“The Chinos” by Taryn Peng

Within ten minutes of arriving to Spain for the first time, an older white man passed me in the street and put his hands together, bowed to me, and said “Ni hao.” “Ni hao” is “Hello” in Chinese, and despite not knowing whether I was Chinese or not, or if I understood the language he was trying to speak to me, he still felt the complete and necessary urge to greet me the way he did.

I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything. But after talking to several of my other Asian American friends who had studied abroad in Spain previously, all the advice I had gathered was “This happens daily” and “Get used to it.”

This set a pretty accurate tone for my experiences with racism in Spain. It is embedded in daily life and no one thinks twice about it. For example, the little corner stores, or “alimentación” stores, are commonly referred to as “Chinos” because the people who own the stores are often Asian. However, again, these stores are called “Chinos,” regardless of whether the Asians who run them are actually Chinese or not. They also do not sell anything Chinese or even Asian—just basic things that *even* white Spaniards need. Without any thought of whether the people who own these stores are Spanish citizens, maybe born and raised, equally Spanish as white Spaniards, using the word “Chinos” to prejudicially call these stores and people without getting to know them only serves to contribute to othering non-white peoples living in Spain and never allowing them to be as Spanish as white people.