To keep the watermelon from rolling off the platform, I placed the bag holding it between my ankles. My fingers tapped words of grief into my phone while I waited at the International District/Chinatown light rail station. Around ten of us were waiting for the next train.
“Ni hao?” A male voice was asking me this tentative question. My head tilted up; who was talking to me? He waved at me, a smile on his lips.
“Ni hao?” he asked again, taking a few steps towards me. Without waiting a beat, he continued, “Are you Chinese? Am I right? Wait, let me guess: Filipino.”
Reader, my mind was worn and my body was weary. How should I have responded?
I look East Asian because, yes, I am Chinese American. That is something I cannot and do not wish to change.
I didn’t want to talk with him or anyone else. My heart was heavy with sadness.
He was also talking at me. Did he actually want to have a conversation? or simply the satisfaction of winning a guessing game?
My eyes remain fixed on his while I did the calculations. If I answer this stranger’s question, he will probably continue to talk. If I respond with snark, he might get mad. (That he wasn’t giving me the space to speak warned me that he might be impulsive. If he genuinely wanted to know my ethnicity, he could have asked me directly. In English.) Either way, we’d both be contributing to an interaction, something I didn’t want.
So, I said nothing, tilted my head back down at my phone, and resumed my text conversation with myself.
Reader, what do you think his reaction was?
“No, no,” he said, coming closer to me. “You’re wearing yellow sneakers and I’m yellow, too, I’m Filipino.”
I kept my eyes fixed on my phone and continued creating words, letter by letter.
“Oh, come on,” he whined, still approaching. “Don’t withhold from me!”
I started a new paragraph on my phone: a guy on the platform just started talking to me, greeted me with a “ni hao”
“You’re a BITCH!” he shouted. My peripheral vision spied that he was standing to my right, less than an arm’s length away.
Reader, what should I have done?
There were other people on the platform. A petite woman, who also appeared East Asian, was standing about six feet away from me to my left. She kept her eyes on her phone. There was also a handful of people on the opposite platform.
Pigeons fluttered between the rafters. Tiny feathers floated down onto the track.
don’t look up
he could hit you he’s close
don’t move
stay
“Fuck you,” he snarled.
Then, he started walking away. A few steps in he turned back and screamed, “FAGGOT!” He sauntered down the platform.
The only visible movement from my body was in my fingers: explained that it was the yellow I was wearing and he was yellow, too. When I continued to ignore him, he started calling me names
When the train arrived, I looked up. I got into a traincar and leaned against the opposite doors. He got into the same traincar and sat down about ten feet from me.
When the train started moving, he made small talk with people wearing jerseys for the visiting baseball team. He greeted them in English. They talked about the visiting team’s city. He told them to have a good time.
Was that really the same person?
I got off the train. He exited the train, too.
After waiting for him to board the escalator, I remained far behind him and watched him leave the station. Unsure of what to do next, I again chose stillness: I loitered in the station for over five minutes before I fell into the shadows directly behind a group of people around my age.
He had disappeared into the city crowds.
Part of the reason why I ask my colleagues, regardless of credential, to call me “Maria” instead “Dr. Yang” is because of events like this. Outside of the work setting my status automatically regresses towards the mean. People like this shouting man reveal just how low some think my status should be.
Like elsewhere in the country, events continue to occur in Seattle that show how much contempt some people have for Asians. The esteemed Wing Luke Museum was recently vandalized. The man who smashed multiple windows with a sledgehammer offered this explanation for his actions: “The Chinese are responsible for all this, they’ve ruined my life. … That’s why I came to Chinatown.” I don’t know who this person is, though descriptions of his speech suggest that he may have psychiatric symptoms. That offers no consolation. (I don’t think the use of racial slurs in of itself reflects mental illness.)
This isn’t the first time that someone has given me unwanted attention because of my ethnicity. (Presumably this was more about my gender, though this event nicely illustrates intersectionality). It won’t be the last time, either.
I don’t think of myself as a victim. What has changed, though, is that I walk through the world with greater vigilance. When I initially took up running, I did so to improve my aerobic fitness. These days, I want to maintain the ability to run a 5K so I can run away for self-preservation.
I think it is mostly luck that the shouting man did not strike me. Had he hit me, I would have been injured. I don’t feel great about my decision that day to remain rooted and still while ignoring him. However, I also believe that any other choice I could have made to limit our interaction would have had a similar result.
I don’t owe anyone my attention, just as no one owes me theirs.
But, such is the creeping toxicity of racism: You don’t actually know when you should be worried, so you always worry.
Maria Yang, MD 