"Squinting" is also translated as "squinting eyes", which is Schlitzaugen in German and slit eyes in English, which is a discriminatory description of Asian eyes by Europeans and a derogatory term for Asians. The name has existed in the Western world for more than 100 years, and comes from the discrimination against Chinese laborers and Chinese immigrants in Europe and the United States in the last years of the Qing Dynasty.
Because of this discrimination, they constantly show the image of Chinese "long braids, beards, and squinting eyes" in cultural works. At the same time, most Western civilians have never seen what Asians look like, and relying only on these cultural works, a stereotype has been formed. So it slowly evolved into a discriminatory portrayal of Asians.
"Squinting Eyes" has even spawned three different versions of China, Japan and South Korea. Some Europeans will stretch their eyes at others to describe Asians. When the eyes are elongated and then tilted upwards, it means "Chinese"; when the eyes are stretched to maintain a horizontal line, it means "Korean"; when the eyes are elongated and collapsed downwards, it means "Japanese".
These actions are based on their imagination and discrimination against Asians, resulting in discriminatory actions. When foreigners make these moves on Chinese, there may be a few people who just think it is a cultural imagination and think it is fun to communicate with you, but more people do these actions against you with a kind of discrimination and malice.
When I was still working as a foreign language receptionist, I met Germans who did this with me. It was seven or eight years ago, shortly after I graduated, and a German showed me the three forms of asians with squinted eyes. That's what I said above, and they use three angles of squinting eyes to represent "Chinese, Japanese, and Korean."
At the time, I remembered this action as a "new knowledge". I have a habit in the process of doing reception, that is, when I learn a certain cultural phenomenon or language knowledge, I will review this content to the next wave of guests. As a result, the second was the Polish Swiss guests, who were very friendly and immediately pointed out to me that the action was actually a kind of racial discrimination between Europeans and Asians. A Swiss woman excitedly said "Es ist races!" Meaning, it's racist! And told me that in more than ten days in China, they have not seen anyone look like squinting eyes.
Later, I immediately went to study this phenomenon and figured out that "squinting" as a discriminatory language and action is actually an Asian consensus, which is an insulting behavior. Japan, South Korea and other regions that are more closely related to the world know that this is a kind of racial discrimination, and they are very disgusted by it.
However, in the past 10 years, the domestic fashion industry has inexplicably regarded "squinting eyes" as a fashion "high-end face", which is a bit strange. Fortunately, the foreign language level of Chinese is getting better and better, more and more exchanges with foreign countries, and more and more Chinese bravely stand up on media platforms to tell the general public that "squinting eyes" is actually an insulting expression, and even a racial discrimination. This has only been the last two years when there has been a little resistance to the "squinting eyes".
Of course, the "squinting eyes" models who have been praised in the sky in the past two years may feel that they are innocent, and they may have their eyes originally looked like that, and then they were purposefully singled out and pushed to the foreground. However, as Chinese, I believe that the minority cannot represent the majority, nor can it be used as an image of China, and we cannot regard what others insult us as our "senior face". Therefore, resisting "squinting eyes" is not an overreaction, nor is it culturally unconfident. China's aesthetic sovereignty should be in the hands of Chinese, and the aesthetics of Chinese should be decided by Chinese.