Smog covers the distant snaking segments at the Great Wall of the real China.
One question I have never been able to answer is “What do you do?”
Of course, people mean “Where do you work?” Or, broadly, “How are you occupied?”
It is not an unfair question. Without it, I don’t think Americans could ever start a conversation. But for a timid soul like me, who dreads introductions and supplying an answer about work because I ether haven’t had a job or I haven’t had one I could describe without embarrassment, the question is a quick way to shame me and kill any social standing I may have otherwise had. It is like going to the library with overdue fines on my account. I could fill my book bag with all the titles like Never Break Eye Contact: Social Networking Strategies Guaranteed to Dominate Your Peers and How to Convince Women to Fall in Love With You at First Sight – all the subjects of a young man’s social potential- but once I scanned my card at the check-out, once I had to fess up that I was jobless and practically penniless, I would be denied, told simply of the bad news that my library card, and social options, had been blocked.
When I was a college student, I had to make the dreaded rounds with not only every person I met but with every curious acquaintance who heard that I was in college. “What’s your major?” they would ask reactively. (I’ve asked it, too- everyone does- and that is what aggravates me.)
I would respond in a mumble, trying to avoid eye contact, “I’m an English major.”
Some would outright scoff and rebuke me, “What are you going to do with that?”
Others, more polite, would smile uncomfortably and only criticize me mentally. He was supposed to say something impressive related to computers, science, or business. Their restraint of open judgment wore heavier on my heart than the snide jeers.
Still others, trying to be optimistic, would follow up by asking, “So, are you gonna be a teacher?” English graduates have no industry, but public schools are always hiring. Problem was, I hated the idea of returning to public school and becoming like so many of the pedants, graying social revolutionaries, and shameless eccentrics who called themselves English teachers. And, spend my days trying to maintain authority over a classroom full of kids like the ones I went to school with, or worse? No, thanks.
“No,” I would reply. Try and make lemonade with that.
“Oh,” they would say. Conversation- and any further social relationship- over.
My dilemma was that I had entered into my English studies with certain post-graduate expectations. But two jaded years later, I was despondent and desperate just to graduate, bargaining with myself that all I needed was enough credits for a diploma. Then I would never have to step foot inside a classroom again.
My misery was predictably unalleviated once I left college for the “real” world. I faced further volleys of “What are you going to do?” and had to make up weak and vague answers, or tell people the plain truth and flatly reply that I had no job, no leads, and no ideas to begin a job search. Or, if I were employed at the time, that I was working part-time in a position meant for students or ne’er-do-wells.
The soul can only tolerate being crushed for so long.
After a few fruitless, post-graduation years, I began entertaining, seriously, the idea of teaching English overseas. I had heard people talk about their foreign teaching experience glowingly, and I had seen schools and agencies advertise abundantly online.
Sadly, while living with my parents and still working part-time, my energy was low and my overseas search was slow. But I remember at one point, finally finding a big agency for recruiting English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, and deliberating between China and South Korea. Korea seemed to be the most popular destination for ESL teachers, and I was interested in the country and the people, but I already had a sense of what it was like. China, on the other hand… what did it even look like?
Unlike I expected, the actual Great Wall is a very slippery climb. I fell three times.
Besides the decorations inside every Chinese restaurant, the colorful outfits and costumes worn during Chinese New Year celebrations and in Chinese historical films, and not counting cultural icons like the Great Wall, what did China really look like? I mean, if I walked around a neighborhood in China, drove through its streets, or went shopping there, what would it be like? What was the everyday experience?
At that time, still searching online, I didn’t have the courage to take the plunge. About two years later, after a series of events I will soon detail, I was still in America, but with a teaching contract signed and an apartment secured in China. The strong force able to pull me out of my malaise and my parents’ house was not my courage, it was my contacts- knowing a friend from China.
Starting as a teacher in the upcoming school year- in China- meant I had a surprising, yet un-prideful, answer when I bumped into old friends and they asked me, “So, what are you up to?”
