Ever since my childhood, my mother keeps comparing me to her friends’ children who are around my age. It seems to me that it is some kind of unspoken competition between parents. They want their children to be ‘better’ than other people’s children and they aren’t satisfied with their own children’s achievements. With time, I became very touchy when it comes to being compared to others.
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The other day, out of the blue, a friend of mine (Shanghainese guy) told me that he thinks that my skin is darker than the average Chinese girl. My other friends who were present at that time were as surprised as me to hear the guy say all that. My gal friends started saying that I don’t have dark skin but the Shanghainese guy persisted in saying that my skin is dark compared to Chinese girls. I told him that I like tanning and that my skin color has always been like this. I was hoping that he’d stop talking about that because there was no point in telling me all that. Still, he wouldn’t stop and even started comparing my shoulders (I was wearing an off-the-shoulder top) to my friend’s (also a Mauritian), saying that my skin is darker than my friend’s. I’ve never seen that Mauritian friend wear off-the-shoulder tops so I knew that her shoulders wouldn’t be tanned. Still, her face wasn’t as pale as her shoulders but for some unknown reason, the guy was focusing on our shoulders. After a few more minutes where he kept saying that I have dark skin, I got really angry. Being told “你的皮肤很黑” many times isn’t pleasant at all. I bit back a retort and got up to leave my friend’s room. I didn’t want to lose my temper there. The guy, finally realizing that he has offended me, pulled my arm, trying to stop me from leaving but I wrenched out of his grasp. I don’t hold grudges against people but I need a few more days to calm down. His comments really irked me. The way he was talking was like he thinks that I shouldn’t have ‘dark’ skin (maybe because of my Chinese background? ) and that he thinks that fair skin looks better. He didn’t say that directly but I’m not stupid, I got the point. Who is he to tell me things about my skin? Right now, my skin isn’t even as tanned as it usually is in Mauritius and I’m being called ‘dark’. I can just imagine what he would say if he saw photos of me taken in Mauritius after a day at the beach.

Unlike most Chinese girls here, I don’t have an obsession with fair skin. The amount of skin whitening products in China is really amazing and even scary too. I was born and grew up in Mauritius,a sunny island. Back in Mauritius, I don’t use sunblock, I don’t walk around with an umbrella and I don’t wear clothes which cover every inch of my skin. It’s no wonder that I don’t have the fair skin that most Chinese girls here have. In fact, the word fair isn’t the best word to describe what type of skin they want. If you see the skin ads in China, you realize that the Chinese people are aiming for white skin. Once, my friends were watching TV and we saw an ad about a skin whitening product. The model’s face was so white that we all said that she looked scary and artificial. In China, those with white skin tend to be those people who are wealthy or at least have enough money to take good care of their skin and buy whitening products. The Chinese people with darker skin are usually those who work in the fields,i.e, people who don’t have the time and money to take good care of their skin because they are busy working hard. I know that some Chinese people with fair skin look down on those Chinese people with dark skin. Did they even stop to think about the fact that those people they are looking down upon are those who are providing them with the rice, fruits and vegetables that they eat?

Even if I have 100% Chinese blood in me, I wasn’t born in China. I didn’t grow up here. In other words, here in Shanghai, I am a foreigner. Don’t treat me like a local Chinese girl. Don’t expect me to behave like one. I love the sun, I love beaches, I love tanning. White skin just doesn’t suit me. I look sickly if I’m too pale. Moreover, my skin color shouldn’t even matter to my true friends.