For years, when people asked about my lineage, I’d tell them it was mostly what they’d expect: a mix of English, Irish and Scottish, with some continental European thrown in for variety. However, I would rarely fail to add that I was also part Chinese on my mother’s side. At that point, my questioner would run their eyes over my face—interrogating the reddish hair, the bulbous nose, the pale, freckled skin— before fixing me with an incredulous look that held an unspoken demand for explanation.

This routine would annoy me, but—though I now cringe to admit it—it would also make me feel a little smug at having subverted expectations in a tiny way. I couldn’t actually answer most of the questions that followed. I knew virtually nothing about that aspect of my family beyond what I’d just shared, and whatever I did know had come solely from my grandmother, with no one else to corroborate. If the conversation continued in this vein, I might have mentioned a tenuous connection to Merle Oberon, the Hollywood star my grandmother referred to as “Cousin Merle” for more than half a century after leaving Tasmania. That was what I might have done before 2020, anyway, before my mother and sister ruined everything with an online ancestry test.

• Tags: Australia, Issue 38, Jeremy Mair