You're in the grocery store checking out the assortment of bizarre Chinese snacks. There's dried shrimp, dehydrated fish, and some other crunchy stuff you've never seen before. You look up from the shelf and notice an elderly, female employee approaching you. You assume she's coming over to ask you if you need any assistance, but to your surprise she puts her hands in your head, grabs a couple baby locs, and begins "inspecting the engine" so-to-speak. After her examination, she begins speaking to you in Chinese, and next thing you know you are surrounded by 3-4 Chinese women staring at your hair with intrigue, trying to figure out the "hows" and "whys" of what is on top of your head. How do you respond?
If I were in America, I would have immediately been offended and considered this incident a violation of my personal space. Knowing me, I would have even glared my eyes, rolled my neck, and sucked my teeth to show my disapproval. In this instance, however, I had no idea how to respond, so I just nodded and smiled and attempted to answer their questions as best I could. Since personal space is not a "thing" here, I am used to being touched and bumped into by people throughout the day, but this was a little weird for me. I'm used to people staring at my hair, but no one has ever been bold enough to touch it (well except my little first graders, but they ask). Instinctively, I wanted to channel my inner Kendrick Lamar and be like "Trick, don't kill my vibe," but I knew these women were genuinely curious about my hair.
When situations like this occur, I have to remind myself that Chinese people are not used to seeing images of people who look like me. There are more than 1 billion people living in China, and most of them will never leave this country. That means majority of the people I pass on the daily basis will only see Asian people for the rest of their lives - craziness. As we know, whiteness is the holy grain of beauty, so the scarce images of black people on the TV and movie screens are not an accurate representation of the black population. Like seriously, nobody looks like Beyoncé or Lebron James or even Lil Wayne, so grandma and her friends at the supermarket have never seen someone like me, I'm sure. I get questioned about my hair so much, its kinda funny sometimes. "Does it grow out of your head like that? How do you comb it? Do you wash it? Why do you need to put oil in it?" I respect their curiosity and interest. Mama always said, "If you don't know, ask."
- FBG