Ganbei Fall 2020 Nostalgia

GANBEI MAGAZINE : NOSTALGIA
8%
I drew this piece, titled 8%, in my senior year
while attending a high school with an 8% Asian
population. My Chinese best friend and I used
to joke that we were “divided and conquered”.
No friend group had more than two Asians, but
any group with Asians always had two. It was
as though every one of us, starting in elementary
school in our predominantly white suburbs,
picked another Asian to cling onto. Despite the
dramatic push and pull of adolescent friend
circles, I held onto the one friend that also spoke
Chinglish, ate rice with every meal, and cried
over extra-curricular math at the dining table.
There were some things from home only another
daughter of Asian immigrants understood.
But we weren’t allowed to be too similar. I can’t
remember a teacher that didn’t mix up our names.
We split into different friend groups, different
classes, and different hobbies. When we both
bought a light blue jean jacket in junior year,
we promised to text each other on nights before
we wore it, so we wouldn’t accidentally match.
My childhood was peaceful. I studied like everyone
else, hated the bus like everyone else, and
got crushes like everyone else, but I could never
escape the subtle ways everyone else saw my
little triumphs of culture. My friend and I were
“the two Asian girls”, and Chinese opera singers
looked like clowns. ■
JESSICA SHANG
2ND YEAR