The origin of "La Chinita"

Yesterday, I was talking to a football teammate of mine who is Asian and also named Julia. She told me she had a friend, Ellen, who was going to come and play next week. Without even thinking, I asked, “Oh, she’s china too, right?” with the Spanish pronunciation of China (cheena). My meaning was, “She’s Asian too, right?” Vanessa, our Mexican friend, about busted a gut laughing.

My Mexican football teammates started calling me “chinita” (Chinese girl) early on in my career in the local Mexican league, which I joined when I was 17. I think it was partly because I was Asian, and partly because my name could be a Mexican name, but my features were most definitely not Mexican, and they were confused by the incongruity. At the time, I thought they were making an assumption about my heritage, but I was too shy to ask them about it. When they asked me where I was from, I told them I was from Korea, but they still called me “chinita,” and gradually, I came to understand that it was just a habit, that Mexicans and Latinos in general just called all Asians “chino/china.”

I also found “chinita” to be endearing in its own right. First of all, the “—ita” suffix made it seem more of an affectionate term, rather than merely a label, or worse, something derogatory. Second, by using the Spanish word for Asian, I felt that my teammates were acknowledging my roots, as well as accepting those roots into the community. Far from being offended, I felt proud that this one term, “chinita,” could encompass both my Asian roots and my ability to speak Spanish as equally important parts of my identity.

Not that my teammates don’t know or acknowledge my Korean heritage. When school took me away from last summer’s season before it had ended, spectators in both leagues asked my teammates, “Where’s the Chinese girl?” My teammates responded, “She’s not Chinese, she’s Korean.”

Introductory Post

The obligatory self-introductory first post.

I’m a 22-year-old Korean adopted American woman and a recent college grad with a degree in Asian Studies. I grew up in Minnesota, but spent my college years in Los Angeles, with a four-month study abroad stint in China thrown in for good measure. I’m a massive football fan, and my club loyalty rests with Liverpool FC, but my national affiliations tend towards grittier elements of the international game—Korea, Mexico and Ecuador.

I spend an inordinate amount of time writing, little bits and pieces of life that I want to record in words, thoughts and ideas that strike me out of nowhere, revelations that I feel deserve more than just a passing thought. A blog may not be the ideal place to coalesce and compile these writings, but for someone like me who is currently in that awkward transition time between college and the real world and not quite certain where she is going to end up, it is probably the easiest way both to consolidate my work and also keep people up to date on what I’m doing, no matter what corner of the world I end up in.

Enough of my writing focuses on issues surrounding adoption that I’ve created a separate blog for those, and I hope to really get that one up and running this summer. Meanwhile, this blog will house writings on other stuff that I like to write about—football (both playing and following), Liverpool FC, reflections on college life, and traveling experiences. It’s totally random and undirected, and constitutes nothing more than my own opinions and my own experiences. It’s highly likely that some things here will be cross-posted at my adoption blog, just because adoption is such an integral part of my identity and thus affects my experiences. But other stuff will just be low-key and fun, updates on my life, links to fun sites, etc.

Whether people actually read this or not isn’t the main point. The main point of this blog is to provide a space for me to consolidate my writings and provide others the opportunity to read if they want. I don’t claim to be a particularly good writer, I’m just a recent college grad who likes putting things into words and hopes that some people might like those words.