Mao

“Mao red book?” street salesmen asked. Surely you, Lao Wai, needed a copy of Mao’s political manifesto. How had you made it so far without one?

Chairman Mao Zedong, father and architect of Communist China, was a politician-warrior who expelled both Chinese aristocrats and Japanese invaders. Mao was more than a statesman – he was a sex symbol. Many of my students carried baseball trading cards in their wallets: plump old Mao on one side, dashing 22-year-old Mao on the other.

Magic Words

Enter any store and clerks would bombard me with insistent sales pitch (little of which I understood). I imagined the click in their eyes: “White guy = money.” To be sure, my Chinese salary was double what an average Beijing worker made (¥800 as opposed to ¥350), so by their standards I was well off. But that’s not how I felt. ¥800 was about $100/month, and with no savings plus college loans waiting back home, I felt downright poor.

So the sales talk persisted as long as I lingered in the store, and I persistently blocked it out.

This went on for six months of buying basic necessities.

Then: magic.

Zhong

Picture a map of the world. Americas on the left, Asia and Australia on the right, skinny Atlantic down the middle. Right?

Not in China.

They positioned their homeland almost in the middle – making the wide Pacific the most prominent feature, with Africa and the Americas shoved off to the side, distorted by edge curvature.

This double-poster size map hung on my apartment wall as a conversation tool. (The dark marks are tape residue that bled through in subsequent years.)

Chinese Chess

My magnetic travel Chinese chess set.

Gathered on sidewalks near makeshift tables, men of mixed ages squatted near chessboards, slapping pieces down with kung fu flavor. Their spirited action reminded me of scenes from New York City parks, the speed of moves intended to intimidate an opponent into error.

Games were corporate affairs, less a contest between two minds and more a collaborative exploration of strategies. Spectators and combatants shared ideas for moves as long as words could keep up with fingers.

Consonant Confusion

I knew China would give me another perspective on the world, on human beings, on myself.

But on the inside of my own mouth?

Take the letter J: jaguar, jelly, jump. Nothing to it — except in Mandarin, which had two forms of the J-sound, each a distinct consonant.

TV

Satellite dish atop a pile of bricks and wood.

My accent was coming along nicely. Davy was pleased. “You should study hard!” he encouraged. “You could become a newscaster.”

“Shut up.”

“No, really.” He told me about a white Canadian college student who’d traveled to China to learn Mandarin, and had mastered it so well a TV station recruited him as a novelty newscaster. Actors trained him to mimic Chinese facial expressions and mannerisms that, combined with his already precise accent, gave viewers the bizarre spectacle of a white person who appeared more properly Chinese than they were.

Five Weeks

In the Forbidden City.

End of the semester. Every American teacher I knew headed south by train to winter in Hong Kong. I stayed behind.

I’d traveled to China to experience life from a different perspective, yet many factors about my situation – salary, apartment – exceeded those of ordinary Chinese citizens. Skipping off to another country (this was 1994, five years before Hong Kong’s return to China) seemed inauthentic, if not flamboyant. I decided to play local.

Golden Arches

Fellow American teachers.

By bike, then bus, then subway, it took forty-five minutes to get to the McDonald’s near Tiananmen Square. It was easily twice the size of the largest McDonald’s I’d seen in America, maybe larger: two floors, ten cashiers, swimming in people.

I’d brought Davy to discuss hiring him to tutor me in Chinese. Glassy-eyed before the glowing menu behind the cashier’s heads, he asked, “What do I order?” This was a bit odd considering the Chinese-only menu, with pictures. I explained the different choices, then told him the authentic McDonald’s experience was a burger. We each ordered a quarter pounder.

Uhduhknuh

“What does that mean?” Ted asked as we watched a movie.

“What?”

“That.” He hunched his shoulders up to his ears.

“You don’t do it in China?”

“No, what is it?”

Composition

Assignment: Explain a mistake you will never forget.

When I was in college, I had a good friend. His name is Zhao Jun. One day, I was tired after hard work. So I wanted to relax. I decided to go to movie with Zhao Jun. When I got to his dormitory, he was sitting on the bed. I said to him: “Let’s go to movie.” I wanted to relax. In that time I can’t notice his face. He said: “No, I can’t do.” “Go, go.” I shaked his hand and went out the door.

After saw movie, we walk along the street. Zhao Jun turn to me. “Nothing is more sad than my feeling now. My sister wrote to me and told my mother is dead because of hard work.”

I was amazing. “Oh my God. I really sorry. I’m wrong. I mustn’t invite you to go to movie. I …”

“Don’t explain and say sorry. We are good friends. You needn’t say more. I forgive you,” he said.

“This is my stupidest thing that I ever did,” I sadly said.

Read next ->