When I came wide-eyed into Paris I wanted to drink in all of the architecture, the daily bustle, the small wonders with open eyes and ears. Within a couple of days I'd bought an iPod shuffle and set it to blast girl power folk rock straight from Berkeley, California.

I'm having some difficulty setting this down in words, particularly since I go through cycles of feminazi fury and foreigner resignation on the subject. The problem is that, at least once a day and today thrice, I get random hollers of "Eh, ma jolie mademoiselle, vous voulez..." or "La chinoise!" as I'm walking in the street.

I'm not sure whether it's the solo female or the Asian skin that does me in, but I've seen plenty of brilliantly beautiful black women, maghrébine (North African) women, and caucasian women passing solo without comment. East Asians aren't particularly rare in Paris, either, as there are three distinct Chinatown areas and today (I was counting, for statistics, because the pattern became apparent in the last couple of days.) multiple other Asians on every metro car. One way of explaining, if not justifying, this was given by my neighbors tonight: sort of as American slang insults yo' momma by default, Parisian slang insults your race.

Regardless, there's certainly a specific intrigue to my being Taiwanese. I say intrigue rather than racism because it comes up in an funny sort of way ranging from awkward to slimy, as represented below by the conversation I've reproduced in full three times with waiters or shopkeepers who, while not explicitly rude, do this:

The most unnerving part is that I never feel like I'm in physical danger. The shouted comments always come during daytime on bustling streets as someone's walking clear the other way, as if the lack of a formalized relationship (friendship, acquaintance or salesperson-client) or a true threat makes for a free-for-all. If there were real danger, I'd just avoid certain neighborhoods. Born-and-bred criminals are to be avoided, but mere assholes can reform — can't they?

Oddly enough this rarely happens in my neighborhood, considered one of the more working-class ones — probably because the 20th has lots of immigrants and is thus fairly blasé about skin color. In fact, I was venting a bit about this to a classmate after class in the highly swank 15th around 9pm (still daylight, mind you) and not three minutes after we'd decided it wouldn't happen in that too-bourgeois neighborhood of gourmet cooking school, gourmet food shops, and gourmet chocolatiers, I crossed paths with a pair of guys

Please note: I was holding a tupperware container of roasted chicken and striding quickly with a (residual, from having just vented about this very subject) furious frown at the cement sidewalk. How attractive is an angry girl holding TUPPERWARE?

I spent the metro ride home tonight in a fury, thinking HOLY DUCK ON A STICK, Paris, you are giving yourself a bad taste in the mouth. Yes, I can follow the stupid gaze-down, frown-fixed, headphones-blaring rules. It doesn't always work, but does the trick 75% of the time. But there's a huge chunk of the feminist, nay, the equal-rights-ist in me that doesn't want to be in a deferential bubble whenever I go out in public.