It was a typical ‘tag day’ (a day where students are allowed to wear free dress to school) and there I was in my black t-shirt and a pair of worn out jeans. As I approached to the deck, my friends looked at me in a rather unusual way. I greeted them with my usual greeting ‘Sup man?’ in hope of finding out what was typically unusual about me.
‘Mark you’re so NOT Chinese.’ said Lysha.
‘...and what do you mean by that?’ I replied.
‘Well you know, it’s a tag day today and I thought you were gonna dress casual but I certainly did not expect you to show up in this attire. I thought you were gonna wear like a shirt with chinese writings on it or something.’ replied Lysha.
It was this little conversation that inspired me to blog about today’s topic which is about stereotypes.
Stereotyping a race of a person can be expressed as ‘Categorizing’ people of a certain race by how they look and appear and assume that everyone of the same race behaves or acts the same way by judging just that one person.
I am a Chinese and by coming to an international school with a diverse population, one would certainly be lying if he or she were to say that stereotyping does not occur. As far as I can remember in school, my friends would often ask question about my race and also make fun of how Chinese people are. I must say I am rather surprise by how much I (or Chinese people) am being stereotyped. ‘Hey Mark do you always eat with chopsticks?’, ‘Is your favourite food fried rice?’, ‘I bet you’re good in math because you’re Asian.’. These are question that I would often get from my friends in school.
Apart from the questions, they would often mock (well jokingly of course) me with you know, the infamous weird Chinese accent when Chinese people learn how to speak English like ‘One dollar for fhree (three) biscuits.’ or ‘Herro, my name is…’ which is unfortunately made a laughing stock out of from people who can speak the English language fluently.
Ah yes, Asian eyes. Who would not notice them? My friends would often stretch their eyes so that it would look like nothing but a line and say ‘Hi! I’m Asian!’ It really amuses me that there are so many people out there who find this fact funny to make fun of. What’s the big deal of having pair of eyes which is unique and different compared to others?
Besides school, I believe that media plays an important role in stereotyping Chinese people. This can be seen in almost every Hollywood movie where they would portray a Chinese person who speaks English in a weird and funny accent, not wealthy and is an expert in martial arts. This fact can be best portrayed in the recent movie ‘The Karate Kid’. Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) is a typical young American boy who had to move to Beijing, China with his mother. There he meets the maintenance man of his new apartment building, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Dre and Mr. Han soon form a tight relationship and Han would teach Dre martial arts to defend himself from some bullies he met in school. Dre would later compete in a martial arts tournament and wins it by defeating his rival once and for all. Relating back to our topic once again, Chinese people, funny English accents and martial arts were all incorporated into this movie. Therefore it would not be surprising that people who are not exposed to a diverse culture would automatically link these qualities to Chinese people.
Apart from movies, the internet plays perhaps an even larger role in stereotyping Chinese people as millions and millions of articles about Chinese stereotypes are posted on the internet. Most of them are rather unfriendly.
By posting these articles, the person has unawarely ‘polluted’ the minds of other people around the world. No wonder there are so many people who usually think negative things about Chinese people no thanks to the person who posted such ‘nice’ opinions about Chinese people.
As much as I hate to admit, some stereotypes portrayed by the media and my friends are some what true. We Chinese people are genetically short in height, have yellow skin and YES, we do eat with chopsticks. Also, I am proud to say that my favourite food is none other than Chinese fried rice. However, the stereotype of Chinese people speaking bad English is definitely not true. A good example can be portrayed in movies as more and more Chinese actors and actresses like Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh are getting more prominent roles in Hollywood movies.
The statement that all Chinese people have small eyes is also not true. If one would actually take some time and search on the internet or magazines about Chinese women in particular, one would be surprised that their eyes are the size of the moon!
Not all Chinese people are great mathematicians and physicists. They are of course some Chinese people who are phenomenal in the math subject but the Chinese also have great talents in performing arts and sports producing great musicians such as ‘Lang Lang’ and ‘Yu jia Wang’ and athletes such as NBA player Yao Ming and the World’s No.1 Badminton player Lin Dan.
All in all, stereotypes are just something that is created by our society ‘labelling’ people which they think represents their race in general. However, we should always remember that everyone is unique and different in their own way and should definitely not let stereotypes stop you from achieving what you really want to achieve in your life even if it means breaking free from it. Many people (in fact most of the people that I’ve mentioned above) have break-free from their stereotypes to get to where they are today.