One casual acquaintance, a man encroaching on middle age with a stern and somewhat stiff, awkward demeanor, gave me a startled reaction.
“China!” he said, bridling his head and looking stunned, “Why China?” Dark images of communism probably swam through his head; he had seen its after-effects as a Marine touring through the former Eastern Bloc states.
I gave him the short answer, the comfortable answer, about making a friend who referred me to a school in China, but I had a longer, full answer that I kept to myself.
When I was a child, I was taken by Japan, and so I thought, all things Asia. I loved eating at Chinese restaurants and I became intrigued by seeing the smooth faces of people with hair so black it glistened in the light. Listening to them talk to each other in incomprehensible languages was an ignorant fascination. I didn’t know much about the cultures of the Far East, but I compiled a visual vocabulary from martial arts movies, Nintendo, and the pop culture detritus that had traversed the Pacific and washed onto American shores in the form of cartoons, toys, colorful images, mentions in casual conversation, movies, and TV.
When the subject of culture came up in school, I would compare the contrasting examples. “In America,” the text might say, “people like to shake hands firmly, maintain eye contact, and speak their feelings directly. In Fig. 1A, John is giving his colleague Carl what is known as “a hard time.” Conversely, in Japanese culture, the people bow in greeting, they prefer to lower their gaze and speak modestly, and always respectfully to superiors. In Fig. 1B, Suzuki-sensei frowns at the blushing Tanaka-san to teach him a proper sense of shame.” I would almost always find my personal habits or preferences described in the Japanese or Chinese characteristics. Not only did I align more with Oriental forms of politeness, I thought they were better. Why don’t we do that here? I wanted to know.
Over the years, as I sampled more entertainment media, I developed a finer understanding of the distinct cultures in the Orient, or what is now cravenly called Asia or East Asia, and I could correctly pigeonhole all the most intriguing cultural aspects according to country. I might hear people ask where Sumo wrestling was from (“Is it China? I thought it was Japan”) and confirm their suspicion, or correct someone who confused kung-fu and karate. Simple trivia, I know, but it was a treasured catalog in my imagination.
Plus, I had always felt an innate and inexplicable connection to Japan and its related cultures. Growing up, I not only took a secret interest in these foreign cultures, people often told me my face looked like I was half-Chinese, Japanese, or part Vietnamese. I can’t explain the mysterious inward and outward attractions. I could only respond to ethnic guesses with the disappointing news that both my parents were white and my family came to America long ago from Germany and Norway.
So, I had lived a young lifetime sensing that I needed to go live among these countries and explore them. I had to see if they matched my mind’s eye and I could feel as comfortable there as I assumed.
And although I probably would have preferred living in Japan over China, the Land of the Rising Sun is notoriously expensive and difficult to assimilate into. The Japanese mind views the world according to in-groups and out-groups, and not speaking the language or being born to Japanese parents, on Japanese soil, made me a lifelong member of the out-group. Of course, thousands of expatriates have overcome the obstacles and realized their dreams to live for years- as a semi-permanent foreign guest- in Japan. But I had a link to China that secured where I would live in Asia. Knowing a native in a Chinese city would provide me a home base, so to speak, where I could begin my travels throughout the continent.
And again, I wanted to explore and uncover the mystery of China, that country impinging on the American consciousness with fears of economic dominance and military threat. China was so big, had so many people, and had such a long and detailed history that it was hard to manage mentally. I think I can safely say that the average American has a clouded image of China, formed by the sources I’ve already named: martial arts films, restaurants, and Chinese New Year decorations (red lanterns, firecrackers, bright dragon costumes); or, Americans imagine a gray, militant landscape of factories and school buildings, churning out an assembly line of cheap goods and math prodigies to overtake our economy.
I wanted to know the truth about China. I had heard the facts, but I wanted to feel firsthand what it was like to live among 1.3 billion people. The sage wisdom of Confucius had made its way inside the papers of American fortune cookies, but if I lived among Confucian, Chinese society, how would they actually behave? What was it like to wake up on the other side of the world?
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