Hello Kitty

Growing up, I never really dealt that much with Racism. People knew I was Asian, but they didn’t mention it that much, and they didn’t use a lot of stereotypes around me. Probably because I wasn’t raised as an Asian.

When I moved to Spain, all of a sudden, I was treated very differently. People came up to me on the metro and started speaking to me in an Asian language, and I would have no idea what they were saying. I earned the name “Chinita” among a lot of my friends because that’s how I looked to them. Like a little Chinese girl.

I think the most bizarre situation though, started a few months after I moved to Spain. I walked to school every day, and halfway there was a newspaper stand. The guy who worked there was very friendly and would wave to me, and often make odd and suggestive comments. After a few weeks, when obviously I wasn’t responding to his advances, he started yelling at me every time he passed.

“Hello Kitty! Hello Kitty!”

After our multiple interactions with one another, I knew that he didn’t speak English, but I think he’d figured out that I did. Except it didn’t feel like an English thing, it felt like him trying to get my attention by calling out the only thing he knew from Japanese culture.

I started taking a different route to school soon after that.