My Current Racial Existential Crisis

I think I go through a racial existential crisis at least once every 3-4 years.  Usually it is brought about by some circumstance where I'm forced to intentionally or unintentionally define myself by my race.  Other times I bring it on myself through some guilty expectation that I should be more aware of my own ethnicity.

I should probably give a little background to this crisis.  I'm 2.5 generation Chinese American who spent her entire childhood in Chicago's North Shore (also known as major white suburbia...at least it was in the 80's).  I had a wonderful childhood, fit in well with all the blond-haired kids, and thought I was Caucasian.  Ok, I knew that I was Chinese, but since my parents neither spoke Chinese, ate Chinese food (minus the dish my mom learned how to cook from a park district class...it is surprisingly delicious), or did anything culturally Chinese, the only thing I had going for me as far as being Chinese was that I looked Chinese.  All that to say, my Chinese-ness didn't factor in for a large chunk of my life.

Fast forward another decade and a half...I'm off to East Asia next month.  Matt gently suggested that I ask some relatives about where I'm from.  So after talking to a great-uncle, I now know that my ancestors lived here:

More specifically, from that little dot on the coast of the highlighted region.  Now I have an answer when people ask me where in China my family is from.  I used to smile, laugh nervously, and tell them somewhere in southern China.  Granted, I can't pronounce it, at least not correctly, but I did visit the city's tourism website and now have dreams that my ancestors lived in a magically beautiful place off the coast where they farmed rice and fished in a boat under the sunset.

So, what's the crisis?  Well, I'm feeling a little immensely ignorant of my ethnic history and am a little scared to actually encounter it in person next month.  Matt bought three pretty awesome travel guides at B&N, but I haven't cracked one open yet.  Somehow I feel embarrassed for having to learn about my history from this:

I guess it's a start.  Maybe I can incorporate this travel guide into Abigail's night-time story rotation so that she'll know more about the little dot when she's older.