Saw this news in Yahoo! Sports [read full article here] and thought I should share random pieces of my mind.
Apparently, Spain's Male and Female Olympic basketball teams posed for a courier ad which showed all of the players slanting their eyes. I don't know what their intentions were, but it never seemed to occur to anyone involved in that photo (including the staff) that what they did could be taken negatively. Even good fun has its limits. I personally find it shocking and offensive, particularly since China is playing host to the Olympics as of this moment.
I've always been proud of my Chinese background. Never mind that I am not that fluent and speak Mandarin/Fukienese with a weird accent, or that I can only recognize a number of Chinese characters (but good enough to understand raw dramas anyway! ^o^). Somehow, having "100% Chinese blood" stirs a bit of patriotism and pride within me. Seeing images like China hosting this year's main event and boasting of its amazing sights, or of the Great Wall of China standing tall for all of these years, or even of Jackie Chan and Jet Li making their names in Hollywood are enough to make me smile and feel excited.
But my being Chinese also has its not-so-happy times. Even though I was born in the Philippines, I've never been truly considered a Filipino. So when I was a kid, I've always been teased because of my one-syllable family name and I've been called lots of weird things (i.e. intsik kwakang baboy tikangkang). Even jeepney drivers/conductors have a tendency to holler something rude that pertains to my ethnicity to catch my attention. And some of my closest friends may have inconsiderately mimicked some Chinese phrases for fun or have made some nasty, stereotypical remark/s about Chinese people in front of my face. I usually just ignore these, but they actually upset me deep down.
Yet even if I am from a Hua Qiao family (both paternal and maternal grandparents were immigrants from China), but I also don't feel like I can be counted as an "authentic" Chinese. For one, I'm a Filipino citizen, and was born and raised here, and have no idea if I'll ever get a chance to set foot on China. Even my parents were born here and have never left this country. And then there's also the problem with language. All those Chinese classes didn't help at all and only dampened my social life in the past. I learned most of my Mandarin/Fukienese from my parents and from watching too much TV anyway, so school really didn't help. But I still graduated high school (there were only three of us in our batch XD) and maintained a healthy interest for the Chinese language and culture unlike many of the Chinese-Filipino kids out there.
Yet, I'm still not quite Chinese, and not quite Filipino at all.
But that picture is really controversial.
I'm suddenly so sleepy now. I can't quite understand what I'm writing anymore. LOL
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