Subtle Asian Traits—a Facebook group formed by nine Australian university students in September 2018 as a distraction from their final exams—has become a place for Asian young people from all over the world to feel a sense of belonging. We laugh at relatable memes, share posts about our childhoods, and pose long questions asking for advice.
Over the past two years, I've wasted far too much time scrolling through countless memes about bubble tea, disappointed parents, Chinese food/cooking and White people's inability to pronounce Asian names. Since not everyone is as well versed in these memes, I thought I would give you guys a breakdown of some of the most commonly found memes on Subtle Asian Traits (SAT).
1.
One of the most challenging aspects of immigrating to a western country at a young age or being born overseas is the language barrier. It's really difficult to be fully bilingual when you live in an environment where everyone speaks only English. Unless your parents made sure you learned your native language, you were probably very monolingual. While going to places where no one spoke English make you very nervous, you're also proud of your ethnicity. Thus, you shakily blurt out broken Chinese / Cantonese / Japanese / Korean / Tagalog / Hindi / Malay... and curse your incompetence.
I'm a first-generation Chinese immigrant. My family immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, before settling in Vancouver. If my mom didn't spend years making sure I didn't forget how to speak Mandarin, this meme would be VERY accurate. [Translation of meme: "一个这个 (yi ge zhe ge) = one of this; 还有这个 (hai you zhe ge) = also one of this"]
2.
I don't know why, but young Asian people LOVE bubble tea / boba. I see at least six or seven bubble tea memes a day on SAT. The love for bubble tea is so strong people have confessed to making Microsoft Excel spreadsheets detailing their monthly bubble tea spending. To try and make their excessive bubble tea consumption a little healthier and more justifiable, bubble tea aficionados get their drinks with less sugar. But as someone who also enjoys bubble tea every once in a while, 0 per cent sugar bubble tea isn't good. Buying 0 per cent sugar bubble tea is like spending $6 on a cup of black tea with milk. [The misspelling of "health" as "helth" is intentional.]
3.
According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, approximately 65 per cent of the global population becomes lactose intolerant after infancy. It's most common in East Asians communities, as 70 per cent of people are affected. Unfortunately, I am one of those people. I didn't know that when I stopped regularly drinking milk, my body would stop being able to process dairy. Many Asians on SAT are in the same boat as me, yet their love for bubble tea is too strong. They would rather endure a stomachache and an unpleasant trip to the bathroom than stay away from milk, or take Lactaid (which weirdly sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. It's Russian Roulette, but with dairy).
4.
Asian parents have a really hard time saying "I'm proud of you." My Asian friends never really heard their parents say it, and my parents have rarely said it to me. It's not because our parents aren't proud of our achievements, but it's due to their "you can do better / you can do more" mentality. Since many immigrant parents want their kids to keep up their grades/GPA and enter a stable career, whenever we do well, we're expected to one up that, if possible. However, from experience, once Asian kids enter university, their parents say "I'm proud of you" a little more often.
5.
While this comic about eating fruit isn't a meme, it is an integral part of growing up Asian. Asian parents don't say "I love you" very often. But, they still show their love in other ways, such as: asking if we've eaten yet, offering money so we can buy more nutritious groceries, calling to check up every couple of days and giving us the best parts of fruits. When I was younger, my mom would always give me the two halves of a mango while she would munch on the stone. Another way Asian parents show their love is by periodically putting a bowl of cut-up fruit in front of us, usually when we're working on homework. It's their way of saying "I see your lack of Vitamin C, and I raise you a bowl of orange slices."
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