Thursday, January 08, 2009

By THOMAS LEE
MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

last updated: July 27, 2008 07:27:45 AM

"You are never going to feel less Chinesey than when you're in China," my co-worker told me.

I had two immediate reactions to this. One: Was "Chinesey" an actual word? Two: She was probably right.

She offered the above comment after learning I'd won a fellowship to China. We are both of Chinese ancestry but were born and raised in another country.

My parents were Chinese immigrants who moved to America more than 50 years ago. But they always were dismayed that I had become so ... well, American. So when I informed them of the upcoming trip, I expected them to gush about reconnecting with my culture or perhaps marrying a nice little Chinese peasant girl and rearing five sons.

Instead, my mom sounded as if I were going to the mall.

"Can you buy me some shirts and pants?" she asked eagerly.

The only thing more horrifying than a 30-year-old single man buying clothes for his 67-year-old, plumpish mother is to do so in a country where he can't speak the language.

"What makes the clothes in China better than the clothes at Wal-Mart?" I said.

"They're just better," my mom confidently replied.

Of course, I didn't have the heart to tell her that the clothes in Wal-Mart probably were made in China. So rather than lecture her about global economics, I reluctantly agreed but secretly resolved to get her a Chairman Mao T-shirt.

My inability to speak Chinese always has been a sore spot with my parents. I remember how ashamed they looked whenever a relative inquired about this topic. You'd think I was a draft dodger.

It wasn't just my parents who expected me to magically speak Chinese. The rest of the world thought so, too.

When I was in second grade, my teacher sent me to see an ESL specialist. I was a little confused. If English was my second language, then what was my first? The teacher mistook my shyness to be a sign of a language barrier. Luckily, after enduring more than an hour of me yapping nonstop, the specialist gladly returned me to class.

From then on, I told anyone who asked that I was bilingual.

"I-ay eak-spay Ig-pay Atin-lay ery-vay ell-way," I said.

Twenty-three years later, I confronted similar problems in China. At one hotel in Chongqing, the desk clerk greeted me in Mandarin.

"Uh ... English, please," I said.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the clerk said, as if she just accidentally spit in my face. "How can I help you?

A few seconds later, she went right back to Mandarin. "Oh, I'm sorry!!!" she exclaimed. She exchanged glances with another clerk and the two burst into laughter. I couldn't tell if they were laughing at me or simply near me.

Other people in my group fared better. There was Chris, a white American raised in Switzerland whose fluent Mandarin was sometimes better than his English.

There was Shimpei, a quiet Japanese man who spoke conversational Chinese but often relied on his trusty electronic translation device.

And there was Surrendra, a boisterous Nepalese man who didn't know a speck of Chinese but greeted everyone with a hearty "Ni hao!" the same way a tourist might shout "Bonjour!" in France or "Adios!" in Spain.

In Lijiang, a confused shopkeeper gestured at me while talking to her friend. The two chatted excitedly until Shimpei offered a few words of explanation.

"I told them that you were American and could only speak English," he said to me.

"What did they say?" I said.

"They said you looked very Chinese," Shimpei said.

"Oh, yes, your features are very Chinese," Chris later told me.

Looked very Chinese? Was that a good thing? I had no idea. Weren't we supposed to all look alike?

I imagined walking up to a black man in Minneapolis and saying: "You look very black." He didn't look too happy.

So although I didn't speak Chinesey or feel Chinesey, at least I looked Chinesey.

Better than nothing, my parents would say.

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