| one look, two worlds are you chinese or are you really chinese? |
| Boy, was I wrong when I thought that visiting China would be like walking in San Francisco's Chinatown times 10. When I'm walking up Washington, entering Chinese bakeries and speaking Cantonese, I feel at ease. I feel like I could definitely get by in that neighborhood and I feel a sense of pride that yes, I have been able to nurture the Chinese heritage in me. But here we are in China, not able to speak a word of Mandarin. Okay, I had my "I'm a single American girl" phrase, but I was even saying that wrong. I couldn't even say the word for "toilet" corrently, and it wasn't till Na interrupted and said "W.C." that I was pointed to the bathroom. Even Anne Frank had gotten that one right. It amazed me that we were all Chinese...we had the black hair (thanks to Clairol, for me at least), had the slanted eyes, and the Chinese gift of shortness (except for our 10-year-old relative who was my height). But we couldn't communicate. We'd walk into restaurants, hotels, stores, and the employees would speak to us in Mandarin and we could only smile, shake our heads, and mumble "I don't understand" in Mandarin. This happens in foreign countries when you're expected NOT to speak the local language. But it's especially frustrating when you look just like the locals but are speaking something completely different. In China, we not only spoke a different language, we also had a different look. Yes, we looked Chinese, but there was something about the hairstyles, the clothing, the makeup, and the mannerisms and already pegged us as foreign Chinese people. It baffled me that we could walk in a throng of fellow Chinese people and still stand apart. But what remained was our Chinese sense of cheapness. We didn't leave that behind in America. One night we sought out a cheap boat tour to see the comorant fishing boats...at least cheaper than what the tour guide offered. My family and another Chinese family from our tour group managed to bargain for 1/4 of the price per person that our tour guide offered...AND we'd get our own boat. The father in the other family commented, "Only a Chinaman could cheat China out of money!" Ordering meals was also another major event. In Xi'an, we joined up with the Chinese family for a dinner of dumplings, which the city is known for. The son and daughter of the other family had a limited knowledge of Mandarin and dad knew how to write and read Chinese. Together, we managed to order a meal, but it took awhile...the waitress would say something and if it wasn't understood vocally, the signal would be given for dad to break out the notepad and communicate on paper. In Guilin, we even have pictures of the ordering process. The notepad thing was taking too long and since some people in Guilin could speak Cantonese, a restaurant-wide search brought back a Cantonese-speaking person, who turned out to be the chef. So we had three or four waiters and waitresses crowding around my dad and the chef, listening to their conversation and reading the notepad. The chef wasn't completely fluent in Cantonese, so some written dialogue still took place. Thirty minutes later, we finally got our order placed. I'm not sure if this all bothered me...or if it just amused me. Do other people of different races experience this when they return to the "motherland?" It's not like we were white-washed...we were simply not fluent in another dialect. When I had told A. that I was going to China, he joked, "That's good. Now you can be with your people and stop pretending that you're white," to which I responded, "Of all the races in the world, being white is the last thing that I want to be!" It was all in good fun, but I guess what it comes down to this...am I Chinese or am I REALLY Chinese? |