You Don't Look Like An American

At the eye clinic today, an elderly patient in her seventies came in with her daughter for a follow up review. At the end, she turned to me and asked, “Where are you from?”

“The United States,” I answered.

Clearly surprised, she pulled her head back and squinted, “Oh, you don’t look like an American.”

With just a flicker of annoyance on my face, I thought to myself, “What do you mean, lady? Which part of me doesn’t look American?”

Her daughter, barely concealing her embarrassment, tried to make a joke to divert our attention from the awkwardness hanging in the air.

Completely oblivious, she continued, “Where are your parents from?”

Ah, so it’s the non-white part of me that doesn’t look American. “I’m Chinese,” I offered.

“Ha! I was born in Formosa.”

“Oh, okay. That’s Taiwan.” I added without missing a beat.

Clearly surprised again and now very impressed, she said, “Very good. A lot of Chinese people I ask don’t know where Formosa is. My parents were Russian and I was born in Formosa.”

Welcome to the twenty-first century, lady. Nobody’s been referring to Taiwan as Formosa for like a hundred years. I said, “Well, I do know a bit of geography.”

With that, the patient’s daughter said, “Mum, we should be going,” and whisked her out of the consult room.

I guess she will always call Taiwan “Formosa” until the day she dies because that was the name she had first learned, even when the native name is universally accepted and doesn’t carry with it any colonial baggage. It was like when I came back to Australia back in March and told people I just came back from Zambia. Quite a few of the people in their sixties or older either stared at me blankly or asked straight up, “What was its name during colonial times?” When I said, “It used to be Northern Rhodesia,” I could see the light bulb light up over their heads. The country has been independent for over forty years and you still only know it by its colonial name?