"Can I Ask Why You Have An Asian Face?"

Yes, I honestly did get asked that once.  And I have had to go through something similar with EVERY SINGLE PERSON that I have met here.  It's ususally about the third or fourth question I get asked.  "Hi, what's your name?  Where are you from?  What are you studying?  Why do you look Asian?"

Here is the story of how I came to be:

My father was born in Germany after the war.  My grandfather worked on an American air base, and all the American soldiers told him that he should totally come to America, because it's such a great place.  So my grandparents decided that they would take their infant twin children and live in America for ten years, build up some financial savings, and then return to the homeland.  Of course, ten years later they had two American kids who spoke hardly any German.  So they stayed.  My dad went to college, studying chemistry, and ended up at the University of Iowa for graduate school.

Now my mother.  She is of Chinese descent, but her parents moved to a tiny island in the Indian ocean called Mauritius before them darn Commies got to the country.  My mother was born on Mauritius, but grew up in Hong Kong.  She went to college in America and got a chemistry major and a double minor in math and business.  Then she went to graduate school at the University of Iowa.

They met in chemistry class.  Cue the bad puns.  According to legend, my dad had a crush on her and started talking to her, but couldn't get the courage to ask her out.  My mom realized what he was trying to do and so asked him out instead.

Ten or so years later, I was born in Minnesota.

Now.  The Asian thing.  In America, people don't ask.  I can choose to "out" myself whenever I feel like it, usually when my friends happen to be discussing their European mutt heritages.  Then the reactions are "Oh, that's cool," rather than someone's mind being completely blown:  "You're Chinese?!  And German?!  And American!?!"  In America, no one really cares where your parents came from, or why you look they way you do.  Sure they wonder, but it's not a big burning question that they need an answer to before you've even held a conversation with them.  Besides, it's not that hard to find people of Asian descent who are American citizens, or adopted, or half-Chinese half-white.  Honestly, it's a lot harder to find people who are of pure German descent, like my dad.

However, in Germany, Germans are white.  And apparently, so are Americans.  A slight consolation is that I overheard one of my friends explaining his European mutt heritage to a pair of Taiwanese girls, and they reacted with almost the same kind of amazement.  "Wait, so you're French?  And German?  And Polish?  And American?"

I am an American.

I am a German-American who has sold her soul to her father tongue, who is currently residing in the land of her ancestors, who likes schnitzel and potatoes and bread and nutella (but not beer).

I am a Chinese-American who has tried and failed multiple times to learn her mother tongue or a dialect thereof, who slightly resents her mother for not raising her bilingual, who is damn good at cooking stir-fry and potstickers, who can use chopsticks and prefers tea to coffee.  And won't put up with Asian jokes any more than "That's so gay."

I am an American, a Midwesterner, a Minnesotan, from the suburbs of the Twin Cities.  I speak English, I am Minnesota nice, I like the snow, yes our last governor was a wrestler, we don't like to talk about that, no one's quite sure how that happened; it's pop (even though I don't drink it) and hot dish and drinking fountain, and we need to take the ACTs to get into college.

The American Dream is kind of cheesy, but there is some truth to it - in America, it doesn't matter who your parents are as much as who you are.  I'm not saying that's better than having a strong cultural connection to one's ancestors; only both my parents were chemistry majors, my brother is going into biochem, and I'm studying German and Linguistics.  Where did I come from?  I don't know.  But I have felt absolutely no pressure to be like my parents, and for that I am glad.

So yes, I have an Asian face.  But that's just an accident of birth.  That's just how I look.  There is so much more about me that is interesting and startling than just that.