, and Armenia for example, are legally considered White but not Asian today in the States.
In the cyber world, or more accurately – the Internet infrastructure, some of these countries are “technically” considered Asian in some aspects. For instance, when we come together for the operational stability of the Internet at ICANN for instance, countries like Afghanistan, Armenia, Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are considered to be part of the geographic region of Asia Pacific, so they are technically “Asian” in this case.
However, this is not always the case, even in the Internet infrastructure. When it comes to allocation and registration of Internet number resources like IP addresses and autonomous system (AS) numbers, Afghanistan is managed by APNIC – the regional Internet registry (RIR) of the Asia Pacific region, where RIPE NCC – an RIR of Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia – manages other countries mentioned in the previous paragraph.
It’s not just Mandarin-speaking Chinese
In Toronto, I am an Asian. Unavoidably, my lifestyle is very Asian, the food I eat is very Asian, the way I look and dress is very Asian, etc. But around my third month of living in this city, I start to realize how some people refer to “Chinese” interchangeably with “Asian”.
An old client of mine once mentioned to me how they wanted to organize an event to introduce their products to the “Asian” community in Canada, but apparently, what they tried to do was just for Mandarin-speaking customers. This client was born and raised somewhere in Mainland China and moved to Canada for her education 10 years ago, while her consultant, Farah, was a South Asian lady born and raised in Greater Toronto Area, and now lives in Brampton.
As a person from Hong Kong who speaks Cantonese as my mother tongue, I generally don’t like the idea of assuming every single (ethnically) Chinese person is a Mandarin speaker. So if you are assuming Asian is Chinese? No way.
But from the conversation with this old client and Farah, seems they both are subconsciously fine with the idea of “Chinese is Asian”. At least, the fact of South Asian is also Asian seems to be obscure in Farah’s narrative.
My sample size was certainly small, but obviously, Asian is not just Chinese. Perhaps some of the Chinese with strong purchasing power is dominating certain consumer markets, which might have created an illusion of “Asian is basically Chinese”. But the definition of “Asian” should be way broader than many existing definitions that we are exposed to.
When I first came up with the idea of writing on this topic, I was going to explore the identity of Asians in the West. But later, I realized I was making the mistake of generalizing the western world and the way different societies define an identity. My points could be biased too, as obviously, I am just commenting from my own perspective as an Asian growing up in Asia, but I hope this article will be a turning point in how you define “Asian” differently from now on.
Reference
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