Racism and the foreign experience in China

Last night¹ was another night of involuntarily being made to play the foreigner. At a "cross-cultural New Year's" party, I was the only non-Chinese person. The hostess went out of her way to talk to me in English, and if I was talking to my friend Eric in English, told other people that he was 'translating' for me. A few people at the party remembered my name, but generally I was referred to 外国人 wàiguórén - foreigner, or literally, "person from an outside country".

It's incredibly psychologically damaging to be made an outsider - regardless of the intent. I have no doubt that the hostess was not intending to be at all offensive. She probably assumed I was in on the joke. Perhaps if I were of a different temperament I might have been. But the effect for me was to make me feel like I was under a constant spotlight as the outsider.

Living abroad has proved the distinction between intelligence and wisdom, in that I've come to understand many things that my intelligence could not lead me to grasp a few years before. Racism is one of them. I'm pretty sure that the white Americans who complain about reverse racism - I used to be one of them - are wrong. Because it's impossible to understand what it feels like to be in the minority when you're in the majority.

Language

On going home

I live in Beijing. Although my books and old clothes are stored in my parents' attic in Connecticut, the things I need day-to-day are here. My girlfriend (and best friend) lives here, and though she came to the US once with me, it was more like a vacation than a homecoming.

However, I'm far from being a citizen of China. The number of people who are naturalized into this country is incredibly small. Part of this is because of the government, which (like America's) is paranoid about foreigners, and makes renewing one's visa a constant hassle.

But I think that even if the government relaxed its controls, the nature of Chinese society would keep most people from staying here forever. There have been several pieces published recently about why, but in short, China is dominated by a monoethnic culture which makes it nearly impossible for someone who is non-Han and/or not born in China to fit in completely.

To give just one example of the cultural chasm between China and the US: In America, when you go out for a meal, you choose between American food, Italian, Chinese, Mexican, Indian, Thai, etc.

In China, on the other hand, the nationality of what you eat is taken for granted. Chinese people eat Chinese food. What you choose is what you want the base of your meal to be: rice, noodles, or porridge.

Similarly, but more serious, are the effects of a single race society. My skin color, although it affords me enormous privilege here in the workplace, also poses an insurmountable barrier to assimilation. Though the US is far from a perfect melting pot, Americans generally wait until they hear someone's accent to judge whether or not they're a fellow countryman. But in China, white, black, or brown skin marks you as a foreigner before you even open your mouth. Even those expats who don't bother to learn Chinese know the meaning of "laowai", a semi-offensive epithet that you'll hear said about you if you go anywhere outside of the expat districts.

So, I'm still a US citizen, and will be for some time to come. I pay my US taxes (voluntarily, since I doubt the American government has any way of knowing how much I make here). But my identification with America has somewhat diminished. When you live in a place outside of America, you realize that just like most other societies, America exaggerates its own importance and correctness, in ways that are nearly impossible to see from the inside.

To take one example, how many of us are taught about the Korean War? We laugh at Chinese people's ignorance of the Cultural Revolution but act as if racism ended with the Civil Rights act.

But really, it's not the negatives of America that makes me reluctant to identify completely as American, but the positives of China. Beijing is a really exciting place, but I'm sure the same could be same of many cities. What's different for me about Beijing is that, like a Tough Mudder race, it's an environment of constant challenge. If you survive, it feels incredibly gratifying.

So for me, when I go back to the United States, it seems like a strange combination of home and not-home. Familiar but yet strange, it feels a lot like going back to one's old middle school. You find that the place hasn't changed, and yet it seems quite different - because you are not the same.

But we're speaking Chinese!

Translated into Chinese, this happens to me all the time.

In fact, in China, if you reply "no" (in Chinese) when someone asks you (in Chinese) whether you can speak Chinese, you can have an extended conversation (in Chinese) about how foreigners can't speak Chinese.

I'm not saying people should assume all foreigners can speak Chinese. I'm saying people shouldn't assume that all foreigners can't.

A perfect China day

Living in China is hard. But it's like Ice Cube said - the more difficult your environment is, the better it is when it cooperates.

The weather was gorgeous. My English classes went by quickly. And to cap it all off, I got a bicycle.

The Kunming incident & thoughts on terrorism

It was pretty scary to hear about this incident from a friend of mine. I've been to Kunming - my Facebook profile picture used to feature the train station where the shootings took place - and I'm sure for him, as someone from Kunming, it was far worse. However, my opinions on the matter may be different from those of my friend, or of most people.

Below is a translation of a short article by China's state-affiliated Xinhua News Network, followed by my thoughts on terrorism.

