Living in China, and I am sure expatriates of all stripes would say the same, often made me feel like a child. Predominantly, this was because of my low language ability. Riding in the back of a taxi cab, watching the city streets scroll past the passenger window, unintelligible signs and store fronts would wash over me. In groups of people, I often had to sit without stirring and wait for the indecipherable conversation’s indeterminate end. Out shopping by myself, I could either point at what I wanted or go without it; good Samaritans did step in when the lady behind the counter became confused orstartled by me.
But not only my ignorance of the language sidelined me to watch the adults go about their business, every facet of life- social customs, city layouts, building aesthetics, manners of speaking, who was married to whom, everything– fit into a foreign grammar that I could not parse at first glance.
Understand- or actually, don’t understand- cousins would call each other “my brother” or “my sister,” friends might do the same, and any time I tried to ask questions to peel away the layers of whatever Chinese riddle was going on, I was met with an embarrassed giggle, or confused look, and maybe a jumbled answer about how Mei Mei was or wasn’t really Sho Sho’s brother, or they just called each other that, and no further explanation. With the question of who was married to whom, I suppose it was not always completely necessary to determine this, but Chinese married couples shared no common jewelry or beauty mark, and then I would see a svelte lady hanging around a sloppy-looking man and wonder why that would be, or see a pretty young lady and wonder if she could be single, so how could my curiosity not grow? I would be sitting among the same groups as certain pairs always seemed to be there together, so I kept a keen eye out to track which male and female pairs consistently came or went together. It really was not very transparent to tell.
I had to be shrewd to gather what clues I could. Wives in China keep their family name after marrying, so my aunt for instance, married to Uncle Jiang, was still Aunt Fong and not Jiang. During group chats, the couples almost never spoke my language and so they rarely introduced themselves to me directly. Sometimes they would arrive separately or sit apart according to the social rank of the whole mixed gathering. I merely absorbed the social scene from a silent distance.
The men and women there did not follow American modes of conspicuous “couplehood” like holding hands, sitting close together, or making inside jokes to try and look cute while grating on everyone else’s patience. People there had a habit of acting reserved, yet still jolly, in public and in private, which I did appreciate, but this clouded my social perception considerably. Eventually, it would dawn on me that a certain man and woman had been standing around each other in three different gatherings, and therefore there was no other explanation but that they had to be married.
The smoking gun that my friend, Ma Cao, was married to this cute lady: their mutual baby.
Another example of the foreign cultural grammar I had to interpret: the basic arrangement of shopping spaces. To contrast, first consider America, the land of wide open space, where each commercial business often has its own rectangular building and parking lot. If combined, stores will form a mini-mall, still rectangular and with a much larger parking lot, and of course many stores can join up under the roof of a classic symbol of America, the very large, boxy shopping mall, with an encompassing parking lot or garage. Also do not forget the downtown districts, with specialty boutiques situated in a row of gentrified, old connected storefronts, separated by interior walls, with parking space on the streets.
In China, there are variations on these basic models, “with Chinese characteristics.” Commercial store giants like Carrefour and Wal-Mart often formed the core of the Chinese equivalent to a medium-sized mall (there were furniture malls and other grand shopping centers throughout the larger cities, too). They have an attached parking garage for the minority of customers who arrived by car, usually above or below the store, but most take public transportation or ride their electric scooters, so the most common parking is a long, cluttered line of scooters, with some charging up via extension cords and exterior building outlets. Inside the building, dozens of smaller shops line the way to the main store. The tactic is the same one your local supermarket uses in placing the milk and eggs in the back corner, past produce and aisles of impulse buys, only the Chinese line their corridors with so many clothing and gift shops that it was difficult to find the main interior entrance, usually requiring walking around corners, through corridors, and up or down escalator ramps- once I was unable to find the Carrefour altogether. I became frustrated and stranded like a gambler desperate to escape an ingeniously looping casino. And, like a cunning supermarket, immediately after the Wal-Mart check-outs are the tea and medicine shops, candy counters, cheap plastic trinkets, and arcade games. This much was easily understandable from an outsider’s view.
