我真的爱的就是你… (True Love)

Wow, that last post seemed to have hit on a nerve, and has probably produced more responses than even the caparinha post. Some of them were sent as private emails, and I’m asking for permission to post them as comments on my actual blog, so if you’re wondering what I’m reacting to in the following post, wait a day and check the comments of my last post, Typical American.

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我真的爱的就是你… (The One I Truly Love is You)

Within a minute of entering the dark karaoke room, I was already off and singing Wang Leehom (one of my favorite American-born Taiwanese, Chinese super-stars). It was test. Well really, the whole evening was a test.

Upon arriving at the LSE, I made a point of signing up for seventy-five billion clubs. I, of course, joined the capoeira club, and then it was on to cultural clubs. I’m an official member of the Chinese Student Scholars Association, the Chinese Society (deceivingly named as it’s actually the Hong Kong Society), the Taiwanese Society, the French society, and the Arabic society. I couldn’t find the American society’s table, though I’m not sure I’m missing anything there.

The LSE is crowded with Chinese students, and so I wanted to take advantage of that fact to keep up with my Chinese (official classes start this week, yay!), but also because I’m really missing China at the moment. Kunming was my home for two years, and it’s an experience I can’t easily forget.

After I lived for a year in France, I was changed. I was no longer American, I had missed too much. I wasn’t exactly French, but I had certainly accepted a French world-view into my psyche. Doubly so after two years in China.

But in France, I could pass as French. Indeed, a wonderful Lebanese LSE student started talking with me the other week and thought I was French. I was flattered.

In China, I was always the 老外 (foreigner), for there, the perception is fairly simple (and this is using Chinese language, I apologize if it doesn’t sound politically correct to the Western ear): yellow skin=Chinese, any other colored skin=not Chinese. So, as my Hong Kongese-American friend, YKC, alluded to, he is considered Chinese because he looks Chinese. He’s also, therefore, expected to speak Chinese (which he happens to be able to do quite well, now, and being raised speaking Cantonese certainly was helpful in that regard, but he is American and his English is perfect). On the other hand, I’m a white guy, so I’m not supposed to understand any Chinese.

I had Chinese-American friends in Kunming who spoke better Chinese than I did, and while I was praised for my amazing Chinese, they were scolded for not being able to. However, it would drive me crazy when I would start speaking Chinese in a group because I could, and the Chinese would ignore me and try to speak to the Chinese-looking person who couldn’t speak Chinese.

My point is, and I think I said this best when I was talking with my dad last week: “I’ll never be Chinese enough for the Chinese.”

And if I wasn’t Chinese enough for the Chinese in China, trying to be Chinese enough to participate in the Chinese diaspora here in London is even more challenging.

As I walked into the CSSA’s Mid-Autumn Festival, one guy asked, “are you sure you’re in the right place?” And yet, I felt so at home there—the party was exactly like any party one could find on a Chinese campus.

When I was in Chinatown on one of my first night’s in town, I was trying to order really spicy food. The waitress replied in broken English, “I don’t know what you mean by spicy.” And so in frustration, I said “我要你们最辣的.” The entire restaurant went silent, and suddenly people from the different tables started shouting questions at me, as if I was some bizarre spectacle they had never witnessed before.

Step right up, step right up for the amazing white guy who speaks Mandarin.

I just felt awkward.

And so last night, I went karaoke-ing with the LSE Taiwanese society. I called the president because I was running late, and he gave me directions in Chinese. I have a hard enough time finding things in London in English, so getting there with Chinese directions was a task. But I made it. Test number 1, passed.

Then the attendants wouldn’t let me in at first. I broke into my Chinese and insisted that I was here to meet friends. They eventually coughed up the room number and I went down to join the rest of the LSErs. Test number 2, passed.

I walked in the room, and they sat me down in front of the computer to order a song. I did, they jumped it in the queue, and suddenly I was there singing before them in Chinese to prove that I belonged. Test number 3, passed…more or less.

But why this need for tests? I suppose that my relations to Taiwan are a bit more tenuous, as I only lived there for three months, but I really do miss it so! Shouldn’t that be good enough of a reason to let me join in club activities?!

When my friend Aaliyah (an American that I know from Kunming) came to the door of the bar, the staff wouldn’t actually let her in. What is this protectionism?

I guess though, that if my Whittie friend, YMC, who is Taiwanese-American isn’t Taiwanese enough for the Taiwanese (and he’s even in the middle of his required civil service stint!) then I have no hope!