Why Man Asked Girlfriend to 'Pretend to Be Japanese' For Reunion with High School Friends
A Chinese woman has taken to the internet for advice after her boyfriend wanted her to "pretend to be Japanese" to meet his high school friends -- specifically his male friends.
The OP (a.k.a "original poster") shared her story to Reddit's AITA ("Am I the A--hole") forum, asking the internet whether or not she's in the wrong for refusing to fake being an ethnicity of which she is not to "impress" her boyfriend's friends at an event.
Redditors weighed in, before the woman later revealed the reason behind her boyfriend's bizarre request, and where they stand now.
Read on to see what went down and how Redditors reacted.
Chinese Woman's BF Wants Her to 'Pretend to Be Japanese' to 'Impress' Friends
In her original post, the woman asked the question: "AITA for telling my boyfriend I wouldn't pretend to be Japanese to impress his old high school friends?"
"I (23f) am a Chinese woman living in America. My boyfriend (23m) is American and white. I am somewhat aware of a weird thing for Asian women some white American guys have," OP wrote. "But most of my boyfriend's exes are African-American so I thought I was in the clear."
"He's going to attend a event that includes many friends from high school," he added. "He told me he wants his friends to think I'm Japanese. He said I don't have to outright say it, I can just do something subtle to give them that impression."
According to the woman, one of her boyfriend's exes, who is African-American, will be at the event, but OP's boyfriend "promises" that his ex being there "has nothing to do with him wanting people to think I'm Japanese."
"He said it's for his male friends," OP clarified. "Even though it's people he rarely sees so this maybe a one time thing, I told him I wouldn't pretend to be Japanese."
"Unless it's required, I avoid telling people I'm Chinese," she explained. "I feel people put much stock into where people are born and I want people to get to know me for me."
Despite her declining her boyfriend's request, OP said her boyfriend "still wants" her to go with him to the event, but noted that "he seems like he's dreading it."
"Am I the a--hole ?" she then asked.
Reddit Weighs In, Slams OP's 'Creep' of a BF
Redditors appeared to unanimously label the woman as NTA, a.k.a. "not the a--hole," and didn't hesitate to rally behind OP, while also accusing her boyfriend of having a "fetish."
"NTA and it's really weird that he wants you to lie to show off his 'Japanese' girlfriend like a trophy," a user wrote.
Another commenter suggested the boyfriend fetishizes Japanese culture, saying he was "dreading" going to the event because he probably "already told them you're Japanese."
"NTA boyfriend and his friends have a weird ass fetish," another wrote in a popular comment, to which OP replied, "Maybe I'm naive. I definitely don't think I understand how kinks and fetishes work."
"I was hoping [because] most of his exes are African-American, that would mean he doesn't have a weird obsession for Asian women," she added, before asking how "many" of his friends he grew up with possibly have the "same fetish."
"I am not defending him, I just don't know how this works," OP clarified.
After a Redditor suggested that the boyfriend may "have a fetish for 'Exotic' women for which any woman not white could fit," the woman said that the commenter's "theory fits the most."
"Maybe my boyfriend have an obsession for non-white women but wants to impress someone who specifically like Japanese women," OP said.
Meanwhile, another user -- who also said OP was NTA -- asked, "Why the heck are you dating this creep nta."
"A part of me was hoping people would say I'm overreacting," she said.
Another commenter asked OP if she was "looking for a reason to stay with that weirdo??"
"You're not the a--hole for not pretending to be something you're not," the user assured. "It's good to have self respect but….your boyfriend sounds like a piece of work and he'll do more microagressions against you if you let him get away with it. PICK BETTER!"
The woman replied, "I was, but this is a problem I can't ignore. My boyfriend has issues."
OP Gives an Update
The next day, the woman gave an update in a new post, sharing that she had a conversation with her boyfriend, who explained the apparent reason why he asked her to "pretend to be Japanese."
"A tiny update as the conversation I had with my boyfriend was less than 2 hours long," OP said. "He promises that he doesn't care that I'm Chinese instead of Japanese. He admitted he's physically attracted to women who aren't white."
"He promises that his old high school friends doesn't have anti-Chinese sentiments. He admitted it was a stupid competitive thing between him and his friends," she continued. "He said his friends will be [impressed] that I'm Chinese but one of his other friends has a South Korean girlfriend. In their weird ranking, even though Chinese is ranked high, South Korean is ranked higher. For them, the only thing that ranks higher than South Korean is Japanese."
OP then dropped a bomb, telling Redditors, "I broke up with him. I told him and his friends need to have more respect for women."
Commenters praised OP for her decision.
"Good for you. That sounds like an insanely stupid thing for him to worry about," a user wrote.
"The very idea that he and his friends RANK the desirability of female partners according to their cultural / ethnic origin is deeply, deeply s--ty behaviour," another said. "You did the right thing to break up with him. Absolutely appalling behaviour!"
"You did great standing up for yourself. You're not some piece of meat for a competition," another person chimed in.