A note from the underground: pollution in China

For the past week, Beijing has been deluged under the worst pollution I've ever seen. Here's a terrifying photo a friend of mine took this morning in Guomao, the trade center of Beijing:

A beautiful "art hotel" in Beijing [photos]

The Jiangtai Art Hotel in Beijing is one of the most amazing places I've stayed in my life. The "art hotel" name is more than symbolic: the entire hotel is covered with art of various sorts. The lobby:

China's insanity [photos]

Although I miss Taiwan and want to go back as soon as possible, I'm returning to China next month. (I've been back in America for the holidays.) People have been asking me why I prefer to return to China and I've been having a hard time answering. I know that I find China more exciting than any other place I've ever been, but why?

I've finally settled on using the word "crazy" to describe China. By itself, though, this word doesn't convey enough. Here are some photos of a few of the crazy things I've seen in China.

The do-it-yourself garbage truck

The beautiful street with hundreds of lanterns and no people

The worst bag of chips I have ever eaten

Lay's potato chips (乐事) have some pretty excellent flavors in China, including shrimp:

And cucumber, which beats anything I've had in America:

Sichuan and Yunnan: China's paradise [photos]

Southwestern China is a natural paradise. Even looking out the windows of a train travelling through Sichuan province, I was amazed at the constant beauty of the scenery. 

Rice fields 

Chinglish: Some unbelievable examples

Of all the reasons to visit China, coming across examples of hilariously mangled English words is not the first one I would give. Nevertheless, examples like the ones that follow are undeniably hilarious when one comes across them in the shopping market:

Or on the bus:

Or in the street:

Sometimes bad English leads to inadvertent honesty:

The strange and wonderful Chinese language

The Most Interesting Language

Chinese is by far the most interesting language I've ever studied. I learned a bit of biblical Hebrew as a kid; got pretty good at Spanish in middle and high school; studied Ancient Greek and French in college; and picked up a bit of Arabic and Latin along the way. But nothing has captivated my attention to nearly the same degree as Chinese has.

Indeed, picking up the language is a large part of my reason for coming to China in the first place.¹ I speak and study Chinese every day, and I continue to find it fascinating. Here are a few examples of why.

"Do You Like It?"

The idea that language and culture are intertwined is one that I've always been skeptical of. I mean, do you really need to read up on French history or cuisine to get fluent in French? However, today I was surprised to find myself agreeing with the sentiment of that expression, after my mom asked me at lunch how to translate the expression "好吃吗？" into English. Literally, this is a simple statement: "[Is it] good to eat?"

Today's dinner: 好吃吗？非常好吃！(Hell yeah!) I ate three of those plates by myself.

But I realized that "is it good to eat?", or "is the food good?", or any such variation, aren't something we say very often in English – particularly when we're eating at home. The reason, it seems to me, is one of politeness. If you don't like something that your mom (or better yet, your friend's mom) made, it's much less awkward to say that "I don't like it", than it is to say that the food itself is bad, and perhaps, by extension, that your host is a bad cook.

So as I told my host mom, I think the best way to translate "好吃吗？" is, "do you like it?" The choice of translation is informed by knowledge of the culture. Maybe there's something to that saying after all.²

Summer Palace (颐和园) [photos]

I went to the Summer Palace yesterday and liked it a lot. It's my kind of park: lots of twisty trails, trees, and water. Unlike the Forbidden City (故宫), it's a good place to wander around in. Here are a few photos:

A really steep bridge

The view from that bridge

The sky through the willow trees

If only they allowed bicycles.

On the use (and abuse) of chopsticks

The bane of my existence during my first two weeks in China was the CHOPSTICKS. Anyone who thinks that because they managed to follow the directions on the red wrapper and eat some food with the wooden chopsticks at the Chinese restaurant, they are qualified to go to China and dine with the Chinese, is dead wrong. First because those cheap wooden chopsticks are much easier to use than the metal or porcelain ones that homes and good restaurants in China use, the equivalent of kiddie spoons in America: less risky but a pain in the ass if you were to use them all the time (who wants to get splinters from their eating utensils?).

But more importantly, there's a world of difference between using chopsticks to eat from your own plate and using them to eat from communal dishes. Everything in China, or at least in Beijing (with the exception of food at fast-food places), is served on communal plates. When I drop food here – as I still frequently do – it's generally not into my own bowl (communal plates, personal bowls for rice or noodles, is how my host family does it) but onto the table, where, often after splattering me with sauce, it lies as a testament to my inexpertise. Trying to pick it back up just makes things worse: it's almost impossible to pick up something that's lying flat on the table in one try, so I can only succeed in doing so after several seconds of pushing it around on the table, during which everyone else is watching me with dismay.

It's not that I haven't improved with using chopsticks. After two months here, I've pretty much gotten used to using them, and the muscles in my right hand have stopped aching after every meal. Indeed, after my host dad gave me several lessons to correct my improper grip (rather than using the index finger alone to move the top one, as I was taught by the chopstick wrapper, you should use both index and middle fingers for maximum traction), I've gotten a lot of compliments on my technique. Indeed, just as most Chinese people's English handwriting is better than that of American native speakers, so my own chopstick technique is better than that of many Chinese people. Interestingly, there are quite a few Chinese people, in my experience mostly women, who hold their chopsticks in what they themselves acknowledge is an entirely wrong way， with the chopsticks crossed in the palm of the hand rather than parallel. The two people I asked about this both said that their parents just put the chopsticks in their hands when they were little and left them to figure out how to use them, and that they've been doing it wrong ever since.

But despite the orthodoxy of my technique, the use of chopsticks remains an effort to me, something which I have to constantly concentrate on or else fail spectacularly at. (Eating in public sometimes feels like running the gauntlet.) With a fork and a knife in my hand I feel comfortable and stable; I trust their solidity and stability. I still don't feel that way about chopsticks, and perhaps never will.

That said, I must admit that Chinese food is fantastic, generally both pretty healthy and very tasty. In particular, Chinese dumplings and meat pies (of the vegetarian variety) are one of the most consistently delicious foods I've ever had. So if the cuisine came about in conjunction with the utensils, there's something to be thankful for.

The real thing

On my way to China (republished)

Thursday 2/16/12 6:30PM EST

I arrive at JFK's terminal 5 with 3 hours to spare before my flight leaves. Though I had planned to get some last-minute things done before leaving the US, I find myself caught up in the melting-pot atmosphere of the terminal and decide to wander around for a while.

The people at this international terminal are a fascinating mix of 1) American travelers about to depart, 2) foreigners returning home, and 3) airline personnel. In the first category are some young people standing around in a circle. I decide I'm gonna infiltrate them. I walk up to them and stand there as if I belong; nobody says anything. However, their purpose remains obscure until an older woman arrives and starts talking to them in French about their passports. As it turns out, they are New York high school students taking a trip to France for their French class. Despite taking French, they don't seem to understand the woman, but I think most of them are just pretending to be stupid to avoid the embarrassment of seeming intelligent. Par for the course for high-schoolers.

Continuing on in my wanderings, I encounter a group of Asian women in matching blue dresses, all wearing heavy lipstick. I later find out that these are the stewardesses on my flight. I also talk to a hostess for Air France, curious to determine the truth of the stereotype that French natives don't like speaking to people who aren't fluent in French (which I am not). The stewardess, unexpectedly, is not from France: she's an American, and as a foreigner herself, is able to confirm the stereotype from her own experience. However, I have yet to ask a French native to get their perspective on the matter. Perhaps the perceived slights that have led to the stereotype are merely impersonal Gallic arrogance.

I don't get a chance to talk to any of the people in the third category, foreigners returning home. Perhaps I avoid bothering them because they are neither culturally familiar nor paid to talk to me. Nevertheless, walking around among these three groups of world travelers makes me very happy. I feel blessed to enjoy not only new experiences, but also foreign languages, which I see as the key to understanding foreign cultures.

I would like to spend longer in the terminal but need to attend to my procrastinated pre-departure duties. Once through security I make a brief stop at the duty-free store and consider buying some Jamaican rum which they have samples of (it is very flavorful) but decide not to risk the alcoholic associations. I arrive at my gate and make some last-minute phone calls before suspending my phone service*. I then debate for a ridiculously long time about whether or not to spend $13.99 on a neck pillow. I finally decide against it but the decision is agonizingly marginal. I've noticed that I have a hard time deciding how highly to value my own short-term comfort against such goods as money and knowledge (the paradigm of the latter case being, should I watch TV or force myself to do Chinese flashcards?). It's hard to come up with a good weigh to way such disparate goods against each other.

I notice something strange while at the gate, but don't really think about until I'm aboard the plane. Almost everybody on my flight is Asian. Why is this? Do Chinese people travel to the United States much more than vice versa? Or was there something about this particular flight that made it better for those returning than for those starting a trip? I remain puzzled.

My neighbor on the plane is a Chinese man, late 30s, returning from a business trip in NYC. I watch him texting using a handwriting IME and am struck by the beauty of his writing. I wonder whether Chinese penmanship is as much a skill pertaining to the older generations as English penmanship is? The ability to write an elegant cursive hand is something I particularly envy people like the Founding Fathers. By contrast, the cursive I was taught in school is lame and wimpy-looking. I renew my resolve to someday learn a manly cursive script.

On the plane, the stewardesses and the captain speak in both Chinese and English, but the former is the default. One of the stewardesses even greets me with "Ni hao!", despite the fact that I'm not only white but have facial hair. (Beards, from what I've seen, are essentially nonexistent among Chinese men.) Moreover, all the talk from the passengers around me is in Mandarin. Though I understand very little, simply listening to the language is awesome and I look forward to spending time in an environment where the pressure is on me to speak and understand the language.

China awaits, and with it Chinese. I couldn't tell you which one I'm more excited about.