If you don’t like social media, I probably don’t like you

This is how I feel about people who are cynical about social media

In my Contemporary Development of American Politics, our teacher asked us “How many of you don’t like Facebook?” and most of the class raised their hands. I get it, Facebook was a cool thing in ninth grade following our middle school emo/scene/goth MySpace phase. Now Facebook is full of those damn Minions, someecards, and check-ins of where your friends went without you last night.

At some point, I brought up how after #BlackLivesMatter became huge in August of 2014, I got to see all of my high school friends who were actually racists! It was great! Also, with the presidential campaigns going on, I get to see all of the “I friended you in high school because we had Bio together freshman year” people show off how much they know about politics.

I was feeling cynical because I had just listened to my classmates bash Facebook, something that I am actually really into. That’s ridiculous, right? Who likes seeing what their distant, homophobic relatives post online? Luckily, all of my relatives are wonderful and intelligent, so I don’t really have that problem. However, Facebook offered me something that I would have been unable to find anywhere else: a community of Chinese adoptees.

I met another Chinese adoptee over the summer (and wow was that a story in and of itself); her name is Charlotte. We friended each other on Facebook, and she invited me to a wonderful page: China’s Children International (CCI). This page was just for the CCI adoptees (there is another one that is for families with children adopted for China). So I post some introduction about where I’m from, when I was adopted, and where I am now. Other adoptees from around the globe proceed to comment and welcome me into the group. It was amazing.

After my first blog post about the Two-Child Policy, I started talking to some other adoptees from the CCI group. Sometimes we talked about what it’s like to be adopted, and sometimes we talked about how the weather was wherever we were at the moment.

A couple of weeks ago, a wonderful woman named Kate from the CCI group messaged me and asked if I was going to write a poem about the Two-Child Policy, or about adoption in general because she wanted to sign it. I was confused for a second, so she clarified that she knew American Sign Language (ASL) and that she was interested in videoing herself signing something I wrote.

I was thrilled, I thought that was the coolest thing ever! I asked how she learned, and she said that she was adopted in 2001 and she’s deaf. We talked for a bit, and I asked if she would be willing to teach me some ASL; she agreed and decided on a time that we could use Facebook’s video chat.

The internet is incredible.

I spent 45 minutes learning ASL, and talking with another adult adoptee from China, who was adopted 6 years after me, and currently lived over 900 miles away from me.

Social media creates communities that are impossible to find anywhere else. So, to anyone who thinks people spend “too much time on their phones” have never been to China and tried to stay in contact with international friends, have never met people online who share similar interests but live in Romania, have no family that lives across the globe that need to be contacted during natural disasters, and have never been torn away from their birth country and found an online community filled with others who share the same loss.

Social media is an spectacular tool that allows for a more globalized, fast-paced world. And I will forever be grateful that I was born into the internet era.

From South Korea (left) and the US (right), met in China, and reunited in Canada

White Rice (with Soy Sauce)

I was a high school junior who was going to our rival school’s prom. I guess rival school wasn’t the best term; it was my close family friend’s private school’s junior/senior prom. My date was one of her good friends who we had hung out with, along with my friend’s boyfriend. My family friend’s name was Bianca, her boyfriend was a first generation Korean senior named Jason, and my date was an international Chinese-Canadian student named James. The four of us went with another couple who were both international students from South Korea: Kira and Nick.

The six of us of ready at Bianca’s house and then went to a Korean owned sushi restaurant for our “prom dinner.” Of course, they served us small bowls of rice as appetizers. I will never forget the five sets of eyes that stared me down as I asked for the soy sauce. I was adopted from China when I was 8 months old and grew up in the Midwest with a wonderful, white family who puts soy sauce on their white rice. However, soy sauce was not made for dumping on rice

Bianca, who was also adopted, looked mortified that I was asking; Kira and Nick just looked genuinely confused, and asked why I wanted soy sauce. Jason and James both thought it was amusing, but definitely strange. Jason eventually handed me the soy sauce and I poured it on my rice. Kira and Nick looked scandalized.

I remember wanting to melt into my seat and disappear as I was eating my (delicious) rice. How was I supposed to know that soy sauce on rice was a “white person thing” (as Bianca so elegantly put it)? The rest of the night went on without a hitch. The private school had good food, and the prom was outside in an extremely aesthetically pleasing courtyard. We went back to Bianca’s house after and watched movies until we all fell asleep on her basement floor.

For the next couple of months, I was self-conscious whenever I ate rice. Even if it was leftover rice that I was microwaving to eat for lunch the next day. I would sometimes stop with the soy sauce bottle in my hand and have a mild identity crisis. In the middle of my recently-painted-teal kitchen in a suburbia neighborhood, I would put my soy sauce bottle down and tell myself to be “more Asian” and act how I “was supposed to.” Looking back, I don’t even know why I thought I needed to prove to myself in my 1950s-esque kitchen that I was “really Asian,” but it was a big deal to me.

Now, four years later, I pour soy sauce all over my rice. It’s delicious. I was back in China this past summer for a study abroad trip to finish up my Chinese major. I never put soy sauce on the rice there because of cultural understanding. However, now that I’m back at Michigan State University, and finally living in my own apartment, I use my Kikkoman Soy Sauce all the time. I’ve learned that it’s okay to be “white,” after all, that’s how I grew up. I did not grow up in China on a rice farm, where soy sauce was used to cook with and not as a condiment. I grew up in Michigan where Chinese takeout gives soy sauce packages with all meals.

I’m still coping with what it means to “be white” but “look (and kind of sort of be) Asian,” but at least I’m confident with my white rice and soy sauce.

**All names have been changed