Frances Kai-Hwa Wang (photo courtesy of Mark Bialek)

Called my girlfriend Nina to see if she would play hooky with me one recent Sunday afternoon. Alas, she’s off with her latest beau somewhere, no time for me. So I sit on the sidewalk outside Sweetwaters café downtown, soaking in the sunshine on this glorious spring day. My laptop sits unopened at my side.

Instead, I steal my friend Rich’s New York Times and I guiltily and gleefully read the entire thing, from arts all the way down to business and even, ugg, politics (which I generally try to avoid). Just one day to stop. One day to sit in the sunshine. One day to visit with all the friends who walk by – Kenji-san with his big brown dog; Diane with her latest middle-aged man from Match.com; Arthur with yet another joke from his old Jewish uncle. There is nothing like the beginning of spring in the Midwest.

A year ago about this time, when I was also bursting with spring, I ran into my girlfriend Vee on Main Street. “Hey girl!” she says after a big hug that nearly squeezes me inside-out, “You’re getting some color! Your freckles are coming out.”

Both my hands fly instinctively to cover my cheeks as I take a step sideways to duck into the shade. She looks pained, “What did I say?”

I catch myself in my reaction – “It’s a cultural thing” – and I explain how Asians prefer fair skin, to show that one is a scholar or rich person rather than a laborer, the opposite of America’s mainstream culture where a tan is desired because it indicates wealth and leisure. When I went to Taiwan when I was 19, people were shocked at how dark I was, in May, from just a few months of running around in the sunshine. I have been slathering on the sunscreen and hiding under hats ever since.

Then I realized, with horror, that I was telling this to an African American woman.

Then another horrifying realization, “I have freckles? But I thought only white people could have freckles.”

This year, an Asian American friend asks how come my son, Little Brother, is so much darker-skinned than his sisters (about the same time that Little Brother’s grandfather also asks how come all his pants have holes in the knees). I want to shout to them both: “He is a five-year-old boy! He is always running around outside!” Still, I want to protect him from needless criticism, so I begin to take more care with the sunscreen and I take him to Downtown Home and Garden to look for a hat.

Back outside Sweetwaters on the sidewalk at Washington and Ashley, an elderly African American man tips his bright red broad-brimmed hat at the ladies as he hops and jumps his big old white Cadillac in front of Grizzly Peak Brewery, classic blues music blaring. He is sooo cool, and I love watching him drive up and down Main Street every summer, a different Cadillac and a different hat every time. Even though I know this will result in some unintentional color in my cheeks, after which I will get both grief and compliments, this is where I need to be, out on the sidewalk, in the middle of it all.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Ann Arbor and Hawaii. She is editor of IMDiversity.com Asian American Village and a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her website or contact her by email at fkwang888@gmail.com.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang

My family went to an art exhibit opening and reception last summer at Wailoa Art Center in Hawaii. Afterwards, my son – “Little Brother” – pouted all night because he saw me kissing the artist, “that man.” He cannot kiss me ever again, he says, and he rubs and rubs his skin with his shirt, to wipe off every last kiss that I give him.

I try to explain that, actually, I was kissed by the artist, that sometimes people kiss hello on the cheek just like others shake hands. But he will have none of it. This is not the first time we have had this conversation, but what am I supposed to do? The artist, the man in question, is over 80 years old! That is a really funny (and completely irrelevant) distinction when you think about it from Little Brother’s point of view. He is four years old, and I am ten times his age; I would gain nothing by pointing out that the artist is (only) twice my age. So I explain that in Hawaii, it is part of the culture to hug and kiss hello, that even my parents now hug and kiss hello (although this took them a few years to get used to).

To say that Chinese people are not big huggers and kissers would be a colossal understatement. Growing up, my parents never hugged or kissed us, or said, “I love you.” But that was ok because nobody’s (Chinese) parents did. Only (Caucasian) people on TV did that sort of thing. We understood that they did love us, it just was not the Chinese way.

In my current “women and children only” sort of lifestyle, frantically running children to and from music lessons and swim classes with all the other moms, my interactions with men have dwindled to almost nothing. Sure, some dads drop off in the mornings, but they do not linger or get involved the way the moms do. As everyone is married and many on our side of Ann Arbor are Asian or Arab American, men and women tend to be especially proper, talk little, and do not touch. It seems quite natural, and I only notice when I step outside of it.

For example, I have to say, I love that European two cheek kiss thing, even though I know that that will never happen in my Chinese American community. My Italian friend Vincenzo was so surprised and pleased the first time I kissed his second cheek – he had already grown used to (the loss of) Americans only  kissing one cheek. He smiled, “You do like the Italian way.” Of course. I do it for him.

So although I reassure my four-year-old that one kiss on the cheek from an 80-year-old Chinese American artist draped with leis means nothing, especially as we leave the house and he warns me to be careful in case someone else tries to kiss me again, I am also secretly delighted to be crossing cultures and encountering different ways of enjoying something so simple as a kiss.

Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a second-generation Chinese American from California who now divides her time between Ann Arbor and Hawaii. She is editor of IMDiversity.com Asian American Village and a popular speaker on Asian Pacific American and multicultural issues. Check out her website at www.franceskaihwawang.com. She can be reached at fkwang888@gmail.com.