White skin has its socioeconomic advantages, sure, but in purely physiological terms, it blows. It is terribly unsuitable to Taiwan’s hot humid climate. It is terrific if you’re lost in a snow drift, but here on the Tropic of Cancer it is anything but grand.

I’ve had a continuous rash for twenty-plus years. Heat rash, jock itch, Hong Kong foot, allergic dermatitis (I’m allergic to my own sweat—try that in Taiwan), hives, and every fungus known to man—I’ve hosted them all, along with other less heat related skin maladies. These problems are the low-grade background noise of living with white skin in Asia.

The more serious issues come from a lifetime spent under the hot Asian sun. Every summer for the last few years I have been doing battle with potential malignancies, sun damage, and various of the more serious consequences of white skin. Each year I get several small surgeries—this suspicious thing gets cut off, those ones get biopsies, and the less suspicious growths get burned off. I never get ahead, and just find myself doing the same thing all over again the next summer.

There is a general Asian predisposition towards thinking having whiter skin would be awesome. My wife is constantly shocked by how spectacularly unawesome it really is. The fairer you are, the bigger the problem. Being a white person living in Taiwan is like being a penguin living on the Serengeti. It is just not our natural habitat, and there’s a price to be paid.