Written by: Meg Ermer
Who is that girl I see?
Staring straight back at me
Why is my reflection someone I don’t know?
So go the lyrics of Reflection, a musical number featured in Disney’s 1998 animated hit Mulan. This movie has always occupied a special place in my heart, and its message about reckoning with and searching for one’s identity, as the lyrics of Reflection sum up, rings true of my own life.
From 1980 to 2016, China instituted the one-child policy to combat overpopulation. Under this policy, families were limited to having one child each, with few exceptions. The consequences of breaking this policy were dire, ranging from fines equivalent to a year’s wages to forced abortions. Because male children inherited the family name and property, baby boys were not only preferred, but necessary to ensure the well-being of their parents in old age.
As a result, more than 110,000 children from China, mostly girls, were adopted by families in other countries. More than 80,000 of these children found homes in the United States, and I was one of them.
In most ways, I had a typical American childhood. My sister was also adopted from China, and our mom prioritized integrating our heritage into our lives through celebrating Chinese New Year, attending family-focused Mandarin classes at the local community college, and even traveling back to China and visiting our home provinces. I never felt very different from my friends at my primarily white elementary school. This feeling of belonging and normalcy continued into high school, where I laughed off the occasional “Do you eat dogs?” joke without thinking much of it. But when February 2020 came, the world completely changed.
In addition to the general COVID anxieties that the pandemic brought, a growing sense of unease began to weigh on me. Suddenly, China was the topic of every other conversation, and not in a positive way.
While never directed toward me, comments I heard at school — including “people in China eat any random s***” and “Chinese people are genetically inferior and more susceptible to disease” — made me feel a sense of otherness that I had never experienced before. Even though I hadn’t really affiliated myself with my Chinese identity up until that point, the anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic still felt deeply personal. Whatever “whiteness” that I had ascribed to myself came crumbling away that year.
With college, came new opportunities to explore my heritage, so I joined Asian Club and participated in their cultural nights and events. While I’ve enjoyed getting to know the club members, I’ve often felt like a fraud, knowing that I don’t have the experience of growing up in Asian (often immigrant or international) families, as most of the other members have.
I can’t speak Mandarin, and I can cook only a few Chinese recipes. Every time I reach for the frozen dumplings at Trader Joe’s, I inwardly cringe. During Lunar New Year, I wear my qipao and accept red envelopes and wonder if I’m appropriating from a culture that I have little right to claim. A well-meaning comment from a friend sums up my imposter syndrome in a nutshell: “When I first met you, I thought you were really Asian, but now I know you’re not.”
It’s a unique position. Being born in another country but not speaking your native language. Checking the “Asian/Pacific Islander” box on applications but knowing you’re not the target demographic. Having a foot in two worlds, neither of which you feel completely accepted in, but both of which are so deeply ingrained in your experiences that you can’t imagine yourself without them.
As AAPI month approaches, I continue to wrestle with how to relate to my heritage. While I’ve prioritized reading books by Chinese authors that have opened my eyes to the Chinese experience in the Western world, I can find only a few bits and pieces of their stories that match my own.
I’m coming to realize that reckoning with my identity will be a slow process, and it won’t depend on a singular factor such as where I’m from, what I look like or where I grew up. Hopefully, one day I will look in the mirror and my reflection will be someone I not only know, but someone whose story I celebrate and truly understand to be my own.
