(I can barely begin this piece because it breaks my heart thinking about what happened recently, but I know I will regret it if I don’t.)
I have spent a good part of my life living and working with Asians. My best friend in the second grade was from Hong Kong. I had my birthday party at her family’s Chinese restaurant. Her whole family was so kind and supportive of me and each other. I am still friends with her and her cousin on Facebook.
Later in college, I had a couple roommates from Japan, sisters and dear friends to this day even though we live in different places now.
After college, I signed a two-year contract to teach English in Henan, China. It was easily one of the most compelling experiences of my life. At 24, my university students called me Jie-Jie which means big sister. Even the grouchiest of my Chinese colleagues treated me with respect and cordiality.
Official relations between the US and China had its ups and downs while I was there. There was spy-plane vs. fighter-plane incident that went down. Each of our leaders blamed the other and things got tense. The school called me once to stay home to avoid an anti-American protest. They didn’t want me personally to feel bad. Although, there were some lively debates, I was never personally threatened or blamed.
A few years later, I had an opportunity to teach and live in Bangkok, Thailand. Again I am grateful for having that opportunity and experience. In addition to tutoring English to students, I also held a weekly Bible Study for sex workers in the red-light district. Many of these young people came to the city for financial opportunities and ended up in a very physically and emotionally high-risk situation. At the time, one in three tourists visiting was coming for sex.
A precedence for that can be recently traced to the Vietnam war, as the American soldiers often took their breaks in the allied country of Thailand. It is not the first time, as the military has a long and horrific history of using sex as both a pastime and agent of violence.
The association with Asian women and prostitution particularly has been a pernicious stereotype here at home. There are a lot of historical reasons for it, but it has to stop. This week’s shooter was apparently targeting businesses with Asian women because he was blaming them for his sex addiction. There is so much wrong with his thinking, but it didn’t come from nothing. It’s a Hollywood shortcut to show a hooker in a red, mandarin-collared silk dress, but the qipao is a traditional wedding gown that is supposed to represent innocence and purity.
It is past time to address our issues how we treat women and particularly those of Asian descent. They are fully human people and not objects to be disrespected, mistreated or harmed.
Lucky lanterns