My scooter is brown and black and such a beaut. It took me a while to think of a name for it. There was “jee-tah” (a combination of 機車 jīchē and cheetah), or “jif” (after the peanut butter brand), but nothing stuck. I wanted a name that embodied its beautiful color and its companionship on late night rides. Thus, Melly.
Throughout my first month here, I would walk around town with friends, all of us foreign and all of us lost. However, some locals understandably mistook me as their tour guide. Once they heard me speak, I saw confusion in their eyes because my Mandarin is not good.
“我妈妈是中国人。我爸爸是越南人。 我也是美国人。My mom is Chinese, and my dad is Vietnamese. I am also from the States.” (side note: China is colloquially known as 大陆 dàlù, “the mainland”）
There were instances when the locals would turn to my white friends and adored them, showering them with compliments of how beautiful they looked. When this happened the first few times, I didn’t think much of it. But this happened often enough that I started to notice a pattern: I felt ignored. To maintain my sanity, I came up with a naive explanation: maybe since I blend in with the locals here, I’m ordinary. But my next thought was, “If I look like them, why weren’t they complimenting me as well?” (姐姐 Jiějiě, don’t you dare say it’s because I’m actually ugly! LOL)
I started to understand once I walked down the cosmetic aisles. There were so many bleaching products for whitening your skin. I left the States to decolonize my idea of beauty, but here we are praising lighter skin tones, big eyes, double-folded eyelids, long pointed nose, etc. “You were brainwashed into thinking that European features are the epitome of beauty.”
And so I wanted a name for my scooter that remembers to celebrate our natural skin colors. Melly— short for melanin: the pigment that gives human skin, hair, and eyes their color.
I don’t blame the culture here for believing that lighter skin is pretty or for disbelieving that I am also from the States. I blame Western colonization and privileged people who don’t take responsibility for it. So, I plan to use my privilege as a Chinese-American to dismantle the idolization of whiteness and to display the beautiful diversity of the States. Here’s to another eight months. 加油 Jiāyóu!
