In my earliest memory, the first time that I realized people have different skin is in my primary school. Our school will let a foreign teacher to teach us as soon as we get into grade four, in order to give us a chance to practice our oral English. My teacher was a man who was from America. He was really friendly and humorous. I forgot his name now, but he was the first person who came from other country and have different color of skin.

When I was in grade four, foreign teachers were rare in many school. Fortunately, our school have one. When we were having the first class with him, I did not discover that he have the different color of skin than us at first. I just noticed that his features are deeper than us, such as his eyes. Then, after the class, he was playing with classmate. At that time, with the contrast, I realized he was much whiter than us. His skin was so white that I wondered whether he ever bask in the sun? Sometimes, I just stood behind him, and compared my skin with him. After a few weeks, I saw him do exercise with us under the sun. I did a contrast again. He did not have any color change on his skin.

In my memory, in China, many girl wanted to have whiter skin than they used to be. They thought white skin is more beautiful, and I might think so as well when I was young. Therefore, after school, I came back home, and asked my mother about my teacher’s skin. I said, “Mom, why my teacher can be so white? Can I get whiter like him if I do not bask in the sun for a long time?” My mother laughed at me. She said, “No, you cannot become as white as your teacher does. His skin was born whiter than ours. There are many countries in the world, and this leads that there are many difference among those countries. We have many different languages and people. We are Chinese, our hair is black and our skin is yellow. Your teacher came from America, and his skin is white. Some people, for example in Africa, have black skin. We were born like this, and it indicates our race and country.” I cannot recall all the sentences that my mom said, but I remembered that my mom told me, although people have different colors of skin, but there is no differences in their inside.

At that time, I did not really know about the discrimination, especially the racial discrimination against black people. Therefore, I did not notice that the color of skin can be used to judge somebody or decide what kind of people’s life they can have. However, I know about this, and I know why my mom said like that. She told me that she met some white and black people when I was 1 years old, and she said that they were really nice and really like me.