On a typical Saturday morning, fewer than two years ago, I bolted downstairs, dressed in plain workout clothing that hid a flashy blue swimsuit underneath. Practice began at 8:00 and wouldn’t end until noon. My stomach begged me to eat something, anything, and despite my best efforts to silence those unwelcome desires, my eyes caught glimpse of a bamboo steamer filled with fresh hot buns sitting on the counter– the only choice in sight – and my hunger won out. Among them was an unassuming, misshapen red bean bun. Desperate, my greedy fingers encircled it, raising it quickly to my lips.

My teeth sunk into the fluffy, soft exterior of lightly sweet dough that provided the perfect vehicle for the smooth, oozing red bean paste within; the rich sweetness coated my tongue, tickling my taste buds and easing a reluctant smile onto my face. Within moments, it was gone. But the taste lingered, consuming my thoughts like resurfaced memories of an old friend, so familiar and comforting, yet everything inside me told me it was wrong.

For the remainder of that year, I ate at least three red bean buns a day; a simple mathematical equation reveals that that is a minimum of twenty-one buns a week, eighty-four a month, one thousand and eight a year. With those numbers in mind, it can be argued that red bean buns, quite literally, made up who I was. But beyond that, red bean buns became the vital catalyst of my journey to repair my tarnished relationship with my family’s culture – filled with struggles, self-scrutiny, disconnects, acceptance, and eventually, pride.

Instilled in me by classmates, the media, and the rest of American society was the rigid rule that beans were only meant to be a side to barbecue, an ingredient in chili, a base for crumbly taco meat; they had no place in desserts. Even more sacrilegious was to eat beans for breakfast, a time designated for stale cereal, prepackaged Pop-Tarts, frozen pancakes, and suspicious sausage. The words “disgusting,” “unappetizing,” “weird,” “bizarre” labeled my food, despite the high likelihood that the bearers of those insults had never tasted it or even afforded it a Google search.

If they had taken to the internet, their hasty rejection of red bean buns would remain unsubstantiated. Baozi (steamed buns) date back nearly 1,800 years to the Three Kingdoms period in China and have always been an important staple in a typical Chinese diet. Among the countless varieties, the sweet red bean filling is especially popular and is commonly eaten for both breakfast and dessert. In any given Chinese city, every few blocks provide one with countless opportunities to buy these red bean buns. Widely available at food stalls, restaurants, supermarkets, and convenience stores, a home is seldom without them. The people of numerous countries in Asia share a preference for various red bean desserts, from dorayaki, taiyaki, and mochi (red bean-filled pancake, fish-shaped cake, and glutinous rice cake) in Japan to patbingsu, yanggaeng, and hodugwaja (red bean shaved ice, walnut cake, and jelly) in Korea to babaofan, jiandui, and doushabao (red bean-filled layered rice, sesame ball, and steamed bun) in China; the list goes on and on. How could something so normal and adored to one be somehow so strange and unthinkable to another?

Regardless, their uninformed and acrimonious views were accepted as truth in my young, impressionable mind, and thus, for years, my breakfasts consisted of Krave cereal, Pillsbury Toaster Strudels, and Eggo chocolate chip pancakes. Those were “normal.”

For so long, I had internalized the xenophobia that surrounded me in every facet of my life – a parasite living within me, feeding off my own self-hatred and destroying me in the process. Without realizing it, I had assimilated the culture of my peers, and in doing so, rejected that of China. Sadly, I am not alone. In schools, in workplaces, in media, and in society itself, racial microaggressions towards Asian Americans are wholly normalized. We deny our heritage in a futile attempt to fit into Western society, but the pulling back of eyelids, the nicknames of “Ching chong” and “Ling ling,” the unrelenting assumptions of intelligence, the questions of “Where are you from?” and then, “No, where are you really from?” still invade our lives, suffocating us. We are taught to expect the mocking and insults and stereotypes imposed upon us, to laugh along with them, to validate them, to believe them. After all, it wasn’t possible for such a successful group – deemed the “model” minority – to face racism, right? After all, they were just jokes, right? After all, they didn’t do any harm, right?

However, upon tasting that first red bean bun, the door which hid it all – the cuisine, the language, the art, the music, the clothing – had been reopened, and this time, try as I might, locking it back up was impossible.

Finally seeking an escape from my self-inflicted Tantalean punishment, I sheepishly requested that another bag of the buns be bought from Assi, an Asian grocery store in North Wales, the next weekend. Gradually, from one a day to two to three, red bean buns became my go-to breakfast. I began to lay awake in bed in the middle of the night, my mind thinking only of the glorious meal that awaited me when I woke up, like a kid before Christmas morning. With every day and every bite, my former distaste for red beans became more and more laughable, the shame of my own culture slowly ebbing away.

This addiction came from a point of excessive restriction – from red bean buns, from Chinese food, from my heritage; I had starved myself of it all. Too many times had I brought in a prepackaged Smucker’s PB&J for lunch instead of my mother’s cooking for fear that my classmates would wrinkle their noses in disgust. Too many times had I announced my favorite holiday was Thanksgiving rather than Chinese New Year to feel accepted. Too many times had I refused to wear traditional Chinese clothing to escape judgmental stares. Too many times had I suppressed my identity for the sake of other people. I was exhausted. I was done.

On an ordinary Saturday morning, not long ago, I awoke to the racket and chatter that often accompanies my brother’s return home from work. Rubbing my eyes, I stumbled downstairs to the kitchen, where my mother excitedly awaited. In front of my eyes was a feast of pancakes, waffles, eggs, sausages, and in the very back, in a modest little bamboo steamer, fresh hot buns. Without hesitation, I found myself moving towards the latter, paying no mind to the other options. A beaming smile couldn’t help but form as my fingers eagerly selected the misshapen one in the middle: a red bean bun.