Leo Jiang won't tell me why he spent the past nine days in Amsterdam. We're in a city center Starbucks in Newcastle, England, on the sort of bitter January evening when the dark envelops everything by 4:30. Jiang, a 24-year-old philosophy graduate now working as a teacher, is circumspect, evasive, and withdrawn, but after hours of demurring, finally admits he'd spent his time in the Dutch capital recuperating from his latest procedure — on his nose — though he's cagey about saying more, such as where his other operations took place. This was one of three he's undergone since July 2010 to help erase his past. And he's adamant that it won't be his last.

When I first met him at school in 2007, he seemed reserved and quiet, but not necessarily outwardly sad. He looked normal, even if he didn't think so — black hair, average height, and small brown eyes. He's since changed: The eyes are fuller, the nose longer and straighter — though currently so sore post-surgery that he can't bear the weight of his glasses on its bridge — the jaw stronger, and the way he stands makes him seem taller than his 5 feet 11 inches, as if he isn't trying to fade away into the furniture anymore. Since the age of 8, he's been trying to pass.

Jiang — his first name was Hao back then — was raised by his grandparents in the Shandong province of China until 1997, when he joined his parents, who'd been in the United Kingdom, in Sunderland, an industrial city in the northeast of England. Until 2003, less than 1% of Sunderland's population was Asian (even today it's still shy of 2%, compared with a nationwide total of about 8%). At his school the ratio was even worse: Jiang was one of just three Asian students in his class, and he was constantly barraged by racist taunts. Before he grew sick of it and took drastic measures, Jiang tried to compensate by simply doing the same to others.

"As a child, I was very racist," he explains, looking straight at me with wide eyes. "Calling people 'Paki bastard,' 'black bastard' — can't get more crude than that. I was trying to fit in."

It didn't work. Jiang became more aware of his otherness, and more uncomfortable in his own skin. For a whole year in high school, he barely attended class, instead sitting at home playing video games, smoking and drinking, pretending to be his own legal guardian when the school called looking for him. At 16, he asked a lawyer to draft a document, had his parents sign it, and changed his name to Leo. A more Western name would give people one less brickbat to swing at him. But it was just a name; he wanted to become this new person.