I've been reading lately, on occasion. Reading a magazine, no longer in print, about Asian Pacific American (APA) issues, by APAs, for APAs. The weird thing is that as much as I love it there are things about it I can't stand. There are things I like, mind you. Something's different about a complaint about traditional parents seen in an Asian magazine comparing them to a standard teen magazine. The Chinese-Asian brand of overprotective parenting is a whole nother animal, really, to some, and to others there's no difference between not being allowed to dances because something 'might happen' or because your dancing "implies" that you like doing something...else.

One thing I don't like is the way everything is slanted towards Asians. Isn't that just the dumbest thing? Here I am reading an Asian magazine and I don't like the way everything leans towards Asians...I can't place it exactly, but I always have this feeling that I'm mildly irked less because it's about Asians than about the fact it seems to have this tendency to put the other races down. White people this, Black people that...but I'm Asian, right? No worries. So what's setting me off?

I pinpointed it. Hell, one issue talks about it. I'm hapa -- half Asian or APA, half something else, in my case European left and right. The magazine has an entire issue devoted to successful hapas like Kimora Lee Simmons (I have yet to figure if she's still around), Keanu Reeves (I'm supposed to be proud?), or Jay-Z (What's to be proud of?). There's an interview with five hapa panelists who answer the coordinator's questions about different things. Each one has a different but not much so opinion on what it's like to live as a hapa.

aMagazine would have you believe that hapas suffer from a loss of racial identity. That's not entirely true. Some -- I venture to say many -- hapas suffer from the confusion as to whether there IS a loss of racial identity. Sure, you can't match with one group, because there are so many elements of the other, but for a long time I thought I'd gotten past that. "Well, you're Asian." "Yeah." Got along best with the Asian population of the school, contented myself with calling myself Asian, looked Asian physically regardless of minor details here and there, had an Asian girlfriend. Out of those people I consider best friends, two are Chinese, specifically from Hong Kong, now in the area, and one is white, but he's had such exposure to Asian culture that in certain respects he might as well be as hapa as I am in a different way, if any of us were to stop and really think about it. We're not known for stopping and thinking, but that's a different gripe.

...I went to Chinatown today.

...Judy wasn't quite in door-answering condition when I got there, as a cellphone-call ahead told me, and so I walked around for a few minutes. My grandfather lives nearby and I passed the grammar school that my elder brother and possibly my father attended. I actually ran my hand over the roughly painted mural-fence-wall that went around it.

I went past people hollering in Chinese at the top of their lungs, and others speaking it much more softly. As usual, I didn't understand a word -- no sudden RNA transplants to learn Cantonese without a second look, so that's nothing new. But something grabbed my self-perception and smacked it with one of my trademark sledgehammers.

I didn't belong there. The hell I did. I probably stood out like a sore thumb, but obviously I couldn't tell that seeing as no one stared at me -- probably a good sign, but that's not me, that's them. The real problem? Chinatown is a culture in and of itself -- a vague fusion of America, China, and goodness knows what else we've managed to throw in in between. But unlike the similarly mixed Richmond District, Chinatown is, of course, predominantly Chinese. I'm half-Chinese. I should be quite comfortable there.

I was tempted to break into a run back to Judy's and the hell with arriving early, I'd wait on the steps. My own distance from Asian culture has hit me before but not with the Mack-truck sort of intensity that I took this time. And that's what I mean. I call myself Asian. I look Asian. I act American, and I'm completely 'white-washed', as the term goes. I'm more comfortable in a setting where most of the participants are white simply because I can respond with my own brand of witty repartee and cleverly stupid comments. In a crowd completely Asian I only rarely feel at ease (remarkably, graduation night was one of those nights even though every single other person I was with speaks Cantonese, most of them better than English.) I tend to require translating services and soft, murmured responses to everything.

So the question is, what do I define myself as? Am I Asian? Do I fit in with those that look like me? Some of them. Am I white? Do I fit in with those I'm most comfortable with? Sure, most of them. Am I hapa? Can I honestly sit down, divide up the aspects of my personality and personal comfort zone and go 'I am this way because I am of mixed race'? Once in a while. Not often enough.

You begin to see where my philosophy stems from. Hapas haven't lost their racial identity by necessity. They just wonder whether they have.