"I just tell people that I'm Chinese..."

"...because it's easier and sometimes they don't believe me anyway."

So these are the photos of Marcus To, that I shot on Friday - he's another one with a crazy backstory in that his Mother is Irish but only recently discovered this after retracing her adopted roots.

Marcus lived in Hong Kong from when he was a-month old until the age of 10, but he doesn't speak any Chinese - much to the disappointment of his Father - because he spent most of his education in HK in an international school.
Like nearly all my other subjects so far, Marcus is proud and happy to be half-Chinese and be 'different', even though he's often getting confused for being Polynesian or Māori (native New-Zealanders) or even part-black. He says he usually just tells people that he's full-Chinese because they won't necessarily know any better and sometimes he thinks it takes too long to explain.
He has lots of piercings and one tattoo, surprisingly he says his dad isn't too bothered by it but was 'just like any other parent' and a bit annoyed when he first saw them.

© Ruth Johnston 2010.

I'm finding that although both Marcus and Jamie were complete strangers that it was quite easy to shoot them because we already knew we had one thing in common and with the lack of anything else to talk about would talk about traditions and things that have happened to us because we're part-Chinese. I think when more people get involved, and I know less of the people, that the shared-experience theme will flow even better than it already is.
I'm putting a re-done version of Jamie up here because I only noticed after I'd finished that his shoulder was all faded, so here is is sans faded shoulder.
I've really got to get on top of my dissertation soon, the middle of November (draft-submission time) isn't that far away!