Chinese-American Teenager Too Asian to Hang With White Kids, Too Poor to Hang With FOBs

To be fair, his personality was trash

March 29, 2022

By: Grant Yang

IRVINE, CA—10th grader Johnny Wu is caught between two worlds, being socially excluded from the white students for his Chinese heritage, while also being excluded from the Chinese immigrant students for being broke. 

During lunch period, Wu would try to sit with the popular Caucasian kids, who would shrug him off before moving somewhere else. “He’s just a little weird,” complained popular white David Loman, “at first I thought he would be a cool Asian that would share his bento box with us. When he tried to explain that he was Chinese, it reminded me of boba so we left him to get some taro milk tea. Definitely would not let him sit near us again. Besides, the Benz can only fit five people and we already have a Latina.”

Wu then tried his luck with the FOBs that had recently come to Irvine from Chengdu. Stepping over three Givenchy bags and a sleeve dog, Wu sat down at a table between a girl wearing only white and a guy with tiny bags on all his limbs. Immediately, the FOBs began speaking rapid-fire Mandarin to each other while giving side-eye to Wu, who was dressed in t-shirt and jeans. Wu could only understand the Chinese words meaning “ugly,” “poor,” and “he almost stepped on my sleeve dog.” After being left out of the conversation for 10 minutes, one of the FOBs turned to Wu and simply said “no.” Then, they left Wu and piled into a Beemer to meet up with the whites at the boba shop.

When asked about any benefits from his Chinese-American heritage, Wu responded, “at least I’m not Wasian.”