The story of the Asian eyes and why it’s not funny.

Aren’t there some moments in your life where you just wish the person who has in some way negatively affected you, can also experience the same thing — first-hand themselves? The reason may not be to directly inflict pain on the person or to necessarily teach them a lesson — but for them to experience the same thing, so they can say, “wait, I feel hurt” — for them to acknowledge and recognize how they would feel when somebody does that to them.

Well, for me, I have definitely wished just that. And I have a story to tell.

Not only will you be reading the story, but as well as be guided throughout with my personal thoughts and questions that I experienced during the event (since this story happened some years before, it is a close guess to how I was thinking and some additional thoughts that I added from the present me).

The ‘pre-preparation’.

In order for you to be ‘prepared’ and have the full experience in my story, I would like to kindly ask you right now to take out a paper, tablet, phone, whatever you can write on — if you don’t have something nearby to write on, no worries, you can just have your brain and that works perfectly fine ;-). The idea is for you guys to merge yourself in my story by following along and answering the thoughts that I had during this experience. When you see italics and “quotation marks” together like “this”, please reflect and think along with me. It is an ‘active’ reading activity. Thank you for your cooperation.

Let’s start.

My mom picked my sister and me up from middle school (this was in Hungary and close to summer break).

On this particular day, my mom decided to take us shopping for some clothes at New Yorker. Back then it was still a fairly new clothing brand and was seen in our middle-schoolers eyes as ‘the one and only, coolest shop ever’ — not an exaggeration. So we headed to Auchan, which is a department store, where they had the brand.

Up until when we arrived at Auchan and entered the store, my sister and I were filled with excitement. We were as happy as little Chinese middle school girls could be. We finally could buy that puppy t-shirt that we wanted!

We entered the store and my sister and I went to the sunglasses section for adults, we tried on a couple of sunglasses and saw them oddly balancing across our tiny faces — as if they could fit our tiny frames. We laughed and were clearly having fun.

But just then, two Hungarian kindergarten boys walked into the store with their mother following.

They were heading towards the boy's t-shirt section, but halfway, the two boys saw us and they turned around. So they bounced towards the sunglasses section, with their mother walking behind them. And they stared — at us.

I felt uncomfortable.

“Why are they staring at me — at us? It’s a bit too long”

The two boys continued to stare. And before I could make any response, they placed their index fingers up to the corner of the eyes and pulled it up. Their eyes were stretched upwards. “Kinai!”, (which is the Hungarian word for Chinese), they shouted looking at us, while laughing hysterically and seemed to be barely getting enough breath.

“Why are they doing this? It’s because I’m Chinese right…”

They continued to shout “Kinai! Kinai!”, while using their fingers to stretch their eyes up as far as they could, imitating what they thought looked like a Chinese person.

I felt embarrassed. I felt ashamed. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there.

But after a while, having satisfied their means of amusement, they went away.

“Their mom didn’t do anything. Didn’t she care — at all?”

She just stood there, emotionless as a statue — watching, as they continuously called us names…

I remember thinking to myself, if it was my mom, she would’ve told us to stop abruptly, but we would also never do the same thing in the first place…

“So, what would you have done, if you were the parent?

“What would have been the correct thing to do?”

After the boys left us alone, bouncing away to the t-shirts section with their mom, I wasn’t in the mood to shop anymore. So, I walked and pretended to look at some necklaces, while I thought:

“What if somebody else did the same thing to them — mocking their culture. How would they feel? I could’ve…”

I didn’t go further. But I continued with other thoughts.

“I wonder how they were raised. Did their parents openly affirm behaviors like this? This wasn’t the first time…?”

And…

“What was their genuine reason for doing it? And did they feel better after doing it?”

“Will it pain them to not do anything?”

But also I wanted to know if …

“It was more than an issue of discrimination”.

And most importantly a question to ask now is:

“How can we prevent similar things or behaviors from happening in the future?”

• “Does it start with the parents' upbringing? Should there be workshops on cultural awareness and understanding for adults — and kids, implemented in their school schemes?”
• “How can we work to include diversity and inclusion in our routines, especially in an ever-growing international society?”

Cultural competence will become an essential skill that is not only important in our personal interactions but also in professional work-place settings.

Ok, back to the story…

I went home that day not feeling particularly good about myself and I was even thinking if there was something wrong with me and where I come from.

My sister and I didn’t talk about what happened that day — or the rest of the coming days and years after. This blog is the first time that I have openly mentioned it, which is ironic because now everybody knows all at once. I also never told my parents, I didn’t want to add an extra worry for them, by mentioning something that wasn’t ‘so important’. I thought that I should learn to deal with it myself…

In short, as a middle schooler and also any other age, this affects you. These and also similar actions cause a certain change in your perceptions, which may either be good or bad.

From this short experience, however, a quote from Matthew 7:12, really resonated with me, as stated in the Golden Rule of Christianity, “…do to others as you would have them do to you”.

Cultural awareness and competence starts with understanding — not only others, but also yourself — how you like to be treated and in turn how you would then treat others.

So, let’s hear your opinion.

• What did you think during the story?
• What aspects did you resonate with?
• What were some similar experiences you had and how did you feel in the moment?
• If you were me or the two boys how would you act/respond? Why?

And most importantly…

• What can we do to improve cultural awareness among each other?

Let others know.

Your first action is to write about what you thought and what you felt during the story or selecting the questions above to answer. Then, comment on this blog, so we can create discussions.

What you are thinking right now, others are most likely also thinking the same.

Make your mark.

Write your story down. Make a difference by sharing your experiences that countless others also resonate with. You are not alone.

• You can go here to read the simple guidelines to start writing and submitting your story.

Share this initiative with others.

Let’s write together.

Let’s start a conversation.

And let’s start by using stories to cultivate action.

#weareothers.

• Check out our website here to find out more about what Raw Culture is and what we do.
• To understand my Why in starting this initiative, read my first blog here.
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Can’t wait to hear your stories and thoughts! I’m here to tell you, they are ideas — stories worth sharing! ⭐️