IX

I received two packages last week. The first was for my birthday which was about three weeks ago. My sister sent a rum cake as she usually does on my birthday. So delicious usually, the kind of cake that can be eaten with one's hands entirely because it doesn't have frosting, because it doesn't need frosting, because it is perfectly sweet all the way through. Pretty much every year she sends me one and in the last three or four years, these cakes come along with birthday cards from my eight year old-niece and my six year old nephew. The backward "y" and "r" in their kid-print handwriting of my name make it all so charming. The trouble began however when my sister informed me that USPS had informed her that the box had been delivered on November 11th. At that point it was November 16th, and there was no sign of the cake. About five days later I got a message from the mail room saying that I had a package. And so all said, it was about 10 days since the cake was delivered to China, and when it was delivered to my work. So the question is where was it? The answer is a mystery, though it's safe to surmise that the cake was inspected thoroughly by customs:

The cake was no longer in a round cake like form, but instead was a mass of cake like nuggets, wadded up at the bottom of the Styrofoam shipping container. