My experience at ACen, part 1: creepy white guys, thoughts on Yellow Fever

I had a lot of fun at ACen. It's a great way for anime fans to gather and share their passion for anime. But one fan I met was rather... disturbing. He was an older white man who asked for my picture. I agreed, but once I began to walk away, he tried to talk to me.

"Do you speak Japanese?" he asked in poor Japanese.
"No, I'm sorry, I'm Chinese, I can't speak Japanese," I replied in Mandarin as quickly as I could.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were a Japanese girl." I didn't want to continue the conversation past that and left.

It doesn't seem like a big deal--just a creepy old man targeting young Japanese girls at an anime convention--but it reminded me of yellow fever.

Yellow fever is defined as "sexual obsession felt by a non-Asian (usually white, usually male) towards Asians of the opposite gender" on Urban Dictionary. It is identifiable by a non-Asian's specific targeting of Asians as partners. No other race will do, and the entire Asian race is assumed to fit this non-Asian's stereotype. An excellent (read: terrifying) example is this man from OkCupid, who claims to be "only interested in the best [women]: Asian women." This man goes on to praises Asian women for their "long, fine silky hair," their ability to "remember what it's like to be woman: to be docile and submissive to a man," and their "delicate, playful personalities" as if all Asian women were the same. This disturbs me a LOT. It's not just because it's directed towards Asian women: there are other cases of race fever that are just as delusional. And this man has more problems than just his yellow fever. He is misogynistic, stating that the way to be a woman is "to be docile and submissive to a man," a trait all women would find unattractive. This man picks women like picking a breed of dog: he goes for a 'breed' he considers to be the most meek and submissive to him, trashing other breeds in the process. It's disturbing and offensive to everyone. Non-Asian women shouldn't be automatically rejected because of their supposed inability to fit one's outdated idea of an ideal woman and Asian women shouldn't be exaggerated and assumed to be all the same.

Yellow fever isn't just limited to men, however: the advent of anime and Kpop in America has created a wave of young girls who take a limited view of Japan or Korea based on anime or Kpop and become completely obsessed. Korean pop culture blog Seoulbeats singles out extreme Kpop fangirls for their unreasonable expectations South Korea due to their narrow view of Korean culture through the lens of Kpop. Due to prolonged exposure to Asian pop culture, these girls have come to target specifically Asian men "to display their 'Koreanness,' their perception of what they think it means to be Korean" or 'Japanese-ness.' To these fans, normal "South Koreans are often treated like prized possession, often to the point of fetishization, as though somehow being in acquaintance with a beautiful Korean somehow makes themselves Korean by association" and follows the same beliefs of the older man on Ok Cupid and at ACen. South Korean men become fetishized "prizes" who can validate a fan's inner Koreanness "by association."

In fact, one commenter on the article pointed out the similarities between one of these girl's sick fetishizations and "one of those guys who are struck with Yellow Fever — fascinated with Chinese culture, want to have Chinese girlfriends and have their own notions and perceptions about China, or that girl who thinks that everything from the West is better," including the humans.