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- USA Today
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an hour ago
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A professor's hunt for the rarest Chinese typewriter
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Each one was an inventor's take on how to incorporate thousands of characters into a machine without making it unusable -- a physical manifestation of their ideas about language. Never plentiful, the typewriters were now increasingly rare, gone the way of most obsolete technology. Mullaney was fascinated. That evening turned into months of research, which turned into years of searching, as Chinese typewriters became one of his areas of historical expertise. He cold-called strangers and left voicemail messages for private collectors, people whom he suspected, from faint traces left on the internet, of having typewriters. He pored over looking for the next of kin of the last known owner of a particular machine. He called museums and asked, 'Do you, by any chance, have a Chinese typewriter?' Sometimes, they said yes. A private museum in Delaware happened to have a surviving IBM Chinese typewriter, of which only two or three were ever made. Someone at a Chinese Christian church in San Francisco got in touch with him to say they owned a typewriter that they were trying to get rid of. Mullaney took it off their hands. Advertisement The MingKwai is legendary among the handful of people who know about Chinese typewriters. It was invented by Lin Yutang, a Chinese linguist and public intellectual who had begun to worry in the 1930s that without some way to convert ink-brush characters into easily reproduced text, China would be left behind technologically -- perhaps destroyed at the hands of foreign powers. Attempts to create typing machines usually stumbled over the problem of cramming a galaxy of characters into a single machine. Lin's solution was an ingenious system housed in what looked like a large Western typewriter. But when you tapped the keys, something remarkable happened. Any two keystrokes, representing pieces of characters, moved gears within the machine. In a central window, which Lin called the Magic Eye, up to eight different characters containing those pieces then appeared, and the typist could select the right one. Lin had made it possible to type tens of thousands of characters using 72 keys. It was almost as if, Mullaney said, Lin had invented a keyboard with a single key capable of typing the entire Roman alphabet. He named his machine MingKwai, which roughly translates to 'clear and fast.' Lin, who was then living with his wife and children on Manhattan's Upper East Side, hired a New York machinist firm to make a prototype, at enormous cost to himself. He presented that prototype in a demonstration to executives from Remington, the typewriter manufacturer. Advertisement It was a failure. The machine malfunctioned at a crucial moment. Lin went bankrupt and the prototype was sold to Mergenthaler Linotype, a printing company in Brooklyn. And that, as far as Mullaney had been able to find out, was the machine's last known location. When Mergenthaler Linotype moved offices sometime in the 1950s, the machine disappeared. In his 2017 book, 'The Chinese Typewriter,' Mullaney wrote that he believed the MingKwai had most likely ended up on a scrap heap. This past January, Jennifer and Nelson Felix were in their home in Massapequa, N.Y., going through boxes that had been in storage since Felix's father died in Arizona five years before. They were looking at a wooden crate sitting among the cardboard boxes. 'What's this?' Jennifer Felix asked her husband. He'd had a peek in the crate back in Arizona. Oh, he said, it's that typewriter. She opened it, and realized it was not a typical typewriter. The symbols on the keys looked like Chinese. Nelson Felix, who often sold and bought items on Facebook, quickly found a group called 'What's My Typewriter Worth?' and posted some photos. Then they set it aside and moved on to other things. An hour later, Nelson Felix checked on his post. There were hundreds of comments, many written in Chinese. People kept tagging someone named Tom. The couple looked at each other. 'Who's Tom?' Mullaney was in Chicago to give a talk when his phone started going off -- ping, ping, ping. The small community of people he'd encountered in his long quest were sending up digital flares, urgently trying to get his attention. As soon as he saw the post, he knew exactly what he was looking at. It was the MingKwai. Advertisement But he didn't rejoice. He didn't sigh with relief. He was gripped with fear. What if they didn't know what they had and sold it before he could get to it? Someone could buy it with a click on eBay. They could make it into a coffee table. Take it apart and make steampunk earrings. It would be gone, just like that. He posted a comment on Facebook, asking the poster to contact him right away. After a few frantic hours, he got a reply, and the next day he and the Felixes were on the phone. He told them the MingKwai's story. He said that while it was up to them what they did with it, he hoped they would consider selling it to a museum. He was afraid that if it were sold at auction, it would disappear, a trophy hidden in the vacation home of an oil tycoon. Jennifer Felix was bewildered by what was happening. It was just a typewriter in a basement. But Mullaney had made an impression. 'It was lost for half a century,' she said. 'We didn't want it to get lost again.' 'To me it's just a typewriter,' she continued. 'But to other people it's history; it's a story, a life, a treasure.' Instructions and a box of tools were used to cast more Chinese character bars for the MingKwai 9 typewriter. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/NYT Mullaney figured out that Jennifer Felix's grandfather, Douglas Arthur Jung, had been a machinist at Mergenthaler Linotype. It's likely that when the company moved offices, he took the machine home. Then it was passed down to Felix's father, who, for more than a decade, had kept the MingKwai with him. 'That's what my dad decided to keep and bring across the country when they moved,' Felix said. Advertisement Keys on the MingKwai 9 typewriter. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/NYT Why, of all he had inherited from his own father, did he hang on to this typewriter? She doesn't know. But she feels it must have been a conscious choice: The MingKwai would not have been packed by accident. It weighs more than 50 pounds. In April, the couple made their decision. They sold the machine for an undisclosed amount to the Stanford University Libraries, which acquired it with the help of a private donor. This spring, the MingKwai made its way back across the country. When it was lifted out of the crate onto the floor at a Stanford warehouse, Mullaney lay down to look at it. The history professor could see that it was full of intricate machinery, far more delicate than any other typewriter he'd seen, and he began to imagine how engineers might help him understand it -- perhaps revealing what was going on in Lin's mind in 1947 when he invented a machine he thought could rescue China. Perhaps they could even build a new one. Lying on his stomach, Mullaney began to wonder. The MingKwai 9 typewriter. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/NYT This article originally appeared in
