Chinese White Boy

It often comes as quite a surprise to Chinese when the Cantonese Language
with a fairly Cantonese tone comes out of my seemingly full white mouth rolling off of my perceived to be full Caucasian tongue. Women born in China hold their hands to their mouth giggling, and many "Wahhh!'s" are heard. Men born in China will hide there surprise at first fearing they are hearing things, and then later in the conversation ask if I am actually from Hong Kong and if not where the hell I learned Chinese so well and admit that at first they had been afraid they had finally snapped from working too many hours.
One Jook Sing Chinese man, born in the United States, told me from across a table full of after clubbers at Chau Chau city restaraunt, "That's pretty good," followed by, "Wow a white guy that speaks Chinese. Huh, you must get a lot of Asian girls."
I then explain that I am white but I am also Chinese and that my family name is Cheung. Furthermore my father was Chinese and my mother was white. Chinese born in the United States tend to assume my mother was Chinese, despite my last name. Furthermore that is after assuming that I am simply a white guy with Yellow Fever that probably studied in Hong Kong or something like that. (Not that there is anything wrong with that. Over there they will love you. Most resentment thrown at me was from people born in the states, or educated in International Schools abroad.)

Here's an example of some tension with my existence. One time in New York, after helping out the Gee Oak Tin Family Association do Lion Dance for Chinese New Year all day, along with some Lion Dancers from New York White Crane, we were eating and comparing notes about our respective Chinatowns the conversation turned towards White Guys dating Chinese girls. "No offense, but" seemed to be the begginning of many sentences, until I clarified that my Chinese father who was straight from China, had been the one to date a white woman and then Father me.
A loud "OOOOO.." rang out followed by high fives all around.
"Okay your cool, your cool." and then there was no elephant in the room.

Again, not that the reverse combination of myself is a bad one, but all males feel
a competetion when it comes to courtship. If White guys are getting asian girls, asian guys feel that they have lost one. If asian guy gets white girl, they have won one. My existence turned from proof of a "loss" to proof of a "win" It shouldn't matter, but it does. Much legislation in the United States has tried to prevent the existence of mongrels like myself for many many years. But this isn't a history lesson, it's my story.

So how did this Adam Win-Son Peters Cheung combination come to be?

It is a story that many people want to hear since my face with my speech can seem so jarring and mind boggling, at least in Boston. (And to tell the truth, despite the great number of Whites speaking Chinese and even Cantonese nowadays, I got the same surpised looks in Hong Kong.)

Let's start from my Fathers story and go from there.