Onitsuka Tigers

I am obsessed with the Onitsuka Tigers. They are a type of minimalist sneaker with a very thin sole, still manufactured in Japan to this day, and most famously associated with 1970s martial arts icon, Bruce Lee*. They are extremely overpriced for what they are, and supremely hard to get. I'd have to pay an arm and a leg for them and then another arm and a leg to ship them back in case they don't fit. And I know in my heart of hearts, they are totally wrong for me. But I'm still obsessed. I want them to suit me. The normal thing to do is to just leave them alone and be happy that other people are out there enjoying them. But I can't. I can't let it just be. And it's not even about the shoes anymore. Every time I see a girl prancing around effortlessly in a pair of Onitsuka Tigers, I want to take off her entire identity and put it on myself. I'm light years passed the age where I should still be doing this, but I don't think I ever grew out it.

I think this turmoil is because

1. I don't have the money for them right now, the fact that I can't have them makes me obsessed with them.

2. They're from Japan and also worn by Bruce Lee. There was a period of time in my life where I wanted to either be Japanese or Bruce Lee.

This is as close to Bruce Lee as I can get

I'm not Japanese. And I'm definitely not Bruce Lee. I was born and bred in Beijing, and I moved to Hamilton, Ontario when I was eleven and a half years old. You could say I'm part Beijing and part Hamilton. Neither of those are Japanese or Bruce Lee places.

You might think being Chinese gives you an automatic kinship with Bruce Lee, but that's not true. Not when so much of your identity is tied to Beijing, and not Hong Kong. If I had somehow felt more solid pride in being a Beijing-er, maybe I'd own my identity better. But I don't. Not really. I left too young, and Beijing is not a place with a distinct enough identity for one to latch on to. It's not like it had its own religion, its own customs, or its own clothes. Even the dialect is pretty much indistinguishable from standard Mandarin because standard Mandarin is based on the Beijing dialect itself. The food in Beijing is bland and unremarkable. Unlike other places like Shanghai, or Sichuan, they've got Great Food that everyone loves and they have their own dialect that's like a secret code that no other Chinese person could understand. There's nothing about Beijing that really makes it stand out, other than the historical buildings that have loads of baggage to them. I just never had to think about this when I used to live there, because it was the default, I was the default. You never questioned the coolness of your own existence when you were the default. Everywhere you went, they constantly reminded you about how great Beijing was. And how wonderful it was that we were to be from there. How great the Tian An Men Square was and all. And as a kid with no critical thinking skills, I took it as fact.

In my third year in Canada in grade 9, my history teacher had taught us about the Tian An Men square incident, which made Beijing look extremely not great, to say the very least (you are welcome to look this up, my friend. But be warned, it reveals a very dark side of humanity). This was a shock on a level that I'm still having trouble accepting, even to this day. I think the best phrase would just be plain "heart break". At around the same time, I'd witnessed first hand, up close, just how big a liar the government was on another matter close to home, which I won't talk about. Just to sum up, during the time around the early 2000s, I didn't want to be associated with China anymore. They broke my heart too many times. We were done. I still loved the places that I grew up around, but I didn't want to be reminded that I was living under that government all those years. I was realizing that the idealized version of China I had in my head never even existed. Also, I wasn't there anymore, it wasn't cool anymore, and I wasn't cool anymore, and Tian An Men Square was just a massive square associated with equally massive terrible feelings. Nobody in Hamilton thought of me as great by default. I didn't even know why I should be. But I wanted to be! This was just so not fair! I didn't do anything to deserve this! Why couldn't I still be cool after so many years of never questioning my own coolness?

trying to go home by clicking my heels in Onitsuka Tigers flats

A lot of times I tried, if only in my head, to pretend that I was Japanese. A totally blasphemous thing for a Chinese person to do, due to history reasons. But I thought, why not? It's not like I'm gonna tell anyone about it. Japan has its own baggage, too. But I didn't care, I thought that was easier to bear than to wrestle with being from China. And it's so easy for me to pretend, it's not like average Joe on the street in Hamilton even knew the difference! They probably think Asia is just one big old country, where everyone still all walked around wearing triangle hats made out of bamboo or something. But “people in the know” knew that people in Japan definitely didn't wear triangle hats. The smart kids that I looked up to, thought of Japan as great. So if I could convince myself that I was Japanese, it made me feel better on the inside. But then, I'd run into a wall of reality: I'm not Japanese, I don't speak Japanese, and most importantly, I'm a terrible liar. And then it's back to square one: I'm from Beijing. I'd try to explain to people: Beijing was great, too! You just had to pretend you didn't know any of the bad stuff the government did! It used to be awesome, actually! They didn't get it. The harder I tried to explain myself, the more people tuned me out.

