I am an Asian-American of Chinese heritage. I arrived in Taipei from Washington, D.C., four months ago, and I am a “banana”: white on the inside, yellow on the outside. People have remarked how interesting it must be for “bananas” like myself to be “back home” in Asia. Indeed, it has been “interesting” to say the least.

I am an Asian-American of Chinese heritage. I arrived in Taipei from Washington, D.C., four months ago, and I am a “banana”: white on the inside, yellow on the outside. People have remarked how interesting it must be for “bananas” like myself to be “back home” in Asia. Indeed, it has been “interesting” to say the least.

Although for simplicity’s sake I often tell Taiwanese that I am an ABC (American-Born Chinese), I was in fact born in Malaysia. I emigrated with my family to the United States at age 15 and am thus an overseas Chinese twice removed. My bananization, though, began even before I arrived in America, with exposure to Johann Strauss at age three, among others. In Malaysia, it was normal for many Chinese to speak English and their respective dialects but no Mandarin. A non-Mandarin-speaking Malaysian Chinese was seldom thought of as weird or mistaken for a Japanese.

As a “banana” I naturally feel more at home in the West than here “back home” in Asia. Besides the United States, I have lived in Britain and spent significant amounts of time in western Europe and Australia. Thus, the West is “home” for me. The trend in Western societies and in “politically correct” America has been to downgrade focus on race and to treat people equally as individuals foremost. In Washington my ethnic origin was mostly irrelevant. People did not care what kind of ren I was. In Taiwan, on the other hand, I perceive that race and ethnic origin are a big deal. It may be more noticeable to us “bananas” because we experience different things from waiguo ren (“foreigners”) of the Caucasian variety.

If the British are obsessed with class and accents, the Taiwanese are seemingly fixated on race, national origin, and how a person “looks”—and I do not mean this in the fashion sense. Hardly a day goes by without someone asking “Ni shi riben ren ma?” (“Are you Japanese?”), as though determining a person’s ethnicity were a prerequisite for completing a transaction. The people here have visage characteristics and ethnic identification down to a science—or so they think. I have a feeling that given half the chance, the Taiwanese would claim to know how to tell a Walloon from a Flemish, a Welsh from a Scotsman, and a Nigerian from a Gabonese—from facial looks alone.

The whole concept of a “banana” is that we are Western in outlook and values but Asian in appearance—and it is the appearance that constitutes the biggest liability here. As a “banana,” I am a foreigner in Taiwan although I am often not allowed to be one. I remember an episode of Roots (the TV series from the 1970s) when the lead character, looking at himself in the mirror, said that all white people saw when they looked at him was his black face. I can certainly relate: in Taiwan all people see is my yellow face—and they assume accordingly. A typical experience is when I went to a French restaurant with three white Americans, who spoke Mandarin. The waiter immediately began addressing me only in Mandarin, as though my role was to act as the group’s spokesperson. It mattered little that I was a foreigner all the same; with my yellow skin and slant eyes, I was assumed to be Taiwanese. As always happens, he did not ask: he just assumed. I bet if they had menus in different languages, he would have given me the one in Chinese and my white companions the one in French—even though I am the one who could read French and my white friends could not. The waiter also gladly spoke English with my white companions but insisted on using Mandarin with me. He stopped only after I forcefully told him: “Look, I don’t understand a word of what you’re muttering because I really don’t speak Mandarin. It’s not a joke! I really am a dumb foreigner, and if you’re willing to speak English with these white people, surely you can speak English with me, can’t you please?!” We “bananas” must be really resented for mucking this well-ordered system that defines roles according to skin color.

