I have never liked visiting China. Apart from the comfort drawbacks (long flights, muggy air, ten mosquito bites the first night), there's also the fact that everyone (in the rural places I visited) is Asian. Literally everyone. After four years of avoiding a trip back, of living in the middle of whitewashed relatives and neighborhoods, that was the first time I've been completely surrounded by Asians. And I hated it.
A little background: I'm not a "full-blooded"Asian. I've gotten questions from people when we've recently met asking about my ethnicity, because I look relatively Asian but I have a Scottish surname. I grew up, despite my mother's best efforts, identifying as white because all my friends were fair-skinned and I saw the white side of my family a lot more frequently than I did my maternal Asian side. I know now that I look predominantly Asian, but I'm legally registered as white (by legally I mean on school papers) and old self-impressions die hard.
Fast-forward a few years: In middle school, I start getting called Asian, and it's one of the biggest surprises of my life. I learn that, to all these easily sunburnt folk in my city (I use that term endearingly), I don't look white. I've gotten used to that by now, and easily call myself Asian around people, but still can't help but play up my white side whenever I get the chance, just to (probably unnecessarily) remind people that being Asian isn't all that I am. My ancestor helped found Pennsylvania, for God's sake, and I'm related by marriage to Buffalo Bill. How much more 'Murican can I get (see what I did there?)?
To the present: I discover that, in China, I look white.
Thank goodness I'm already used to being the minority. Otherwise I probably would've undergone a HUGE identity crisis.
How do I know this? Well, not only did a lot people stare at me for longer than usual wherever I went (which got really uncomfortable in situations where I couldn't keep moving, like public transportations or park gazebos), most shopkeepers and hotel concierges would speak to me at first in English. Which is fine with me, because four years of neglect has all but stripped me of my ability to speak Chinese. I can still perfectly understand everything though. This becomes important later on.
There was this one infuriating situation, where I was standing in line for train tickets while my parents held a place in the other line. We were keeping tabs on each other to see who would reach the front first. There was a middle-aged man standing in front of me who kept turning around periodically to stare around at his surroundings, as many native Chinese are wont to do. Every time he did this, I would just stare at my suitcase to avoid awkward eye contact. To him, it probably looked like I was unaware of anything else.
Dear sir, you forgot about peripherals.
I noticed, with my peripheral vision, that he was in fact staring at me every time he turned around to casually scan. After about twenty minutes of this (lines in China move slowly), I had had enough and looked directly back at him every time he turned. This seemed only to amuse him, as not only did he not stop turning around every few seconds, he would now have this smirk on his face, like, "Aw, cute, it's getting mad." After about ten more minutes of this, and after one particularly uncomfortable long stare down, he turned to the front, tapped on the shoulder of the woman in front of him, and whispered to her that "the silly foreign girl behind me is angry" (that is an approximate translation). He then turned around to grin broadly at me, while the woman just openly stared.
A word to the wise, and to the ridiculously stupid and ignorant: never make a chill person angry enough to take action. It was my great pleasure letting that foolish man know I speak Chinese. I wish I could've taken a photo of his face when he realized that I had understood everything he'd been saying.
There were more subtle occurrences throughout the trip that let me know people knew I wasn't 100% one of them. And while I'm used to being part of the minority, I'm not singled out back in the U.S. because of it. In China, looking different meant unacceptance. Everywhere I went (especially in the countryside) people made it openly clear that they were shocked to see me among them. More shocked than, say, they were when they also saw my mom, a born-and-bred Chinese. I didn't necessarily feel shunned, but I definitely felt a lot more eyes than usual. Even as an Asian in a white neighborhood, I have never remembered feeling so much attention before in my life because of people's perception of my ethnicity.
Hence my overwhelming happiness at finally being home again. Never before have I identified so strongly with my my home city/state. And this couldn't have come at a worser time.
I'm already having difficulty understanding that I'm moving out of my beloved home state to go to college. Now, too late, do I realize that I never wanted to leave California, not only because it's the chillest state (shut up, I know I'm biased, and I'm loving it), but because I'll miss the unique dynamics one simply doesn't find inland. I've already noticed that the few friends I made at orientation don't quite behave or speak the same way my friends do. It goes further beyond the slang (I've already said "hella" and "ratchet" to these people when talking though, and I noticed a slight hesitation in their responses. This threw me more than it should've). It's impossible to explain, but already even the easy comfort of conversation with cool people is taken from me. Inland people are just unsettlingly different.
Speaking of which, what will I do without the ocean?
It's sad that I'm already considering transferring back to a university in California, without having even gone to my new school. But it's true. I haven't left yet and I want back in. Even if I do make it all four years with disparate seasons (what is weather), one of the criteria for grad school is that it MUST be in California. I don't want to find a job and settle down after uni in any other state.
Only when presented with the loss of something I've taken for granted do I realize how deeply I've always treasured it. Isn't that always the case?
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Now that college is starting soon, I want to take up this blog again. I'm sure in the future I'll want to know what I was thinking and feeling at this point.
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I've recently, due to a new friend's recommendations, gotten into the post-hardcore genre this summer. Looking back at an old post where I openly bash screamo, it's kind of funny that now nearly a third of my iTunes library is composed of punk and hardcore rock. I guess I really trust his taste.
It's exceedingly difficult to choose just one P-H song to post, but here it is:
A Match Into Water, by Pierce the Veil (Explicit)
And if you, reader, dislike screamo, here's another one of my new all-time-favorites that's not so... dissonant:
Secret Valentine, by We the Kings
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