Trying to Explain

Sometimes it’s difficult to explain the things that are hard about living in China. I feel separated by people not so much by distance or time but by experiences. I can describe what happens to me – the funny stories, the sad thoughts, the interesting and intriguing parts of life – but it never seems quite adequate. It’s like sitting down to draw a picture of the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen and ending up with a smiley-faced stick figure.

I hear the muffled voices of students as they walk past my apartment, and sometimes I think that I understand what they are saying. It seems like I should understand—if I could just hear them a little more clearly—it seems like they are speaking English. But of course they aren’t, and even if I could hear I wouldn’t understand.

My life here falls into routine and seems quite normal to me. But sometimes all of a sudden I realize I am in China. What am I doing in China? How did I get here and whose life am I living? Six months ago I was still a college student; how can life change so completely so quickly?

My students are constantly asking questions about America and what it is like. It seems like I’m always talking about America, but only in the general sense. Whenever I actually think about America – not just the country and culture but my America – it is always a startlingly clear picture that catches me off guard. I remember that right about now there would be Canadian geese flying over. I can picture standing outside in the dusky fall evening and looking through the brown and yellow leaves and hearing their noise. I can tell students about Canadian geese, but they can’t understand that Canadian geese remind me of everything I love about autumn.

If you’ve never been in a place where 1.3 billion people look the same and you look different, how can you understand what it’s like to see another foreigner? Occasionally I do see another foreigner, and I stare at them as much as the Chinese. It doesn’t much matter where they are from: Germany or Australia or Ghana. In China there are only two kinds of people: Chinese and foreigners. It’s hard to understand what that’s like when even in Snellville, Georgia, you can walk into a store and see Caucasians from every racial background, Hispanics, African-Americans, Indians, Asian-Americans, Africans, and Middle-Easterners. Everyone had different colored hair and different clothes and even different languages. In a country where 1.3 billion people have black hair (okay, a few dye their hair, but mostly), even medium brown hair stands out.

And then too, sometimes it’s hard to explain how much little moments mean. When your apartment is crowded with students who are laughing and talking and being themselves because they are comfortable around you. When a student says, “We may have language barriers, but we have warm hearts.” When a student doesn’t ask, “Do you like China? Do you like sports?” but instead asks, “Do you feel a generation gap between you and your parents? Do you feel lonely sometimes?” You realize that for a moment they are not seeing you as a foreigner or an American or an English machine but just as a person.

Today in class we were talking about apologies and forgiveness. I told my students the story about the son who left his father and brought shame upon his family by wasting all his inheritance. When I told about how the father was able to forgive his son because he loved him so much, several of the students had tears in their eyes. And I thought, wow. I’m really glad to be here.