Lemme tell you about a kid who hated Chinese novels. That kid was me. That kid was forced to bring a mandarin novel to school every alternate day to boost my Chinese reading level. This probably worked for ....zero of the years it occurred.

Even the Chinese adaptation of Harry Potter at the time couldn't MAKE me read Chinese novels. I wasn't super interested in Chinese stories, or Chinese renditions of stories.

I would what I needed for school ( usually stories about morals, and the story of the very very scary nightmare reality of 1942-1945 in Singapore, where people ate lots of tapioca to live through starvation.) And nothing much else.

What I did like, though? Were the stories of Liaozai. The legends of the gods, the Sun Wukong's trip to India to get the scriptures. Any story that had magic, humour and love that lasted through the obstacles, I read.

(If you were raised on TVB, you'd understand.)

So obviously I gravitated towards those stories. Chinese stories in school didn't have those. All I learnt about was that if you pretend nothing is wrong, robbers were less likely to think you were worth robbing.

Also no one I made friends with on the internet knew about the stories I was raised on, so honestly it didn't really occur to me that Chinese stories, or Southeast Asian stories, were particularly interesting to people overseas. (Yt ppl, basically.)

The people that did know about the stories I knew usually fetishized that shit to degrees I get confused by.

(Have you seen The Touch? I love Michelle Yeoh, I love that movie, but MAN I ONLY LIKED IT CAUSE MICHELLE YEOH)

(like really the story was about this white guy who said everything wrongly, and wanted Tripitaka's heart for immortality? Do I need another white guy trying to do a Khaleesi here.)

ANYWAY. fast forward, 2020. Covid-19 hits, we all venture inside, we start learning wild things to cope, bread maker sales went up by 600%.

I start to hear things about this show called The Untamed.

( YES WE ARE BACK ON THIS SUBJECT HAH! FOOLED YOU!)

I get persuaded by friends to watch this.
I resist, because again:

Now Boo Boo gets wind that Netflix has the show. Boo Boo is intrigued cause hey convenient.

Also Boo Boo was told it was two guys in love in China, a place where she legit thought they didn't exist due to the CCP.

She was joking.

Maybe.

So she watches a few episodes. She gets confused on which ones were in love with each other, so she starts shipping everyone.

Then she decides to find the translation cause it was the source material and THEN she bought the books to read in Chinese.

And THAT is how I began trying to read in Chinese again.

More importantly I was reading Chinese material I LIKED and was willing to spend time slogging to get the real flavour of the text.

And then. I realised something.

MDZS was not the anomaly. There were other Chinese novels out there I LIKED BECAUSE OF THE PLOT AND THE REFERENCES THAT I KNEW AND THINGS I REMEMBERED FROM CHILDHOOD.

Do you know how fun it was to hear people talk about Chinese poems I was forced to learn in school due to Chinese teachers being all teachery and not caring if the students liked the poetry? And people from different races too?

It gave me, a half Vietnamese, half Chinese potato child the will to live again. Finally!

There were people!

Willing to hear from stories from our culture!

FOR REAL.

Like I once related the story of The Butterfly Lovers to non-Chinese people and DO YOU KNOW PEOPLE EAT THIS SHIT UP SO HARD?! ITS A FUCKING MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE MUSIC VIDEO THAT'S WHAT IT IS.

So you know, I was so happy, and saw that other people, sino- descent disapora, who loved that other people loved it.

Which brings me to my next point.

Hi people from other races and cultural background.

We see you in this house of fun. We wanna welcome you. Just make sure you understand that what we are offering, what we are excited about, what we are helping to share, is something fucking vulnerable and the babiest of babies.

And we welcome discourse, we really do. Just well, please do note that if we are offering advice on how you guys are treating certain topics in the fandom, especially if given by a person raised on that culture, don't...throw it in our faces by doing the opposite.

What most of us are showing you right now is something and special to us. Take it from this person, who didn't care about her Chinese heritage beyond "hey this food is delicious" before now.

If you're benefiting from the help of a Chinese person for your fic, art and others, do remember that the onus then falls on you to credit those who helped you.

There's a saying for that: 饮水思源。 remember the source when you sup at water.

Forgetting is super super easy, in normal circs.

Trust me, as someone who has a shot memory, who gets distracted easily by shiny things and eyeliner and cats, I'm hoping that people forgive me easily for forgetting things.

However. If you happen to have gotten help from others, you then have benefitted from someone's labour, specifically people who have from time to time suffered from discrimination both positive and negative. And it becomes more imperative to do so.

If you were sharing the specifics of the state of law in California banning the death sentence, I would thank you for sharing that knowledge, though why were you sharing that, it's weird to do it out of the blue, I only said hi to you, why are you doing this.

The point is, there is so much labour involved when we share our history. And there's magic when we share things.

That magic gets killed off when people start acting shitty. Or steal from POC thread lines. Or even when we offer advice and you then say, "haha, no".

I have met people of all races who refuse to listen to advice when given gladly to POC. An Indonesia rapper refusing to change their name despite the clear reference of a slur. Gordon Ramsey using ALL Asian cuisines and calling it an authentic Asian restaurant.

Also, Crispy Fucking Rendang.

No.

I have friends who have become discouraged with the response of some people of non-chinese heritage when playing in the sandbox and then feel unable to love that ever again.

And that's sad cause this is the first time something Chinese of this scale has been talked about

And for some of us, we are also learning properly of different cultures and different backgrounds, how certain things get triggering. And how sometimes we ignore it cause we think the other party is "okay".

As a very very very very very non-confrontational Asian person raised with a very dominant mother, I am super non-confrontational. I will say stuff like, " maybe don't do that-" but I've been told it's not a strong boundary set.

And I've been told by friends that if they are mad at you, a common practice is to not acknowledge or to give the silent treatment.

As someone with a lot of relatives doing this on a rotational basis, this is something I completely understand.

If we really think something is terrible, we do try and bring it up. Don't assume that it's something that is taken lightly. For some of us it's hard, especially for some who have already dismissed anyone else understanding the pain.

A friend of mine on Discord mentioned that we have to be more honest about the pain some Diaspora feel about the trauma they experience as Chinese diaspora in the internet and in Western culture, and I agree.

But. This is a two way street.

Do you know how many times I have looked at something vaguely racist and not reacted because I was essentially gaslighting myself because I was worried I was taking some things too seriously?

I nearly weeped with relief recently when I shared some thoughts and was immediately—

Told "NO THAT IS FUCKING RACIST OMG."

The vehement agreement was a relief.

But it's also usually done much later and not in the moment.

It's a mechanism that needs work.

Like I would have been so much braver if I knew someone of my culture was there to back me up, but the internet is a foul piece of shit, and often makes you feel more alone even in crowds within fandoms.

So sometimes we don't do it immediately. But it festers.

IT FUCKING FESTERS.

(Sorry, but heh. FESTERS.)

And ultimately what you're left with is someone who has so much reservations about showing certain aspects of culture that they get scared and don't even want to interact with non-chinese diaspora, for their own mental well-being and health.

That is a way that interest dies.

And well. As a very old 30 year old, here's my advice.

Don't do things that would make any person, especially people who are, till this day still struggling with how they're perceived, their identities, and their art or skillset, want to give it up altogether.

Ultimately magic happens when there are worlds that are created with the stories that we've been told in youth, and if you're new to the lore that it was created from, come in. learn. Listen. Read and ask questions. Take criticism.

Cause if you're not...well. the magic is lost.

And you're basically asking your favourite artist, writer, content creator, to do and supply art to a lore that no longer holds magic to them.

And well. In a way it's equivalent to forcing a child to read without telling them why.