Mei Lin
an excerpt from:
by Margot Durfee
Mei-Lin has lived in Beijing her whole life. she has walked past the same buildings and people everyday after school since she was little. and yet, when she passes by the children chasing one another, the elderly women peeling vegetables on their doorsteps, the men smoking and drinking tea and playing chess, when she smiles at them, all she receives are blank stares. she feels isolated, invisible, as if she is on one side of a tinted window and the rest of the world is on the other. she has been alive long enough, and experienced enough, to know that she doesn’t fit in, especially in a country as racially homogenous as China, where her biracial-ass sticks out starkly her chestnut hair and hazel eyes a constant reminder that she isn’t “one of them,” even though she has similar features: a rounded, flatter nose; almond-shaped eyes; straight, thick hair.
photo | Juli Lin
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