{"id":59266,"date":"2019-11-21T15:36:09","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T15:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59266"},"modified":"2019-11-21T15:53:12","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T15:53:12","slug":"please-dont-get-a-tan-passing-as-white-in-hong-kong-is-a-reward-for-hard-work-you-didnt-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59266","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Please don\u2019t get a tan\u2019: passing as white in Hong Kong is a reward for hard work you didn\u2019t do"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Please don\u2019t get a tan\u2019: passing as white in Hong Kong is a reward for hard work you didn\u2019t do<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Hong Kong Free Press<\/a>
\n2018-11-04<\/p>\n

Sarah Denise Moran<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/a>
\nPhoto: Sarah Denise Moran<\/a>.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n

Twenty-six years ago, my Filipino mother left behind everything familiar to work abroad as a domestic helper. Around the same time, my British father also left his home country in search of better opportunities.<\/em><\/p>\n

Then in 1995, I won the lottery of birth by being born in Hong Kong<\/a> to a British father and a Filipino Mum. That day, I gained a British passport, white skin, and a lifetime of privilege.<\/p>\n

I grew up in local schools in Hong Kong. I can speak, read, and write Chinese fluently and half of my friends are Chinese. Which is why despite not being Chinese in Hong Kong, I never felt like I was different or didn\u2019t fit in.<\/p>\n

Until this one time, when I was seven years old, my teacher started explaining to the class how the Chinese term gwai mui<\/em> (literally ghost girl in Cantonese<\/a>, used to describe western females) came about. Apparently, when Westerners arrived in China<\/a> for the first time, Chinese people thought they were so white, they could almost be ghosts.<\/p>\n

Being the only foreigner in a local Chinese school, I was naturally the \u201cghost girl\u201d in class. What followed was a week of my classmates shying away from me, and occasional gwai mui<\/em> remarks. That was the first time I realised skin colour meant something, and my only close-to-negative experience from being white-passing<\/a> in Hong Kong…<\/p>\n

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

Twenty-six years ago, my Filipino mother left behind everything familiar to work abroad as a domestic helper. Around the same time, my British father also left his home country in search of better opportunities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,125,8,6462],"tags":[4773,30534,30533],"class_list":["post-59266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-free-press","tag-sarah-denise-moran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59266","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=59266"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59269,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59266\/revisions\/59269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}