Being an American in China (or just being a white-faced foreigner from an English-speaking country), attracted a lot of attention from the locals. I was one of a very small sample of non-Chinese people in an area of around 3 million people, and after months of living as the only white man in a small university town (small in Chinese terms, as the official count of the county was over 600,000 people), I too became shocked whenever I saw another laowai– foreigner. Most Chinese were too shy to approach me or come out and speak directly to me, but that didn’t prevent them from blurting out “Laowai!” as I walked past or surreptitiously peeking over their shoulder when I was near. I could always tell, while walking on campus, when one girl in a pair had spotted me walking behind them. Their voices would get suspiciously low, and a couple seconds later, her friend would slyly look back at me, and then they’d both giggle.
Occasionally, a few students would find me walking through the campus and ask to take a picture with me (most would just try to sneak a shot with their camera phone), and I would always oblige them with a pose. Other brave souls would walk straight up to me, in the middle of whatever I was doing- shopping, eating, jogging, exercising- and start firing off the frequently asked questions (e.g. “Can you speak Chinese?” “Are you America?”).
Because America has the most dominant popular culture and everyone knew about my homeland from movies and the news, I held a lot of appeal to most of the people I met. Countless times I heard from someone how they had always dreamed of going to America but couldn’t because of the expense. Many young people would stare at me awestruck with an open smile, not saying anything, their imaginations soaring with images of the fabled life they had seen on screen. It was tempting to assume their wonder was due to my presence, but really any foreigner would receive the same reaction as a representative of a far-off land the natives had previously only imagined. A young white man, in China, would have to have a horn growing out of his forehead not to be admired and called handsome. So, the Chinese, especially the younger generation, carried impressions of foreigners that would excite them to speak to me.
On the other hand, there were quite a few tense car rides and dull, uncomfortable moments at the dinner table where I sat in silence with a middle-aged man who either had no interest in American topics or lacked the English to step out and meet me in the middle ground between our cultures. Not to say that I expected my hosts to cater to me. As a guest in their country I did respect that Chinese was the language of the land. Mostly, I tagged along as a silent observer and conversation piece in social situations; getting to speak with a young Chinese man fluent in English, or a female student with exceptional English skills, was a rare treat.
But in most situations, I was not comfortable enough to ask conversational questions in Chinese, and the English questions my hosts felt socially obligated to ask would only underline the awkward gap between us. At a restaurant, it was only polite for my hosts to ask me what I wanted to eat, but I only knew the name of a handful of Chinese dishes. “What would you like to eat?” they would ask, expecting me to select a restaurant, or, if we were at the restaurant, a list of items (typically, a party at a restaurant will select enough items to cover the table with plates, not one entrée per person as is the norm in the US). This question was practically impossible for me to answer since the only restaurant names I knew were KFC and hot pot (not the name of a restaurant but a type of restaurant where meats, vegetables, and noodles are dipped into a broiling pot of spicy soup on your table). For dishes, I would select a certain kind of black mushroom (mu-er or 木耳/ “wood ear”) or I would try and get off the hook by saying, “Uh… chicken?”
I had no idea what was written on any of the menus, so the only way I could choose anything was by pointing at the pictures (if the menu had them) or by walking up front to the display coolers in the restaurant lobby and letting my pointer finger get to work. Living in a foreign country with abstruse written symbols meant almost always having adults choose my food for me when eating out, an experience that humbled me back to childhood.
It could also be frustrating, having to answer “What would you like to eat?” and thinking How should I know? This is your country’s food. You choose.
At the riverside park with Aunt Fong and Uncle Jiang.
The dinner question I hated most was one of (Aunt Fong’s husband and therefore) “Uncle” Jiang’s favorites. I would reach out with my chopsticks to sample one of the many lukewarm meats from the pile of plates on the table (having so many dishes at one meal meant things often sat around while waiting for the rest to get cooked; I suppose that people had eventually gotten used to and preferred lukewarm platters- but they always drank hot water), and once I put the strange meat in my mouth Mr. Jiang would ask, “Dustin… what is that?”
I stopped chewing. “Beef?” I would venture, desperately hoping I was right. I knew it wasn’t chicken, or at least it looked nothing like chicken as I had seen it before.
“No,” Uncle Jiang spouted with a breathy Chinese accent.
It’s not beef, and it can’t be chicken- oh no- this had better be pork because it sure isn’t fish. “Is it pork?” I asked, stifling my voice from cracking.
“No.”
Oh no, it’s dog. I’m eating dog. That is the only other dark meat.
My throat stiffened. Maybe Uncle Jiang had misunderstood me or confused his vocabulary.
“No, I am wrong,” he said, “It is beef.”
I breathed easier and smiled. “Okay.”
