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.

Davy, one of my Beijing-native students, agreed to a little role reversal: he would tutor me in Chinese two hours a day, five days a week. At first he insisted on helping for free, but through persistent negotiation I hiked his hourly rate to something I hoped was fair.

Davy laid out an aggressive course of study: forty new words each day, yielding a total vocabulary of one thousand words by break’s end. Did the Chinese study English at such a feverish pace? Not only did I, despite Davy’s assurances, doubt my ability to keep up, I also cringed at the prospect of spending my whole vacation memorizing flash cards.

Five weeks. In another country. Alone.

As those weeks progressed — practicing with workbooks, cooking my own meager meals, poking into the city’s nooks on bicycle — what impacted me most wasn’t the cold, or the isolation, or the brown dustiness, or the boredom.

It was seeing no white faces around me. Ever.

One day Davy accompanied me to the Forbidden City. I used my Lin Da work unit card to buy a regular ticket, rather than the more expensive foreigner’s ticket. Later, as we crowded at the gate, the guard who took my ticket asked for proof of my eligibility to pay Chinese prices. Again I produced my work unit card, but – yes, this is strange – I wondered how he knew to stop me.

Imagine: I, a white person, wondered how a Chinese person could tell I wasn’t Chinese. Had I lost my mind?

The guard’s request shouldn’t have surprised me. For months I had been asked, on buses and subways, if I was American, Canadian, European, Australian. Other guesses included Greek, Arabic, Uighur (a minority in western China), Jewish, Puerto Rican, Indian. A single glance proved I was anything but Chinese. So why didn’t I expect this guard to identify me as a foreigner?

Total immersion weighed on my psyche more than I reckoned. Wherever I was, the Chinese saw a break in continuity: numerous Asian faces bundled against the cold, and one white face. But I saw no such break – only a single collection of Asian faces, all bundled up – which matched my own sensory impression of being bundled up. From the perspective inside my head, I seemed the same as everyone else.

I watched a ton of Chinese TV during those weeks; I became hooked on a classical Chinese radio station. I wrote letters, mailed them off from the post office. I ate alone in my kitchen – oatmeal, rice, jiaozi.

Is it any wonder I dreamed my face was becoming Chinese?

Sound asleep one night, I looked in a mirror and noticed my brow and forehead were flattening, my nose broadening, my face widening.

And in the dream, I was thrilled.

I didn’t regret my American identity, nor did I seek to change nationality. But the constant sense of difference, of separation from the norm, pressured me deep down into wanting to conform, to be the same as everyone else.

To this day I recall that feeling when reading about minority activists in America. “Must ethnicity always be an issue?” I’m tempted to ask. “Why not be American, simply American, like everyone else?” But it’s not that easy. Ethnicity is always a factor, felt on the inside even if not treated differently on the outside.

While In China I knew I could return home and blend back in with everyone else. American minorities have no such escape. They’re already home.

Class party. Once my student, Davy (left) became my teacher.

Davy in the Forbidden City.

Forbidden City entrance.

Ticket (front and back).

Walking map.

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