Ever heard of “cognitive dissonance”? I suspect this is what the locals experience when they encounter me. They see a yellow face that comprehends neither Mandarin nor Taiwanese—and their neural synapses go bazookas! A dog’s innate instinct tells it, “If it smells like a cat, it is a cat.” For the Taiwanese, the rule of thumb seems to be, “If it LOOKS Chinese, it is Chinese and by golly, it must speak Mandarin Chinese.” (Ain’t no such thing as Cantonese or English! And ain’t no such thing as an Inuit, Mongolian, or Chinese-looking Vietnamese born in France who speaks French!) At a party, my wife Sophie (who is white) was speaking in English to a Taiwanese who immediately addressed me in Chinese when I approached. On being told that I did not know Mandarin, he remarked, “But just from how you look, I assumed you would speak Chinese.” Yeah yeah, what else is new? When we checked in at a hotel in Taichung, the front-desk lady wrote down my nationality on her paperwork as “Singaporean,” even though the inside page of my navy blue passport, which she inspected, had the big words “United States of America” emblazoned across it! I shudder to think how many crimes here may have been solved erroneously as a result of hasty conjectures about race and national origin. It seems no matter how strong the evidence is to the contrary, once they make up their minds you are something because you look like that something, heck, you are it! Passports? Who needs passports?! And why bother listening to what you have to say?! It’s how you look that counts, dummy!

The Chinese language does not play fair either. To my consternation, after arriving in Taiwan I learned that I could not call myself meiguo ren (American) because in colloquial Chinese a mei guo ren is by definition a white American only. I am classified as a zhongguo ren (Chinese) or guangdong ren (Cantonese). At most I could be a meiguo huaqiao (an overseas Chinese from America). Thus, my definition as a person is based purely on family ancestry and racial origin. White Americans, on the other hand, are not defined by their ancestral heritage. Even though they all have forebears that came from somewhere else, they are full-fledged meiguo ren. There is no such thing as calling Robert de Niro an itali ren (Italian) or George Bush a yingguo ren (Englishman)! Kristi Yamaguchi, the Olympic ice-skater, could boast an American lineage going back to the 19th century and earn a gold medal for the United States. But in Chinese and to Chinese speakers, she can never be a true meiguo ren—and it all has to do with skin color.

Some Taiwanese take pleasure in denigrating me for not knowing Mandarin. But hey, at least I know Cantonese! Ain’t that good enough? After all, before 1950 most people on the mainland and in Taiwan spoke dialects and not Mandarin, right? Rather than being encoded in Chinese people’s genes, Mandarin was in fact imposed from the top down. Go ask the Tibetans! A typical comment I hear is: “It’s so strange. You’re Asian but you don’t speak Chinese.” Gee … so now are all Asians supposed to be born knowing Chinese? To use the same logic, Taiwanese, being Asians, should innately know Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, and Tagalog! Interestingly, these people who say I should be ashamed for not knowing Mandarin would hardly think it proper to chide Ted Kennedy for not speaking Gaelic. Basically, a Swedish-American is expected not to speak Swedish, but a Chinese-American is expected to speak Mandarin. Am I nuts or is this simply racist?

The fact that Sophie speaks Mandarin but I do not no doubt makes us the “Laurel and Hardy” show of Taipei. When Sophie does all the talking in Chinese in a restaurant or shop, the locals would first stare at me in bewilderment, as though I were a rare specimen from Mars, and then turn away from her and begin speaking to me. I sense there must be some law that mandates Taiwanese must speak to slant-eyed people only and avoid talking to waiguo ren at all cost! Invariably, they are determined to will me to speak whether I could or not! Other times, attempting to figure out the reason for my muteness, they would ask Sophie outright if I am Japanese! Hooeey!

Once at a restaurant, Sophie walked up to a waiter and spoke to him in Chinese. He then walked six feet over to me and began speaking to me—in response to her question! Even after she told him that I did not understand Mandarin, he continued looking at me and speaking to me! Perhaps it was just my magnetic personality but in reality, it was more like my yellow face doing its job on him. The British are said to be “prejudiced” and the Taiwanese are not. But in all my sojourns in the most provincial English and Scottish villages, I never encountered Britons finding perverse glee in the fact that I, a slant-eyed “foreigner,” could speak better English than some blond blue-eyed Russians. They did not laugh when I was doing the talking in English while my very white-looking Spanish companions remained silent. Never once in Portugal did the locals patronizingly say they thought it “strange” to see a white person like Sophie unable to speak their language while an Asian like myself could. And suddenly in Taiwan … wham!

