



Hong Kong is a strange place. I’ve never been in a place that seemed so obsessed with categorization of people. What you are defines who you are. Are you white, Indonesian, Chinese, a native Hongkonger? A banker, a lawyer, an engineer, a teacher? Rich, poor, middle class?

Coming into Hong Kong, I didn’t expect to be white. Not that I was expecting my skin to change color on the plane ride over, but I didn’t know it would matter. I didn’t know that I’d be stared at in the MTR and in the lecture hall, while walking down the street and while eating at a restaurant. I didn’t realize that “gweilo” would be murmured when I raised my hand in class, or that people would excitedly try to relate to my culture through the Big Bang Theory (I always managed to disappoint locals when they found out I didn’t watch it and therefore had no opinions on how funny Sheldon was).

And, moreover, I didn’t expect the privileges that came along with it. I didn’t expect professors to grade me more easily, for girls to consider me more attractive, for bouncers to let me into crowded clubs. A Swedish friend of mine, a 6’3 ginger who was a continual source of fascination for locals, told me a story of when he got on the first class section of the MTR without a first class ticket. The MTR police attempted to take away his Octopus card and fine him. He took the card back. “No,” he said, and they acquiesced, letting him off with a weak warning not to do it again.

Then, just as my head began to swell, I discovered the dark side of Hongkongnese categorization. I told a local friend I was Jewish. That, I learned quickly, was a mistake, as soon it seemed everyone had heard I was Jewish. Stereotypes about Jews in Hong Kong run even thicker than stereotypes about whites (perhaps because Jews are much less common, or at least much less likely to make themselves known). Immediately my friends began to excitedly make comments about “my people”, the financial and the academic success, the penny-pinching, and every other stereotype that had come across their radar. They made casual jokes about the Holocaust, proud of their knowledge of Jewish history and its esoterica. One of them mentioned “Arbeit Macht Frei” and laughed. He had been to Europe, and he had learned German.

And the thing was, it wasn’t even that bad. Not a single one of them would have ever threatened me, or treated me poorly because I was Jewish. These same friends making Jewish jokes took me with them to local restaurants and bars, drank with me and commiserated with me over difficult exams.

They just weren’t able to interact with people and ignore their stereotypes. It was as if I was a simultaneous person to them. I was white, Jewish, and myself, two stereotypes coexisting with an actual person.

And I didn’t even get the worst of it. I was at dinner once with an Indian friend (“North Indian, not South,” he was quick to remind me). He had grown up in government housing, and we were talking about life as a poor Indian kid in Hong Kong. He told me about his friends toking their way straight out of high school, and about run-ins with Pakistanis over cricket. I told him how amazed I was that Indians in Hong Kong were generally lower class, that in America Indians were generally regarded as a model minority. He nodded.

“Indians,” he said, “are the black people of Hong Kong.”

What he meant by this was that Indians were often the thugs and criminals of Hong Kong. When white kids wanted drugs in Hong Kong, they knew where to get them: Chungking Mansions, where Indian men pushed weed and hashish in ear shot of the Hong Kong police. He was comparing that to his stereotypes of blacks in America. He had never been to America, but he had seen enough American movies and TV shows to know that in America, black people were criminals.

I saw it differently, however. Indians were the black people of Hong Kong. They were the black people of Hong Kong in the sense that they were trapped by the same stereotypes, expected to fulfill the same expectations. Indians in Hong Kong were supposed to fail out of high school, they were supposed to push drugs outside of government housing, they were supposed to get in fights at bars over cricket matches. They were supposed to commit crimes against each other while society watched, shaking their head sadly at the universal thuggery of the young Indian male.

Because broader society in Hong Kong can’t imagine a young Indian male outside of the street, and even when they see one in college they expect him to fail out. They don’t understand the difficulty of growing up poor and Indian, they don’t understand why they can’t just all speak English or Cantonese, why they have to speak Hindi to each other.

And so they watch, and shake their heads, and murmur to each other. They see an Indian man and clutch their purses, they see a Filipino girl and wonder if she’s seeing a boyfriend, they see a mainland family and glance over their suitcases to see how much powdered milk they have stowed away.

And I stand, leaning against the door, watching their faces as their eyes flick to me, and I wonder what they think, and I wonder what I think.