{"id":26043,"date":"2012-10-17T02:25:36","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T02:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=26043"},"modified":"2012-10-17T02:25:36","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T02:25:36","slug":"china%e2%80%99s-mixed-views-on-mixed-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=26043","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Mixed Views on Mixed People"},"content":{"rendered":"

China\u2019s Mixed Views on Mixed People<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

hardboiled: the asian pacific american issues newsmagazine at uc berkeley<\/a><\/strong>
\nIssue 13.3<\/a> (March 2010)
\npage 9<\/p>\n

Margaret Zhou<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cLittle girl, wait! Take picture?\u201d Over the four years I spent in China as a child, I was grabbed and tugged by the arm hundreds of times by strangers who all had the same curious and excited gleam in their eyes. My other foreign friends, who stood out in a sea of black-haired heads with their blonde hair and blue eyes, were also common targets of these harmless attacks. There always seemed to be a difference, though, in how the swift picture-takers treated me in comparison to the other kids. Since I am half-Chinese and half-white, I was the only one among us who looked kind of un-foreign, kind of like them. Sometimes this would render preferential treatment, as the picture-takers would say I was the most exotic looking one; other times, I was deemed not exotic enough to be in their pictures, and instead received confused glances as they turned away. I never knew which one was better or worse.
\n\u00a0
\nVivian S. Toy of the New York Times<\/em> published an article last year relating the experience of her mixed children during their visit to Beijing. Her stories of picture-takers and that continuous question, \u201cWhat are you?\u201d recalled memories from my childhood. \u201cIt had become clear why my children were attracting so much attention. They look Chinese, but not exactly. They look Western, but not quite,\u201d Toy explained.
\n\u00a0
\nIn the same vein, an article titled \u201cMixed blood people get the best of both worlds\u201d was published on the Shanghai Daily<\/em> website in September 2009. The article lists the numerous benefits of being mixed in China: mixed people are popular in the fashion and modeling industries because they\u2019re usually taller than most Chinese; they\u2019re perceived by many as \u201cmore attractive and more intelligent\u201d; those with an American parent don\u2019t have to study hard in school because they can go to a U.S. university; mixed babies are often used in product advertising; and mixed men are often approached by women for marriage.
\n\u00a0
\nPatrick Liu, who wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on the history of a mixed family living in Jiangsu Province, is cited in the article as stating that the \u201cattractive and intelligent\u201d stereotype surrounding people of mixed race \u201creflects both pride in Chinese culture and respect for foreign culture.\u201d The article goes on to state that in a homogenous society like China, where 93% of the population is Han Chinese, \u201cit is intriguing for people to see a different look, especially when the difference is mixed with similarities that are easy to understand\u201d \u2013 because, of course, it\u2019s easiest for us to understand people of our own race.
\n\u00a0
\nSo is it true then? Do \u201cmixed blood\u201d people really have the best of both worlds?…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China\u2019s Mixed Views on Mixed People hardboiled: the asian pacific american issues newsmagazine at uc berkeley Issue 13.3 (March 2010) page 9 Margaret Zhou \u201cLittle girl, wait! Take picture?\u201d Over the four years I spent in China as a child, I was grabbed and tugged by the arm hundreds of times by strangers who all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,8,394],"tags":[221,12502,12501,12500],"class_list":["post-26043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-china","tag-hardboiled","tag-hardboiled-the-asian-pacific-american-issues-newsmagazine-at-uc-berkeley","tag-margaret-zhou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}