What I could not navigate were the shopping streets. In a big city, the shopping streets were major attractions with chain stores, popular food vendors, neon signs, and more people per square foot than I had seen in even Times Square or almost any other American equivalent.
Nanjing’s Confucius Market, where filial piety and sales tax are included on every item.
In streets like these, the super chains like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and the Nike and Adidas stores were easy to identify. But where I mostly stayed, in the real China (as opposed to the mega-cities which have every kind of commercial layout), shops were housed in rows of decaying architecture built centuries ago that stretched over several long city blocks. Each shop was recessed in the structure, as if cut out of a concrete cave, and there was no signage to signal what were the contents inside. Sure, there were names painted above the square openings, but always in a typical, sloppy or mechanical font of Chinese calligraphy. This was of no help to me or anyone accustomed to the marketing power of inviting icons. The hardware store did not post a picture of a wrench out front. The clothing stores did not have an icon of a fashion model or a simple graphic of a shirt, but if they were a big enough franchise then at least they had abundant sale posters hung up and a wide window view to the clothing racks inside. The fake Apple store, however, did use the trademarked white apple logo to try and fool the masses into buying a knock-off i-product. Or, maybe it was a real Apple store after all, but who was I, a foreigner, to tell?
The cumulative effect of these businesses in the row house style of an American downtown (note that Chinese cities do not have downtowns but urban centers with sprawling streets and cavernous back alleys) was an eyesore and a headache. The natives, who had spent their life getting acquainted with the language and the cityscape, could pick out the distinct business types by familiarity or by reading the writing scrawled above the doorway. Meanwhile, I was left scratching my head. I wondered what each shop contained, and I had to walk directly front and center to peek inside, like an audacious toddler, and scan with wide eyes all that the shop contained.
One city’s not-so-inviting commercial street. The garage-door like openings were a dark mystery to me, but the chickens spoke, er, clucked for themselves.
A very Chinese feature of the multitude of small businesses was the overlap among neighboring shops with the same product line or service. Three hardware stores in a row might have slices of the same pie: one selling chain, cords, parts, and pieces of things; another, power appliances and generators; and the third, paint and bathroom fixtures. Or, there could be a whole street of nothing but small clothing shops, each selling a variation of the same shirts, purses, coats, scarves, and accessories. I walked down the streets of a small city where I saw four different bakeries in addition to the street snack vendors, each low in quality, not a threat to its competitors and not being threatened with lack of business. The Chinese economy, very unlike the American, makes tolerant allowance for small business owners to set up shop next to a near-duplicate line of competitors, sell little, and pay less in rent.
Go to any tourist area, any area that is could even conceivably attract a tourist in China, and you will soon be able to predict with great accuracy what booths and what gaudy junk will line the way to the attraction. Walkways led the way to every accessible part of the Great Wall- filled with tiny shops for folding fans, t-shirts, cheap jade amulets, and cheaper plastic toys- and it was the same at every other location. Permanent stores and booths might not be set up, but at the top of a mountain trail or outside the mouth of a cave an old woman might be waiting to show off wooden toy swords and bottled tea and fruit drinks to the only group of travelers she might see all day. How far had these vendors walked to set up shop, and how long were they sitting along this pathway? I always wondered. It seemed that, despite the saturation of identical souvenirs, the number of businesses in Chinese tourist sites and cities did not drive up the level of competition. I cannot imagine any greedy slumlords evicting tenants when I often stumbled upon shops in dark alleys after getting lost after several turns through rambling lanes, and to my surprise, saw an employee or owner lounging at the counter, watching TV. I peeked in my head for a moment out of sheer astonishment. Who would ever shop at this place? Who could even find it?
A typical line-up at a busy tourist attraction.
There were many times in China where, like a boy wandering away from his mother to explore the variety of aisles in a large store, I set off on my own to walk the streets of the city and chance to find new sights and adventures. This was my favorite thing to do when I visited the major cities. I would follow my street map and take a pedestrian tour through parts of Beijing, for instance, letting the streets take me where they would, stopping whenever I was hungry or something caught my eye. I spent the time mute, a stranger not only to the city-dwellers but to their language, culture, and society as well. Again, sights and sounds poured over me, like an infant hearing words for the first time, and to acquire an understanding of my surroundings I had to passively accept it.