By the time that I was in my 20s, I'd accepted that I cannot be Japanese, or could I convince people that Beijing was cool. But I could still pretend that I was from Hong Kong, a different place that was still loads better than Mainland, China, according to 20 year old me. This was another blasphemous thing for a Chinese mainlander to do, though not quite as blasphemous as pretending to be Japanese. I was introduced to the concept of Bruce Lee at some point, I don't remember how. Maybe I looked up Uma Thurman's Kill Bill outfit inspiration, or maybe I saw figurines of him sold at Urban Outfitters. Likely a combination of both. Somehow I got curious about him. After watching a YouTube clip of him talking about how to be water, I decided Bruce Lee was now my new icon/boyfriend. He'd been long dead before I was born. I'm aware. But everyone still liked him! He was really handsome! And he figured out how to be water! If one were about to fool oneself into thinking one was from Hong Kong, one might as well fool oneself into being in relationship with great dead Hong Kong legend. But, it wasn't to be. Our relationship didn't last, because apparently, even fictional boyfriends needed to have something in common with you to be sustainable. Bruce Lee and I had nothing whatsoever. He walked around with way more confidence than I could ever hope to accumulate in a lifetime. He spoke English with a Cantonese accent, which I never had. He starred in famous action movies, I grew up watching zero. He was a martial arts legend, and I had no martial arts abilities. The only martial arty thing I did was that one bad Kung Fu class I took in high school that made me vow to never touch it again. And even if he were not famous, even if we were in high school at the same time, we would not be friends. I would probably have a disproportionately massive crush on him to the point of creepy stalker, and we would never get along at all.

I had even more trouble pretending that I was from Hong Kong than I were from Japan. I attempted learning Cantonese by watching my favourite Cantonese movie, Green Snake, on repeat, which, due to its art house nature, did me no service at all in the language department. I tried singing along to Cantonese songs, but I'd either just copy the sound and forget what they meant, or I'd remember the meaning but not remember the sound. My boyfriend (real one) in university was actually Cantonese, and I'd frequently pester him about basic phrases like "How are you?", "What time is it?", and “Where is the washroom?". I listened to his family's conversations, desperately wishing to catch someone say "Where is the washroom?" once. I never did. Cantonese proved to be Olympic level difficult. I still can't understand a word of it. It remains more mysterious than Japanese or even French.

The Onitsuka Tigers continue to tempt me immensely. I am filled with envy when I see another Asian person wearing them. It's like they never had to struggle and just belonged. And that fills me with great envy and rage.

It cannot be denied that I am from Beijing. I lack a real identity, but I cannot claim either Japan or Bruce Lee to make up for it. And I do not spiritually align with Onitsuka Tigers no matter how much I want them. But, does identifying with those things make you cool by default? Should being from Beijing make you automatically not cool? Why should the mere fact of sharing a hometown with Bruce Lee, make someone cooler? Why should sharing a hometown with the Tian An Men square make someone not cool? I'm sure Japan, Hong Kong and Bruce Lee all have their own baggage, too. Maybe nothing about being from a place makes you inherently cool because there is no such thing as “inherently cool”. Wanting to be assumed as automatically cool, implies some kind of superiority, which is actually kind of lame. Though, I won't blame myself for feeling that way. I think it comes from a place of wanting to be accepted, but just dialed way up to the top. It's acceptance on steroids. Of course I'd feel that way as a teenage girl. I think I'm still mourning the loss of the unconditional sense of belonging I had as a kid in elementary school, in Beijing. I never feel unconditionally accepted in Toronto, or Hamilton, or Tokyo, or Saitama, or anywhere else I'd lived since. And I had no longer felt accepted in Beijing now, either. I wonder if any of this will ever change. Maybe it's all just a part of being a person.

China is just a monument in my head now

Gosh. Who knew writing about some ballet flats would result in such an existential crisis? I hope I'm one step closer not being madly jealous of everyone else wearing Onitsuka Tigers.

*his are not the ballet flat variety, they're sneakers. Though it is fun to imagine Bruce Lee wearing ballet flats.