Friday, July 23, 2010
Coz I'm brown...
Sitting here in the air conditioning right now. Tills has just finished watching Playschool on which there was the classic song, 1 grey elephant. (1 grey elephant balancing, step by step on a piece of string, he thought it was such a wonderful stunt, that he called for another.... elephant)
She's got the pipe of the vacuum cleaner on my bed and balancing while I am being instructed to sing the song. Then she suddenly says to me, "I'm a brown elephant mama." Then she rubbed her arm with her hand and said, "coz I'm brown mama and elephants are grey, not brown." Yesterday I told her she had lovely brown skin (as opposed to her pink freckly mama) and she said back in Chinese, "I'm black like baba." In Chinese there isn't really a phrase for dark skin or whatever. It's just a direct use of "black". And I don't really like it much. I don't like the crazy obsessions of the women here to be as "white" as possible either. People tell her in Chinese fairly often that she's black. I respond that black is good and would you rather have my skin? Crazy ideas, but anyway. It's summer and she's got a tan!
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Maybe it's because there's not really a good word for "brown" in Chinese. Although I believe (but could be very wrong) that the obsession with white skin is older than western influence and is a result of the Han vs. other ethnic Chinese groups dynamic. Still a racial issue though. No worries, Tilly can just find herself a nice Aussie boy who will be crazy about her lovely brown skin. :) Also, she won't wrinkle as fast as us pasties.
ReplyDeleteyes, you're right. tilly asked me the other day how to say brown and i didn't know!! the closest i could get to was 'coffee coloured'. yes, the white skin thing is also about not looking like a peasant who's been out working in the fields. though you seem far better schooled on the issues than me!
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