"So what are you?"

I have always envied those who can answer this in a long-winded way to include every continent on earth and throw in various mix of spices in quarters or eighths, or even sixteenths. My friend, Ms Pants Advocate, can list over half of the UN Security Council in her blood stream.

Being just full-blooded anything seems so...dull.

On a recent trip to China with my parents, a revelation came one night out at dinner in Chengdu.

"Dad! Let's do the family tree when we get home!" I excitedly said. Earlier, we had visited an elderly relative who revealed all the glory of the old family. Oxford scholars, renowned surgeons and crazed artists abound in the thick volume of my paternal grandmother's family tree.

"Pfft!" My fat cousin scoffed at the idea.

"We're not doing YOUR family tree. We're doing OURS!" I scoffed back. He's on my mother's side of the family and thus we don't share the same surname.

"Sometimes, you find things things you don't want to know, " he retorted quietly.

Given my limited mastery of the Chinese language, all I could come up with was very loudly, "I DON'T CARE!" and a pout.

My outburst was met by silence around the dinner table. Momma and Pappa looked embarrassed. We don't know what drugs she's been taking while on her own in Melbourne, we might need to have a quiet chat with her later, the look on their faces revealed.

And then the silence was broken by my cousin.

"You want to find out about how your grandfather's mother was not even his mother? The old man was illegitimate! The woman was a sing-song girl who became a concubine!"

"What?!" This was obviously news to my mother as well. At that point I couldn't tell if she was upset or confused.

"See, you don't want to play with history," fat cousin emphasised again.

Silence ensued while plates of Szechuan delicacies were brought to our table. I picked at the green peppercorns and stole looks at my mother in between. I wondered, what was the psyche of a woman who just found out her much admired father was a bastard?

"Well. That could explain why he was an outrageously good-looking man." She finally said, with a hint of smugness.

"The old man was still a bastard." Fat cousin insisted.

"Shut it!" I said defensively of the man who caught a tortoise for me the first time we met. "He was still your grandfather."

The uncomfortable silence continued.

* * *

"How was your day today?" The Boy asked over the phone that night.

"I found out that I'm one-eighth prostitute from mama's side."
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