I'm a CBC: a "Canadian-Born-Chinese". According to Statistics Canada - I'm a second generation Canadian by definition as I was born in Canada with at least one parent born outside of Canada (both parents, in my case). I am also a beneficiary of birth tourism. With the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China looming only about a decade away and all the uncertainty surrounding it, my parents arranged for my mother to visit her parents and brother in Canada so that I could be born a Canadian citizen. They reasoned that should things go badly south with China before they could immigrate, at least Canada would not be able to refuse me. So my mom visited her family in Canada, I was born, and a month later we were back on a plane to Hong Kong where my dad would meet me for the first time.

About two years later, my parents qualified to immigrate to Canada through the points system and we were on our way back to the good old Canadian soil. Suffice it to say, I have no memories of my two years in Hong Kong and that plays a large part in why I have much more strongly identified with being Canadian for almost all of my life. I remember my pre-school days in a suburb of Toronto, where there was a reasonable number of Asian children in my classroom and I could speak English and Cantonese at almost equal opportunity on the playground. When we moved across the country to Vancouver, I was suddenly one of maybe ten Asian kids in my entire elementary school. I immediately felt the difference on the playground, noticing - as much as a five year-old can - that I was having a harder time making new friends. I was suddenly not only contending with being the "new kid" in Grade 1, I was also the kid who looked very different from everyone else. I took to wandering around the playground looking for other Chinese kids and eagerly asking if they could speak Cantonese. Two were new immigrants from Taiwan so we were at an impasse for communication, one was a third generation CBC who couldn't speak any Chinese dialect, and the final one was a girl a year older than me who was in almost the exact same situation. We started to wave to each other when walking home separately with our families, and soon our parents connected over this and became friends so that we also became playmates. 

(I did also make friends with two other girls in my class who were not Asian. We became the oddball trio of the classroom, and that is a status I don't feel I ever quite left behind, especially through my pre-University days).

It was during these early days where I really felt my "otherness" for the first time in my life. I was young and not very bright, and really all that mattered to me was that I had friends I could play with. It had never occurred to me prior to this that my being Chinese made me different enough for it to be of note. Of course, I grew up in a very sheltered neighbourhood during a time when Canada really embraced the mosaic narrative and heavily emphasized it in our education, so I lived a fairly uneventful childhood. Sure, there were the occasional comments about the Asian stereotype of getting good grades, but I don't even recall that many microaggressions being aimed at me during this period of my life. The only overtly racist incident I experienced was a passing adult making an offhand remark about my eating dogs when I was walking dogs with a (Caucasian) friend. Honestly, if she hadn't been so offended on my behalf, I probably wouldn't have even noticed because it was a reference I did not understand.

Much has been made in recent years about the lack of diversity and Asian-American representation in the media and the accompanying negative effects it can have. Like many of my generation, this is something I recognized and acknowledged as I became older and learned to question why I didn't see myself reflected in popular media. Something as simple as finding a character costume for a themed party would make me realize how few options I really had. I don't know that I necessarily set out to find shows, movies, or characters that were Asian, but I kept my eye out for them and would make a point to watch them if I was able. I've certainly used search engines to look up Asian characters in Western media, wondering if I've missed any important ones. So I thought I'd make a list for myself - that way I have something to review and reflect on that is meaningful to me.

I'm going to be using "Asian- American " because - as far as I am aware - there is not a blanket term that encompasses those of Asian ethnicity who grew up in Anglosphere countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and USA). "Westernized Asians" doesn't seem quite the right fit either because that doesn't necessitate growing up in an environment as a visible minority, which I think is one of the defining characteristics of an Asian-American. Also of note: I'm not going to pretend that this list is exhaustive. I don't have any kind of educational background or credentials that make me remotely qualified to reflect on or critique Asian-Americans in popular media. On top of this, I am going to be mostly covering East-Asian representation in Western media, especially with a focus on the "Chinese-American" experience. I do this not because other cultures are better represented (they're not), but because I can only speak for myself and reflect on my own experiences! After all, this is a "fun project" for me in my spare time in a journal that no one reads!