After Words about China

[liralen]

Dad asked me, a while back, to actually write something about how I felt about going to China. Not just the things we saw, the history that was there, or what it was we did, but how it made me feel

Comments

[liralen]

It would be an interesting thing to find out! I think it surprised me how much was echoed...

Yeah, that was one thing I talked over with John, was the fact that I think I might have been looking in China for something I'd found in Hawaii when we visited there. The odd sort of ease that comes of knowing that my race wasn't "different" when I was there, that I could just blend in with John and be mistaken for locals when we were there. I remember walking into a fish restaurant with John and having the waiter asking us what we were doing there because if we really were local, we would be getting fresh, free fish from our families, not going to a restaurant... But as John pointed out last night, to me, Hawaii is a part of the U.S., and it was like the combination of being in a mostly familiar culture (and language) and having my race not stand out anymore. In Indiana, my sister used to call us "the raisins in the rice pudding".

And I'll have to admit that a good deal of that alienation or annoyance is actually sourced from *me*, not necessarily from the person asking. I still remember being in a grocery store and an elderly lady asking, "Pardon me, if you don't mind me asking, but are you Chinese?" And she was obviously trying very hard NOT to annoy me, because she wanted to just talk to me. Her daughter had just adopted two girls from China and she was wondering how to treat them... and while some part of my mind flashed to annoyance about the idea that they'd have to be somehow different... the rest of me recognized that she really wanted to know and she was asking from a position of really wanting to love those girls the way she "ought to". So I just said, "Love them. I'm about as American as I can get, and they'll just be like that. I'm not adopted, though, and they'll be like any other adopted little girl, there will be some wounds about having been abandoned, but if you love them as their grandmother, they'll know it and love you back."

It was... I dunno... sometimes I can take those questions with compassion, but sometimes I think it's my own issues that get in the way.

Oh! Good!! I'm very glad that you enjoyed the original writeups that way, as that's part of why I left out a lot of the emotional stuff. *laughs* I deliberately tried to write is as I write up most of my trips, with all the wonder and excitement of discovering things I hadn't known or experienced, yet. It's kind of cool to know that those things definitely did come across to someone else.

[silkiemom]

I think it's interesting how it seems like other people expect you to identify with your race rather than your culture. Just being around other people who look like you isn't as comfortable and familiar as being around people who are your own culture. I think that the "where are you from?" and "what are you?" questions not usually meant to other and alienate, but the cumulative effect of being asked those questions does become othering and alienating. I think the issues with those questions are an understandable reaction after a while.

[liralen]

Yes... I think you have it on the nose.

Especially the "Just being around other people who look like you isn't as comfortable and familiar as being around people who are your own culture." It's soooooo true...

Thank you!