"Excuse me, What are you?"

There is something I really need to get off my chest. The odd part is what I am about to discuss is an issue I have had for as long as I can remember, but that I never gave much thought to until now. I have always dismissed it like many other aspects of my life. As luck would have it, I am currently taking a Critical Reading class that recently touched a very personal aspect of who I am, the very aspect I've been dismissing. When I say "who I am" here I am not talking about my personality, but my nationality - the essence of my being. I feel shaken to the core and I need to vent.

My full name is Celia Won Kum Spenard-Ko. For some, this may come as a shock because they see me as your average caucasian woman. However, I'm not. I am half Chinese, half Canadian (hence the Chinese middle name and the hyphenated last name). My father was born and raised in Hong-Kong; my mother, a green-eyed, red-headed, freckled Montrealer. What is the result of combining two complete opposites? A kid that looks nothing like either of them.

Growing up was hard. My father was never home, therefore I was with my mother a lot - alone. People would come up to us and say "Oh she's so lovely! How long have you had her for?". My mother would have to then awkwardly explain that I actually wasn't adopted and that my father was Chinese. Embarrassed, the nosy inquirers would usually apologize. I remember one day my mom had to pull out a photo album containing photographs of her pregnant self because I started to doubt she was my real mother. She also gave me a diary she kept during the whole pregnancy from the moment she found out I was coming. This reassured me for a time.

At school, people used to wonder what I was. I imagine the Italian name "Celia" would easily throw them off. I hated my name for that reason. I felt it didn't fit me, but I didn't know what "me" was. I remember the first time I saw the Disney animated film "Balto", the half dog half wolf that never fit in anywhere and for the first time, I felt like I could actually relate to something.

My parents divorced when I was eight and my father left the country to go back East. When he left, he took all that was asian in me with him. I hated being half. I wanted to be a pure Canadian. I hated having two last names, because I felt like the "Ko" was the only thing standing in my way of ridding myself of Chinese culture once and for all. Perhaps this was my way of coping with my father's departure. He wasn't around for me to hate, so I hated the part of myself that represented him.

Slowly, my eyes got a little wider, my face was less round, my hair started to lighten and freckles appeared on my cheeks. I no longer looked like the little china doll I was as a kid.

I remember my first visit to Hong Kong. I finally went to visit my dad. When he would introduce me to his friends, they all laughed and said there was no way I could be his daughter... I didn't look Chinese. Then they would examine me more closely as I fidgeted shyly. OK, maybe a little Chinese. I remember sitting at the dinner table with my aunts and uncles, not understanding a word they were saying. Every now and then, they would look at me and say something very slowly in Cantonese, I would smile and nod, they would laugh and continue talking amongst themselves. I don't recall a time where I ever felt more white.

Back home, my friends would ask me how my trip to the "homeland" went.

After visiting Asia several times I began to reconnect with my other half. I stopped wanting to deny my Asian roots. Maybe you could say I began to be proud of them. Too bad I didn't look very Chinese anymore. Those close to me will deny this, especially if you ask my mother, according to her I could be pure, but sometimes I feel she doesn't have the most objective perspective. My high school friends also see me as "Ling Ling", the only Asian girl in the Laurentian Academy than wasn't an exchange student. "Highlighter" and "TV face" (due to my bangs) were also frequent nicknames. Nowadays people ask me if I'm Italian, South-American, Icelandic... A man asked if I was Russian once. Even today in the subway some stranger came up to me and said "now you must be a pure Quebecer!". For some reason I was insulted and spat back "no, I'm Chinese!" The only thing he could think of to say was "ah yes I should have known... your hair".

This got me thinking, perhaps it is not so much that I have physically changed, but that people are so caught up in there fast paced lives that no one takes the time to really look before they speak anymore. Everyone simply assumes. They don't have time for details. When you talk to someone, are you really giving them you're undivided attention or is your mind elsewhere? When you talk to me, do you not notice that I barely have eyelids and that my eyes are slanted? Is it that hard to stop and really look at someone intently, especially when they are speaking to you? Give them your undivided attention, otherwise who knows what you could be missing out on. Details are so beautiful, so why not seek them out?

Yours truly,
The Eurasian.