Whereas half the time I am taken for a Mandarin-speaking Chinese, about a quarter of the time I am mistaken for a Japanese—which only shows that classifying a person based on appearances is hardly an exact science. I am still baffled why locals insist on speaking Chinese to me if I have the word “Japanese” written on my face as they claim I do! Needless to say, in four months in Taiwan I have told people “I am not Japanese” more often than I did in my previous ten years! One day when I was looking at attaché cases in Asiaworld, the saleswoman said those bags looked really good on “us” Japanese (“Zhe ge daizi, ni men riben ren hen hao kan.”). Wee hoo, welcome to race-based shopping! Are there any racial groups the attaché case looks bad on, I wonder?! As usual, she did not ask: she just assumed. Pop quiz question No. 1: what do you call a slant-eyed person in Taipei who is dressed in Western clothes and speaks American-accented English? A Japanese, of course!

The other quarter of the time, I am assumed to be Korean. Once I tried to change currency at a bank and encountered a schmuck for a teller who mocked at my halting Mandarin and asked if I wanted him to write down information in Korean! My mistake was to attempt to speak Chinese after starting off in English with “How much is your commission?” and paid the price for it. Hey, I looked Korean to him—and it’s all about looks, remember? Pop quiz question No. 2: what do you call an English-speaking yellow-skinned person who wishes to change U.S. dollars in Taipei? A Korean, of course! Didn’t you know? The Koreans first change their wons into U.S. dollars in Seoul, and then convert the greenbacks into Taiwan dollars in Taipei. They purposely go through these extra steps just so they may practice their English with uncomprehending Taiwanese and be gladly insulted by ignorant bank tellers!

People have suggested I should be glad to be mistaken for a Japanese as the Japanese have “status” in Taiwanese eyes. Yes, but isn’t this arbitrariness of fate—of being favored or discriminated against based on one’s skin color, class, religion, sexual orientation, “looks”—the very sort of thing that we in the West have been fighting against for the past 20 years? On hearing my experience at the bank, a Taiwanese friend said the schmuck was being a schmuck probably because Koreans are looked down on in Taiwan, as opposed to Japanese who are looked up to. Ah ha, finally an admission from the horse’s mouth! So, there is such a thing as revering some people and scorning others on the basis of race and national origin. Uh, excuse me … isn’t this Racism 101?

So I was mocked at for my atrocious Mandarin and assumed to be a Korean, but more to the point, I was derided in a way that white waiguo ren would never be. There is something to be said about having pink skin and blue eyes! No wonder white people love it so much here. They have the status of God, almost, and can be described as latter-day mensahibs. In four months here I can put together better Chinese than some whites who have lived here for four years, and yet I am the one who gets laughed at, not they. White people are fawned all over just for saying “Ni hao” in the wrong tones. They could carouse in pathetic broken Chinese or refuse to speak Mandarin altogether, but no right-minded Taiwanese would despise or ridicule them. They would never get such condescending comments as “But why can’t you read Chinese?” or “It’s so strange you cannot speak Mandarin.” Did anyone say this was a white man’s world? Yep, it sure is and it’s right here in Asia! As a kid in Malaysia, I remember some locals who would be rude to each other but “Yes, boss” their white mensahibs like shameless sycophants. What I see in Taiwan strikes me as a milder variation of the same theme. White people are placed on a higher plane than yellow- and brown-skinned people, and the ones putting them there are the yellow and brown people themselves. Welcome to the 21st century.

In this society that is obsessed with diwei (“status”) and guanxi (“personal relationships”), white people, the “real” waiguo ren, have by far the most diwei. A person who is “white trash” would be “somebody” in Taiwan just by virtue of his skin color! I have learned there is also some “prestige” to being a meiguo huaqiao: it comes from having “made it” in America, speaking good English, and being presumed to be somewhat wealthy. It may be hard for many locals to grasp the concept of a yellow-skinned Westerner, but once they are convinced you are a meiguo huaqiao (as opposed to a worthless Korean or a refugee from Hong Kong) your stock rises exponentially! Incidentally, to be a meiguo huaqiao is to have “status” but to be a Chinese mainlander is … well, not such a wonderful thing. I can only surmise that given how the guest-worker laws are designed to keep them out rather than in, the Filipinos must have very little or no diwei at all. I guess I should be grateful for being light complexioned enough to be mistaken for a Japanese. If my skin were three shades darker, I would lose “status” in a big way and probably be mistaken for a mentally retarded aborigine or Filipino. Hey, it’s all about looks, remember?!

