Chinese in the Caribbean

I was told there was a small Chinese population in Guyana but I didn’t run into any for a long time. There weren’t even very many white people that I saw. Instead, amidst the sea of Afro and Indo-Guyanese faces, I stood out painfully and this fact followed me wherever I went. It didn’t help that I had probably the whitest skin in the country, having just come out of a Canadian winter. Whenever I walked around, men would call out to me “China!” or “Chinese girl!” or sometimes “Hey beautiful!” (no matter what - even when I wore baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt and had an acne breakout).

This public attention to my race made me uncomfortable. As a Canadian, this would be considered street harassment and in Canada, it is incredibly rude to greet someone by pointing out that their race. Not to mention, of course, the fact that I’m not Chinese. But this kind of behaviour persists all over the world, except, oddly enough, in Korea where Koreans assume from my lack of Korean fashion sense that I am Chinese.

But I eventually got used to this treatment, taking it as their way of being friendly. The one comment that threw me off-guard was a mechanic, who called out to me “hey China! Como estas, mi amor?” I was taken aback; I had not seen anyone speaking Spanish here at all. I wasn’t sure if maybe he was Spanish or he thought Chinese people spoke Spanish.

True to my style though, I did eventually find the Asians in Guyana. I came across a regular-looking grocery store and went in to buy some beer and maxipads. While I scanned the liquor shelves, I heard the store clerks chattering behind me, and I thought, wow, I really can’t understand what they’re saying. For some reason, Creole sounds an awful like Chinese. When I turned around, it turned out that the store clerks were Chinese. It appeared that this grocery store was owned by a Chinese family.

I wandered to the second level of the grocery store and discovered an entire floor of Chinese imports. Interestingly, and perhaps stereotypically, I was flooded with immediate relief. Here was the soya sauce and the sesame oil. Fish sauce and oyster sauce. Rice. Now I knew where I could go if I wanted to make some bibimbap. When I lived in Namibia, I had even managed to find a hook-up to order tofu, which seemed to be a more complicated process than even buying drugs. Perhaps I could do it here too. This Georgetown store seemed to have everything, including shampoo and Chinese Colgate toothpaste…because God forbid you have to brush your teeth using toothpaste with English packaging?

Oddly enough, constantly being greeted as “Chinese girl” – and being a little homesick - made me crave Chinese food. As one of the “six nations” that form Guyana, the old and established Chinese population in Guyana means that the country has developed its own regional variety of Chinese cuisine. I asked a few different drivers and hotel staff what restaurant had the best Chinese food (there were a surprisingly number of Chinese restaurants), and they all unanimously suggested New Thriving.

New Thriving Restaurant

It was a big place, with a fast food takeout area on the lower level and a more formal banquet-y sit-down area on the top floor, as well as a little Chinese bakery on the side selling Asian pastries. I thought perhaps here I might blend in a bit more, but the patrons were mostly Indo-Guyanese, with very few Chinese families. The Chinese owner greeted me warmly and I ordered the chili bean curd (or bean “crud” according to the menu), which I thought would be ma po tofu, but turned out to be its own thing. The meal was delicious, and I left feeling better. I thought about the indentured Chinese workers who came here almost two hundred years ago, working long hours for very little pay, and thought about how homesick they must have been, being so far away from home. They figured out how to make it work, and now are a part of Guyanese society. I felt a little less homesick with a belly full of tofu and a bit of historical perspective. Now, I just had to find a tofu dealer.

black and white and YELLOW

A few thoughts on race issues, and being an Asian woman in Windhoek.

After apartheid, officially sanctioned racial segregation was no longer imposed, but you still see quite a divide drawn along racial lines. The townships of small modest sometimes rundown houses are still full of black and coloured people, whereas the affluent neighbourhoods with barbed wire fences, electric gates, guard houses, and palatial structures are mostly white people. What I find very interesting, and sometimes annoying, is the way that I am considered to be “white” here, because of my relative position of privilege. As a foreigner, I’m perceived to be a tourist here, and therefore rich. My closest friends that I’ve made here are white, and I live in one of those affluent white neighbourhoods. At nice restaurants, the service staff treat us extra politely and the chef sends us complimentary dishes from the kitchen, I guess because people assume we are important (HA HA HA). People have even offhandedly referred to me as being white, and I can’t deny the feeling of not being “one of us” from the men who catcall me in the streets.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m not white. Back in Canada, nobody ever treats me like I’m white – in fact I am constantly reminded of my Asian identity back home. I eat Korean food at home with my Korean parents every night. My grandmothers speak to me in Korean. I still hold on to some Korean etiquette even in Canadian settings – feeling uncomfortable and horrified, for example, when French Canadians try to greet me with a kiss (why can’t we just bow respectfully from a safe distance?), or when my friend’s mother asks me to call her by her first name.

More importantly, I am still sometimes discriminated against because of the fact that I am not white, but a woman of Korean ethnicity. Canadian men who sexually harass me on the streets, for example, say very specific things to me that they do not say to white women. As much as I embrace Western culture and values, and have many friends of many ethnic origins, I do not identify as being white, nor do I have any particular desire to be identified as such. So to be classified as white here in Namibia is a bit of a jolt to me and my identity at times. I mean, I understand it – clearly I’m a person of privilege and I’m not black – but my feelings towards this alternates between amusement and annoyance.

The status of being Asian in Namibia is pretty interesting on its own. The other Asian worker I met here told me that she has travelled all over the country, and from what she’s seen, it is quite probable that I am the only Korean person in this whole country. Which means I probably won’t find someone else to make me kimchi chigae, sadly. When I asked a Chinese girl who had visited Namibia how ordinary folks viewed Asians, she told me perhaps jokingly that folks here believe that all Asians know kung fu, so they’ll leave you alone. There are other Asian people here, mostly Chinese businessmen, which probably only contributes to Namibian’s perceptions of me being rich. Trust me, though, I am not a Chinese businessman.

My personal experience has been that some of the locals view me to be an unusual creature. I guess it is still quite rare to see young Asian women in some parts here, so a few men can’t resist but try to talk to me, or at least yell “China” at me (an exclamation that I don’t quite understand). As I was told by another female intern, most of this street attention is not terribly derogatory, and it's almost never hostile, unlike in Canada, where sadly some men yell at me shocking things that i am sure they would never say in front of their mothers (sidenote: this is a great website about street harrassment in ottawa). Here in Windhoek, it's mostly along the lines of “Sister I must tell you: you are beautiful”. I feel like these folks mean no harm and are just curious, which is much better than whatever is motivating those jerks back at home. Either way, I suppose it could be worse. There are worse stereotypes than assuming that I am beautiful, exotic, rich, and know kung fu.