Waiting for the train from Aguas Calientes to Ollantaytambo, I asked Daniel how to see and write in terms of affect. Of course it’s important to talk about ideology. But I think I think too much in categories and broad concepts and don’t pay enough attention to how bodies move and are affected by other bodies. I said my writing has been too detached. I’ve been afraid to fuck up. Daniel said I should pay attention to the moments of intensity.
I journal every night in bullet points recounting the day’s events. At the very least a single line, but sometimes I write a few pages. If there’s something I need to flesh out or give more detail I linger on it. I scanned through my journal this past week and found no moments that screamed out at me. Until I noticed something I’ve noted down almost every day here: people confronting me or yelling at me in the street about my race. I feel disgusted whenever I hear the word race but it just feels more honest than the word ethnicity. Ethnicity is race in the language of tolerance. And tolerance is at best a conditional acceptance of difference. Cleansed, aestheticized difference. Difference kneeling in its right place. Ethnicity is not just “cultural,” it is irreducibly political.
I’ve been bothered by people yelling things like “Chino!” and “Japonés!” here before but I’ve never really been mad. I assumed it was just a crude recognition of difference. One of my favourite race moments was when I was eating chaufa de carne at one of my favourite stands in the Pisac market and the owner, Dina, poked me: “Better than your country, right?” I asked her: “What is my country?” She didn’t reply. But she was right. It was among the best I’d had.
The worst moment was probably in Aguas Calientes. As it’s primarily a tourist town for Macchu Picchu, there are already so many people in the streets and in front of restaurants harassing people and trying to get business. One day a man stopped me as I was leaving the market to ask me where I was from. When I said I was from Canada he refused to accept it. He said: “You don’t look like a Canadian.” I asked him: “What does a Canadian look like?” No response. I gave him a friendly glare and walked off. But on the way back to the hotel a man started yelling at me in the street. I hardly remember what he was saying. It was like all the times before but more intensely aggressive and patronizing. This was the first time I wanted to yell back. I wanted to scream at him like a real righteous fucking racist. I wanted to match him and get all of our ugliness out in the open. Because if you know what it is it’s to be seen as a caricature of all the worst associations you can imagine and to see yourself as that, to become that caricature at the same time. I wanted to take away his humanity. I wanted to make him into a figurine on a shelf. I wanted him to feel on what level it hurts and on what level it works. But I didn’t turn around. I just walked away.
Yesterday after Inti Raymi I stopped at a mercado for water. A few women were chatting there, most likely the owner and her friends. One asked me where I was from: “Canada.” She made a gesture with her fingers and her eyes. “Oriental?” I let her guess a couple times until she got it right and she cheered a little like they always do. But she was very sweet. With the warmest smile, she said: “Welcome to Peru.”
Part of me likes this treatment better than back home. I often feel these impressions implicitly even when it’s unsaid. Sometimes my mom and I notice it in the way a waitress treats us. Without words, we know it’s there. I don’t know if I like pretending it’s not. It doesn’t give us a chance to speak back.
I wonder if any of you have had similar experiences here you’d like to share, and if you feel similarly about them?
6 replies on “X. Uno Gringo Chino”
While I can’t say I’ve had the same experience a you, how I’m treated as a woman here in Peru is also laced with micro aggressions (or not so micro) in a way that doesn’t happen in Canada. You notice it. You notice the way someone looks at you or the way their language changes when speaking to you. I remember on a night out in Aguas, I was happy to be dancing and hanging out with my friends but walking through the bar I could feel the way I was being looked at by the men in the crowd. I decided it would be fun to tell people Steven was my husband. Fun but also safer.
Morgan, I’m sorry to hear you’ve experienced that. Yes, you often do notice. I’m glad Steven could be your fun and safe husband for the night.
Adam, your perspective is so incredibly valuable. I think sometimes in a Canadian context racism becomes more insidious. Like it’s always there, but people feel the need to utilize micro-aggressions that could in theory be excusable behaviour over overt racism. This doesn’t make the racism any less real, it just feels less tangible. Walking with girls on this trip who get yelled at with comments about their race was so jarring. It added an extra layer of exoticization and objectification to catcalling. “I wanted to take away his humanity. I wanted to make him into a figurine on a shelf.” This is pure objectification and is such a terrible experience. I truly appreciate your vulnerability in talking about your lived experience and your willingness to extend grace to others while simultaneously acknowledging the reality of racism all around us.
Thank you, Orla. I appreciate your support very, very much. These moments are jarring. Objectification is messy and grey for me. But in that moment, that was my genuine feeling (of course, not to say that our feelings are entirely unconditioned).
Hi Adam, I genuinely am so grateful for this blog post and the vulnerability of living as a racialized person. “Ethnicity is the language of tolerance”— you really capture something so profound that I haven’t been wanting to admit to myself, I think growing up East Asains often means internalizing this idea that we deserve the harm that comes to us since as immigrants we’re often fed narratives that it was our own volition to be in such a situation. I think about after being labelled as “konnichiwaed” so many times I’ve come to find gratefulness for someone assuming I was Chinese, accepting that no one would ever guess Canadian. This must be how my mother felt when my classmates screamed “ni hao” and she smiled, equating ignorance with good intentions.
And your comment about Dina—I have no words. Truly, what is our country? We have the faces of our motherland, can we still say that it belongs to us when our bodies have been rooted in the West, even when people cannot see those roots?
I know that as a woman my experiences are very different—the fetishization of East Asain woman likely is why I have not come across anywhere similar to the same aggression. The other night when I was clubbing with Ana, some guys around our age approached us, and Ana translated that they wanted to take us home. For the first time on that trip, I felt as if the locals “didn’t see colour”, that I was stripped of whatever negative stereotypes associated with my Asianness, and it was a breif moment of empowerment by being sexualized. But I’m not colourless, and it’s confusing, I want people to see me not by my race but not just as a woman.
As humans we need and deserve recognition, but at this point I wonder what I even want to be recognized as.
Thank you for sharing your voice—especially when the world tries to silence us.
Annie, thank you so much for your support, for being vulnerable with me and for sharing your valuable experiences and questions. You’ve written so many beautiful and complex lines that I’m still thinking about.
“This must be how my mother felt when my classmates screamed “ni hao” and she smiled, equating ignorance with good intentions.”
“We have the faces of our motherland, can we still say that it belongs to us when our bodies have been rooted in the West, even when people cannot see those roots?”
“But I’m not colourless, and it’s confusing, I want people to see me not by my race but not just as a woman.”
“As humans we need and deserve recognition, but at this point I wonder what I even want to be recognized as.”
I empathize with you and know that you have different experiences with racism and discrimination as a woman. These questions are difficult, contradictory and just plain confusing, and I’m so glad that we’re talking about and thinking about them together.