Of bananas and eggs
October 17th, 2005One interesting bit of jargon I’ve learned while in China is what it means to be a banana or an egg. A banana is yellow on the outside but white on the inside and is a term used by mainland Chinese to describe Chinese who grew up overseas. An egg is white on the outside but yellow on the inside and is a term used by mainland Chinese to describe Westerners that are very much interested in Asia/China.
I had heard the former term used by one of my previous Chinese classmates to describe another visibly Chinese classmate. I’ve learned that Asians can often be harder on/crueler to fellow Asians but there are exceptions.
Of course the Japanese have some interesting terms that they use. Ierô kyabu which is a variation of “Yellow Cab” is applied to a Japanese women who wants to have sexual relations with a Western man. The phrases I was looking for though are amejo and kokujo. These describe Japanese women who want to date Americans and black Americans particularly the GIs stationed in Okinawa. This subculture has arisen but so has much conflict over the twenty thousand American soldiers stationed in Japan.
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