In any new city or experience in China, having a friend to translate for me proved invaluable. On my own, I could gain a sense of my surroundings, but I often needed someone to confirm or correct my surmises. Occasionally, I would be blessed to meet a young man who had studied in America and, in addition to understanding the general differences between our cultures, spoke fluent English. Other times, some of my bolder female students would be willing to approach me, and eventually our conversation would turn to explanations of the Chinese way.
Mostly though, I was on my own in a country where a tall, white man is a strange novelty. When I bought vegetables or food at the campus food store, the check-out ladies would mostly refuse eye-contact, but sometimes they would laugh and I can only assume that they were exchanging in-jokes to each other like, “Hey! Here’s that big foreigner, and he’s buying peanuts again! Foreigners must love peanuts!”
And even though I knew how to count and speak a scant amount of phrases in Chinese, they would always hold up their fingers or their calculator display to show me how much I owed, which I recognize was a courtesy to me as a foreigner, even if it could feel a little patronizing. I shocked the cashier a few times by repeating the total in Chinese, or saying, “I know, four fifty” when they seemed skeptical that I could comprehend. Those rare times I spoke up, they would have a good-natured laugh. I was a surprise to them- precocious, even.
Walking the streets, children would see me and call out to everyone, “Laowai!” Foreigner! After living for months in a city as the only non-Chinese face, I too sat up in attention when I saw a bulbous, white body through a train or bus window- another foreign traveler or teacher. We were a special class, an odd and entertaining spectacle.
I will say that many people seemed delighted to have me in their country. In city life, strangers ignore each other as they walk past, and this happened to me for the most part, but there were still quite a few occasions where I perceived that the people in front of me were whispering about me or the group standing to my side was examining me as I walked by.
Thankfully, Aunt Fong or another volunteer would often accompany me into the city center or help me when I needed to do something important like go to the bank or doctor. This ensured that I got to where I wanted to go, my needs were communicated to the clerk, banker, or wait staff, and no sly vendors could cheat me out of my American dollars. After a while though, having someone escort me everywhere, order my food, and speak to store employees for me aggravated my American sense of independence. It ignited an urge to go see places and try things on my own, hence my solo excursions around Beijing and elsewhere. Still, I could not escape my dilemma. I either relied on an intermediary to help me and do most things for me, or I wandered on the outside of society, aloof to what was taking place before me.
Aunt Fong, literally taking me by the hand.
It was not a very difficult burden to live with, but it was definitely humbling. The worst part about being a foreign guest was when people assumed I was stupid, or when they bossed me around like an ignorant beast. I held no ill feelings toward those who phrased things delicately or spoke to me simply, as if to a child. I knew from teaching English classes that expressing one’s meaning to speakers of other languages often required baby steps. The point wasn’t to demean but to convey. To do so subtly requires acute empathy of your listener’s perspective.
But not everyone took pains to explain things delicately to me. Oftentimes, with Uncle Jiang, I received rough orders that were his transliterations of Chinese grammar. “Look. Follow me.” Or: “Listen to me.” He would speak these commands with a stiff, stern face, and his tone and cadence were deep and slow, almost like Darth Vader, but without the booming sense of doom or space helmet.
This routine of listening to blunt statements got old quick, but I always reminded myself that Uncle Jiang was good enough to try and teach me Chinese and let me stay over at his and Aunt Fong’s apartment most weekends. I had to respond to his grace with patience. He and Aunt Fong also took me along on several weekend trips, which I have to credit him for, even if he tried to rush me through lines by pushing me in the back or tugging my wrist and chiding me “Quickly, quickly.”
My position in China was such that I could not change my treatment. In America, the fantasy of teenagers is to own a car and move away from their parents to drink and do whatever they want- right away at 18, if possible. In China, I was reverted to the childhood stage, unable to fend for myself. My travels and most of my commerce depended on someone else, not necessarily older, but culturally literate. I was relieved of certain responsibilities, cared for by others, often treated as the helpless outsider. I could not argue I was otherwise.
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