One of the striking things I notice is that white people hold their own kind to far higher standards than they do Asians. Sophie would not hesitate to condemn Germans and white Americans when she hears of their “racism.” But to her, the Taiwanese could do no wrong. If a German said he found it “strange” to see an Asian like myself speaking German, he would be castigated as “racist” and “narrow-minded.” If a Parisian waiter were to avoid talking to me and purposely spoke to Sophie only because she was white, she would be a bit furious. If an Afrikaner from Johannesburg were to insist that only whites could be Americans, Sophie would consider him “ignorant” and “backward.” If a white saleswoman at Saks in New York said to her, “You should buy this attaché case. It looks really good on you Jews,” that woman would be strung up on a tree! The Taiwanese are guilty of the same things, but instead of condemnation they get apology upon apology, excuse after excuse. They could go around saying “Jewish people are good at hoarding money” without being branded anti-Semitic or “prejudiced.” “They mean well and don’t mean to cause offense,” Sophie would counsel, or “they just aren’t used to a multiracial society.” True, but the same could be said for most of white Wyoming, Mississippi, and western Europe. Why isn’t the same excuse invoked for them? And why is it a crime for Westerners to eschew “diversity” and immigration when Asians can proudly maintain monoculturalism and closed-door immigration policies with impunity? Another time, Sophie said I should stop being offended and just learn to control my feelings. Let me get this straight: I am supposed to be mad when white people are racist but I cannot be mad when Asians are! Great. Apparently, a white man’s “prejudice” and “backwardness” is merely an Asian’s “well-intentioned innocence.”

Our “politically correct” white American friends seem no different. Once a group of us were chatting about how many bushibans (private “cram schools”) hire whites only to teach English because whites are deemed to have the “authentic look.” As Kristi Yamaguchi is defined as a riben ren instead of a meiguo ren and she doesn’t “look American,” she would be considered by many locals to be unqualified to teach English in Taiwan. Nice, huh? Back home, these friends would be aghast if they heard people were being denied employment simply because they lacked the “authentic look.” But here they hardly care, or dare, to denounce practices that are blatantly racist. “These Asians have a weird sense of racial identity,” they would say, apologetically. When they hear some of my stories, their response is, “I know it must be hard for you.” All I get is dispassionate sympathy. There is none of the outrage they would likely show if I were, say, a Jew complaining about Germans in present-day Leipzig, or a black person recounting experiences in rural Montana. They uniformly shrink from using the R-word, a deliberate omission, I sense. It is almost as though they could not bring themselves to admit that Asians could be racist, and in the process they perpetuate the myth that racism is exclusively a white man’s disease. “Yellow against yellow” and “yellow in favor of white” racism is equally “bad,” and it is about time Western people saw it for what it is instead of turning a blind eye and constantly making excuses for it. From what I have experienced, Asians can be ethnocentric, prejudiced, bigoted, and prone to stereotyping and valuing people purely on the basis of skin color in ways that modern-day Anglo-Saxons, Teutons, and Gauls can only dream of.

In the meantime, I have learned my lessons and come up with my own survival rules. Survival Rule No. 1 is: let people know you are a meiguo huaqiao! Survival Rule No. 2: don’t ever be mistaken for a Korean! Survival Rule No. 3: use English only! In order to come across as a meiguo huaqiao, it is necessary to speak English as much as possible even if it causes cognitive dissonance. Although it is nice to speak the local language, for yellow-skinned slant-eyed foreigners in Taiwan that proves more a hazard than a sound policy. For self-preservation, it is just better to do the “ugly American” thing, be an imperialist foreigner, and speak English all the way. Otherwise, the risk is too great of being looked down upon as a mental retard just off a mainland China boat, or an imbecile Korean! Now, if I were white, I would probably be better able to use and improve my Mandarin in this, my so-called “home.” Isn’t this just about the funniest irony of all?

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This is the full version of an article to be published in LIFESTYLE magazine under the pen name 'Washingtonien.'

"The author arrived in Taipei in March 2004 accompanying his spouse on an overseas job assignment. He holds a Ph.D. in Modern European History and previously lived in Washington, D.C., and London. He has also traveled around western Europe and Southeast Asia."