D&R: Yin Yang
Starting sometime around middle school, I started to see this strange black and white symbol pop up around my neighborhood. What I now know to be called Yin Yang or Taijitu, started for me as an Asian symbol that meant courtship.
In America, a lot of couples like to show off their relationship status through many different forms. Back when Facebook was just starting out, no one would know about your relationship unless you did something like kissing in public or boasting about it in conversion. But when I was growing up, I started to watch this symbol appear amongst my friend group and then quickly disappear just as it came. Off and on for years, until I finally made it to college and took a class that taught me about this symbol.
Taoism/Daoism has been a very strange religion for me to follow. Some much of it is ingrained in thought that thinking about it too much might cause for you to go insane rather than to understand. Learning about Yin Yang and its roots to an actual religion, rather than just “an Asian couple thing,” made me admire it more and feel bad for all of my friends that draw them on their wrists because they wanted to be special.
Part of the core message that many Americas associate Yin Yang with is balance. One completing each other, rather than complimenting. As I started to look into the history of Yin Yang, it’s mistaken identity, and American appropriation I noted that while many Americans misinterpret the meaning, but I found their ignorance rather harmless.
In the summer of 2017, I made my first trip aboard and decided to partake in buying a Yin Yang necklace with eight I Ching hexagrams surrounding the Yin Yang. I kept the male half for myself and gave my boyfriend the female half so that we could have a piece of each other while we were apart. Later I would encounter some of my Chinese friends when I returned home that would look at it and say “you know you have the wrong piece, right?” And while I know that I should probably swipe the necklaces so that I wouldn’t look as ignorant, I’d like to think that I’m holding that small dot in Yin Yang that is a little piece of each other.
Below I have provided a few articles talking about this ignorance among Americans, as well as a video as a starter to anyone’s education that would like a step in the right direction towards the true meaning of Yin Yang.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/08/25/the-conversations-we-need-to-have-about-cultural-appropriation/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b7e0f785e962