Uncle Jiang played this mystery meat game with me on several occasions, usually following the same routine. I would begrudgingly guess wrong a couple times and then wait to hear from him that he was wrong and it was beef after all. He had no idea how nervous this made me. I never ate dog in China, as far as I know, but I did see it as butchered meat on a few occasions (as a skull with cheek meat or a whole red carcass), and the sight of a hanging, skinless dog was more difficult to see than I was prepared for.
Not very different from the “What restaurant do you like?” question was “What is your favorite tea?” As a tea culture, the Chinese can tell the subtle difference between red, white, green, and black teas and all their subtle varieties. When Americans say they prefer green over oo-long tea at a restaurant or coffee shop, I am skeptical they are faking it. To me, tea comes in two flavors: bitter and sugar-added. Asking someone their favorite kind of tea is a cultural assumption; it seemed a polite inquiry to my hosts but sounded baffling to me. They would bring their tea mugs and thermoses everywhere, and if there was tea in the mug it would be made obvious by the mass of loose green leaves soaking in the water. Tea bags weren’t used in China; the leaves were preserved whole for better appearance, smell, and flavor. The people scrupulously prized the different varieties, reserving the finest- those purchased at any of the abundant specialty tea shops- for gift-giving.
A cup of loose leaf tea. Better to use some kind of filter or leave the leaves in the tea pot, otherwise you have to constantly spit the leaves out when you drink.
One student gave me a bag of leaves (not from a tea plant) from her father’s garden that would sweeten a mug, so I added one of these leaves in with a few chrysanthemum blossoms for my morning beverage and started telling people “chrysanthemum” as my default “favorite tea” answer, which confused most of them because they had never heard the English word for, nor could they pronounce, chrysanthemum. This social defense worked for me until a Chinese English professor and tea connoisseur informed me that chrysanthemum is not actually a tea. I was thwarted. To move past this challenge, I would tell all future tea interrogators, “Um, green” and let that sink in with them as I thought to myself: Just give me some hot water. I don’t know anything about tea. Then my host, if I were a house guest, might counter with, “There is only red or black to drink.” Foiled again. Let it not be said that the Chinese are unschooled in the art of verbal ju-jitsu.
There were other categories of questions I struggled to politely dismiss. As the sole, exclusive American in the city, I was looked to as an expert or reservoir of knowledge on my home country. Students interested in graduate school abroad would ask me which schools had the best programs for music education, economics, language learning, or whatever it was they wanted to study. I had to think up ways to softly say, “I have no idea.” More than a few times someone asked me what the name of an American movie was by giving me the Chinese name and an unhelpful description of one detail they remembered about it. Conversely, many times I frustrated the Chinese and my interlocutor would grunt and complain, “Why don’t you know the Chinese name?”
I was expected to be familiar with any American city or state mentioned, which was fine because most Chinese only knew the major cities and tourist sites. The struggle came when they asked me about a specific university. The Ivy League schools are incredibly famous and revered in Chinese schools, and besides these, many students had looked into schools I had never heard of. They asked me how to get into Harvard or wherever it was they had their hopes set on, as if I had any idea or access.
More times than I cared to, I had to answer questions about my favorite NBA team or player, or what NBA team played in my hometown. I had no interest in basketball, which was a shock to them, so I flatly told them I never watched the NBA. Their reply: “But you’re so tall!” It would be like a child meeting an elf from the North Pole, getting a chance to excitedly ask it questions about Christmas, and hearing from the elf that it didn’t work for Santa and its family didn’t even celebrate Christmas. The NBA was the greatest thing in the world to them, and I came from the land of basketball, yet I didn’t share their love. “How could this be?” I’m sure they were thinking, if they ever thought in English. I explained to my Chinese friends that I did love to play basketball as a boy, ironically the only time in my life when I was not above average height.
The long defunct Waterloo Hawks, an NBA team from the city neighboring my hometown.
At the middle school where I taught, the boys loved asking me about computer games. Note that what were called “TV Games” (Nintendo, Playstation, and X-Box) were considered too expensive in China, and almost no one owned them or played them. The students loved playing online games which were either cheap, free, or pirated. Their questions about computer games became so expected that I tried leading them on a few times. “Yes, I love CrossFire. Do you play CrossFire?” Before I told them I wasn’t serious, they were thrilled.
The most popular game among my male students, “CrossFire.”
One line of questioning I found humorous and also embarrassing was when a student would introduce himself and say, “I am from such and such a town. It is famous for pears. Do you know it?” Of course I never knew it, and the idea that foreigners would know of a Chinese town famous for pears made me smile on the inside. Related to this, the question would come up in conversations if I knew of some famous historical figure or Chinese emperor, and I had to plead ignorance. I imagined it must have felt like meeting someone who had never heard the name Thomas Jefferson or only faintly recognized George Washington. In a land where I had to struggle to explain to people who Elvis and the The Beatles were, I was often reminded that my own cultural knowledge or ignorance could be equally strange.
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