I’ve been in China long enough now that I’m beginning to realize that there is something different about me, something very Je ne sais quoi that separates me from my fellow students. I don’t mean that I’ve changed in any way, but that there is something just international enough and just Chinese enough about me that I don’t get labeled an American that often. At first I thought it just the occasional fluke when someone would guess that I’m European, but I’ve come to believe otherwise now.
Side note: when discussing someone’s country of origin in China, generally the options are America, Russia, Canada, Brazil, sometimes Mexico, the Caribbean, European, African, Middle Eastern, Jewish, Australian, or any of the plethora of central and southeast Asian countries.
Anyway, what I’ve noticed over time is that this is no fluke. People will ask me what country I’m from, and ask my classmates if they’re American. If I throw the question back to them then they guess American about half the time, but it’s a true guess without the assurance behind saying to my classmates: Where are you from? Followed immediately by a confident, America?
I bring this up because 北外，the college I’m at, opened up this week and students from all over the world are here now, and it’s interesting seeing the differences. I can tell that someone is French opposed to German, but the criteria I use are different than how the Chinese guess. I really can’t explain it, but for those of you who travel a lot or have lived in a truly international city (cities of immigrants like NY don’t count, sorry), you know what I’m talking about. It’s that subtle difference in body shape and dress, color and style, how they carry themselves and hold their coffee, not so much how we walk alone and in groups, but the difference in our motions when walking alone versus in a group; the shoes and type of jeans they wear, how loudly they talk, their gait and motions through a crowd. The European students are either very earth-conscious bohemian or fashion conscious, upper-class bourgeois in their dress with the occasional anorexic off-duty hooker look and I-just-got-off-my-yacht look mixed in, whereas we Americans, in a reflection of our cultural heritage, fall somewhere between the two.
The biggest difference, I’m ashamed to say, is that we Americans are the only ones not already bilingual.
Of course, the coolest identifier is the accent we have with our Chinese. The French accent doesn’t work well with Chinese, but Italian does. So does Vietnamese. The American accent is comprehensible, but noticeable. It’s close to the English accent an Indian immigrant of twenty years might have. Most everything is easy to understand, but occasionally some sound is just completely missed, especially when excited or cold and the tongue misbehaves. My Chinese always gets worse in the winter, because my numb tongue and lips are never quite where they should be. If lost and asking for directions, I have to bite the tip of my tongue before talking so I can become intelligible.
For me, I do dress more like a European than an American at times, but I think it’s more that I move and act like an expat instead of a student with a temporary visa. At home I’m just a southerner in his beloved hat or a preppie college kid, but here I’m neither. Part of it is the wardrobe cuts I made when packing, but nearly everything I wear can easily and quickly be dressed up or down, but remains comfortable. There’s a worldly wear to my decisive steps across a busy street or deliberations by a subway map.
By worldly wear, I mean both. It’s a worldliness that comes from traveling all over with the locals on the train or by overnight bus or even backpack, and the wear and weariness that comes with the tired knowledge that I face a crowded subway or a long line in the cold. Worldly wear manifests itself as a quietly confident stoicism.
That confidence is evident in my step in Beijing. The city is constantly changing, but it’s still a place I know. I may not know where that subway line goes or which bus line to take off the top of my head, but I understand the underworkings of the city, which means that I can always figure it out. And always having the confidence that I can figure it out, even if I don’t speak but a few words of the language or local dialect, is, I’ve realized, about as international as a person can become.
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Kunming, China |
