Diana Bayko on Finding Self-Acceptance as a Mixed-Race Woman

Mixed Asian Media - September 24, 2024

By Diana Bayko

In sixth grade, I participated in a school speech arts competition. My so-called best friend at the time, a white girl, was about to speak about internationalism. She opened with some Cantonese phrases before launching into the effects of the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the People’s Republic of China. My friend chose to wear a qipao — also known as a cheongsam in Cantonese — a traditional Chinese dress she had purchased from an Asian mall in the suburbs of Toronto. 

“I’ve always wanted one of those,” I said to her, admiring the embroidery near her neck. “It wouldn’t look that good on you,” my friend said, “because you’re half-Chinese.” 

I was caught off guard by this comment and couldn’t find the words to say anything. But my friend filled the silence by explaining, “It looks more interesting on me because I’m not Chinese. Everyone expects to see this on a Chinese person.”

My friend’s speech was about globalization, about how political changes would result in greater connections with different people and cultures from around the world. Yet right in front of her was me: a half-Chinese, half-white girl whom she dismissed as someone who didn’t belong in a qipao. Beneath my skin, I felt like I wasn’t enough of either race to wear my traditional Chinese dress. (It’s such a universal and tiring experience for mixed-Asians to feel like they aren’t enough of either race or culture.) In addition to this girl’s cultural appropriation, I learned as a kid that a white child could put a non-white child in their place.  

The qipao incident wasn’t the first time I didn’t feel like I was Asian or white enough in the eyes of white people. But I also felt I wasn’t Asian enough in the Chinese community. When my mom and I ventured out for dim sum or to buy pens and stickers from the Asian mall, shopkeepers gasped in disbelief when they learned I was her daughter. They’d shake their heads, raise their eyebrows and gasp, saying, “No!” No. No I am not one of them. No, in their eyes I am not half. After analyzing every feature on my face, and the size of my white-Ukrainian bone structure, they’d shake their heads and tell me no. I learned early on from other people that I wasn’t quite Asian, and I wasn’t quite white.

In my 20s I traveled to Moscow, where I found my doppelgangers. Immigrants from Kyrgyzstan flooded the metro and city streets; in their faces I saw my older brother, I saw myself, I saw my mixed-race cousins. We looked at each other knowingly, and I felt strangely at home. I had never seen so many people in one place who looked like me. When foreigners were stopped for document checks because they didn’t look like they were from the region, I walked freely among the city streets. One day, when I appeared lost, it was a man from Kyrgyzstan who approached me and tried to help me find my way. 

In my 30s, I gave birth to a baby boy with blue eyes and blonde hair. My biggest fear was that no one would know this child was mine, just like no one knew I was the daughter of my mother. Would I be mistaken as the Hispanic nanny for this child? At a playground, another parent (who was a complete stranger to me) said, “Your child looks nothing like you.” I cocked my head to the side, squinted my eyes, and said questioningly, “Thank you?” She laughed awkwardly, but she never apologized. Would I receive this kind of commentary if my ancestry was more visible?

In my 40s, I decided to change how I define myself. In English, I had always told people I was half-Chinese, but in Mandarin I said it is my mother who is Chinese: “Wo de mama shi Zhong guo ren.” Now, I declare that I am the one who is half-Chinese just as I do in English: “Wo shi ban ge Zhong guo ren.” I’m sure my accent is wrong, and I place the wrong em-PHA-sis (as Mike Myers would say) on the wrong tone, but I don’t care. My insecurity matters less than my ability to change the definition of myself with this one line. I am Chinese and I am white.

One day my son — the blue-eyed blonde-haired one who is now 10 years old — asked me, “Mom, am I part yellow?” 

I laughed, surprised at his use of language, surprised by what kids in fourth grade know and discuss among themselves. “Yes. You are. Because Wy-poh is yellow.” I imagined him picturing his grandmother. I continued with my explanation, “And I am half-yellow. So that makes you part yellow.” 

He stared out the window, expressionless, and I worried about his sense of self. I worried he wouldn’t feel seen or special enough, like a mixed-race girl being told a qipao wouldn’t look as interesting on her. 

When my son looked at me, I asked him, “So how do you feel about being part Chinese?” 

I was nervous to hear his answer. What if his insecurities mimicked my own? But he casually shrugged his shoulders and said, “I know I am.”

Diana Bayko holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and a Publishing Certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. Diana has racial and cultural ties to China, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the British Isles, and her writing about motherhood has appeared online in The Yummy Mummy Club. She is an MFA candidate in the Creative Nonfiction program at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she is writing a memoir about racial, personal, and professional identities.