The Foreign Duckling
In China, no matter what I did, how I primped or what I said, I stood out like an ugly duckling. It was simultaneously freeing and infuriating. I was stared at without pretense, and for the first year it drove me nuts. Men, women and babies would stare at me, mouths open, totally unperturbed by my churlish glare. I sometimes lashed out at them—screaming in English, knowing they couldn’t understand, furious that they looked at me like I was some misshapen Frankenstein.
But at the same time, it was freeing to be so different. It was so obvious that I was an outsider, that I didn’t need to make any effort to fit in. As a student Prague, where I studied abroad, I was mistaken for a Czech several times, which was flattering, and made me hesitant to come across as an American, if I could avoid it. In China, despite the perfunctory compliments on my hair, it was obvious that I was a weirdo, and because there was nothing I could do about it, I was freed from any expectation of how I should act, what I should wear, what I should say, or how well I said it. (It’s common for any foreigner speaking a word of Chinese to be excessively praised for their masterful grasp of the “foreign-proof” language.)
Sympathy for the Teacher
In the blissful summer before my junior year of high school, my parents forced me to take an SAT preparation course in the basement of a brown-brick building named The Lyceum. But despite the name, it was not a place of higher learning.
The teacher, a lumbering middle-aged woman, resembled Aristotle about as much as I resembled Alexander the Great. She stood in the front of a makeshift classroom that looked like it doubled for AA meetings and read from an open Princeton Review prep book. She taught us how to divine, through the process of elimination, the correct answer to reading problems even if we hadn’t understood the passage. She reminded us of things learned and forgotten, like scalene triangles and the transitive property. If you had told me, ten years ago in that depressing classroom, that one day I’d be in her shoes, I would have laughed and gone back to sleeping.
Getting the In-Laws Out
Editor’s Note: This essay first appeared, in edited form, in the August edition of NewsChina.
Mixed-race romances are always vulnerable to culture clashes. Both parties were raised differently and consequently have very different ideas of what a marriage should be. But, two years after moving in with my Chinese boyfriend, I really thought we’d come to grips with anything that our diverse cultures could throw in the way of contented, marital bliss. After all, we’d got the OK from his parents—no mean feat for a mixed-race gay couple in family-focused China. I was over the moon that I’d been informally welcomed into the fold, though I was careful to remind myself that we’d need to sweeten the deal with grandkids somewhere down the line. But, all in all, things were perfectly idyllic, and I consequently adored my boyfriend’s parents.
Then they came to stay with us. Again and again and again.
I Get It. Now Get Me.
For many years I have griped at being patronized by Chinese colleagues, classmates and even friends with that age-old dismissal of my observations about their country or culture.
“You’re a foreigner. You don’t get it.”
Enter Let the Bullets Fly by the acclaimed filmmaker Jiang Wen, whose output I enjoyed while in college—particularly Devils on the Doorstep and In the Heat of the Sun, which I believe to be China’s most visually luscious film to date. Anyway, a colleague of mine arrived one morning at work raving about how subtly and ingeniously Bullets got its claws into the quagmire of Chinese politics, insisting it was Jiang Wen’s “masterpiece” and would “redefine Chinese cinema.”
Then the disclaimer: “I don’t think you’d be able to understand the political messages. After all, it’s about revolution, and pain, and suffering. It’s very Chinese.”
Face to Face with Beijing’s Finest
“When the policeman questions you, you must be careful. They will try and trap you. Do you know? Trap? What it means?”
Yes, I knew what trap meant. But the way those broken English words came out of William’s mouth did not inspire much confidence. My skinny, dweebish visa agent stared at me with a bureaucrat’s humorless gaze. I had just spent the last hour being coached on how to survive a Chaoyang District Public Security Bureau investigator’s interrogation. Tomorrow I would have to walk into the PSB and lie to the Chinese government. If they believed me, I would be free to continue my life in Beijing. If they didn’t, I could be asked to leave China in ten days. My head was boiling in a stew of Chinese corporations, names, and addresses, a fabricated record of my last seven months in the People’s Republic. In less than twenty four hours my life had been turned upside down. How the hell did everything get so fucked up?
Midnight Train to Beijing
A common ritual for expatriates in China is the visa run. Because of the limited number of days a tourist can spend in one “visit” to China (in our case it was sixty days), those staying in China for longer durations must make the trek out of the country and back in to get a new stamp on their passport and reset the timer. Common destinations include Mongolia, South Korea, and Hong Kong, whose special status counts as leaving China. Often it’s used as an excuse to take a vacation every couple of months, and that’s what Michael and I did for our first run to Hong Kong—we made a weekend of it. This time, however, was supposed to a formality: take the train from Beijing to Hong Kong (a twenty-four hour trip), then immediately get on the return train and head back. Clean, simple, and efficient. However, there was one snafu to trip us up.
Writer’s Block
There is a Chinese idiom about a man who buried a sum of silver underground and, worried that passersby would find it, placed a sign next to the plot that read “ci di wu yin san bai liang,” or “There is not 300 liang of silver here.” Needless to say, the next day his silver was gone.
I wonder if the censorship bureau understands this parable because one thing everyone in China should know by now is that if you ever come across a website that terminates your Internet connection, start digging.
Taxicab Confession
It all started with some small talk. I got into a cab at Xidan after the buses had stopped running, and the cabbie, who was the talkative type, decided to make conversation.
“Did you participate in the moment of silence?”
It was a hard question to answer, though it shouldn’t have been. The answer was “No.” Simple as that. But I equivocated. I told him that I was in a mall during the moment of silence and that I saw some people observing it (which was all true), what about you? He said that he was on the street, standing beside his car, honking his horn. I asked him why and he said dismissively that the state had ordered him to.
The Crisis of Ambition
I had only been teaching in Beijing for a few months when I decided to ask my students about their future hopes, dreams, and aspirations. It seemed like a simple thing, guaranteed to spark some conversation and discussion and allow me to learn a little more about them. I was therefore surprised when the question engendered no comments at all. I thought it might have just been shyness so I quizzed students individually, but all I got were shrugs. I thought it might have been a vocabulary issue, so I switched to Chinese. The answer I received was simple: “I don’t know. Graduate and find a job, I guess.”
Fireworks Free For All
It began about a week ago. Sharp noises echoing through the chill winter air of Beijing. It started with isolated instances—noises heard far in the distance that reverberated from high rise to high rise. As the week rolled on, the frequency increased. Heavier explosions would leave car alarms blaring long after the echo died away. Shrill, whistling screams would be followed by a deep, echoing boom! The cacophony peaked at midnight on the 7th, becoming a ceaseless barrage and leaving at least one dead and many hospitalized. Today, empty cartridges and shreds of red paper litter the streets, blowing like tumbleweed across broad avenues, accompanied by gritty powder and ash that stings the eyes. The faint tang of sulfur lingers in the air.
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