Uncle Dan’s Notes: On the Innocence of Asians…

Posted by Uncle Dan on February 17th, 2008 | Categorized as Blog | 306 views and 17 Comments

So last Friday night was interesting. It was technically the Valentine’s party, being as it was for, well, everyone. We don’t need excuses to party, but they can make it more interesting.

During the night, my HK friends go nuts. They actually usually go nuts these days, but other people notice this time. My Bulgarian friend asks me “Hey, what’s with the Chinese people? They’re going wild tonight!”

In the meantime, a Dutch guy is after a girl from Taiwan, and actually not leaving her alone for most of the night, while my Indian friend gets jealous because he thought the girl was attracted to HIM. But meanwhile, my keen Asian senses tell me that she’s a nice girl who’s too polite to actually say no to people, but will seek to unembarassingly flee.

Also meanwhile, a HK friend and an Indonesian friend are having fun with a Thai and HK girl, in extremely weird ways. It’s not as lewd as it sounds, because they seem to have fun exaggerating lewdness, which somehow comes across as comical. Mind you, these guys have some stories, and don’t mind going a little over the weird line, if it means having a lot of fun in a wild way which may or may not involve women. It’s hilarious to hear about later, especially from them. It WOULD be kinky, if it weren’t also disturbing in a funny way, or funny in a disturbing way.

On that note, it’s funny that people in the general-West think Asians are all very innocent. And we all should know it’s a mixed bag. You DO get innocent Asians, and it’s a little above the average. In the previous campus, where most students at my college start, they start every term telling the RAs about how many abortions were done in the previous term, usually from Asian girls who didn’t know about protection. In my second term there, they actually gave boxes of condoms to RAs, saying “If anyone asks, you’ve got them. Tell them to USE them, it’s cheaper than abortion!”

Nevertheless, Asians can pick it up, because Asians don’t hide their lack-of-innocence from each other. We know all about the Malaysian playboys, the wild Hong Kong girls, the dirty Korean humor, and just how bad Japanese perversity might well be. Europeans walk by a group of, say, Chinese, talking together, and think that they’re probably having an innocent conversation, but no, they’re drinking, smoking, and making dirty jokes just like everyone else does. You just have to understand it.

There are only a few Indonesians here, but I can understand enough of Bahasa to know that while people love them because they’re nice people, and the guys considered platonically cute, get a group of guys together and… Well you know.

Which goes to say that men are men everywhere. Yet, we get the innocent, smart, and possibly well-behaved card. And that suggests that to me that people think we’re Asian before we’re male.

I took a class once, one theory of which suggested that in the West, various media have painted Asian males as asexual and weak, and Asian females as sexually desirable.

Follows in line, doesn’t it?

Daniel Nguyen-Phuoc

Vietnamese in ethnicity, born in Houston, Texas. Lived in Jakarta, Indonesia for 14 years while going to a British International School to finish with the International Baccalaureate. Survived only two years in the University of Michigan before ending up in Switzerland. Graduated from an international (and that's meant in every word) hospitality college. Interesting life, to be sure. But not the only one.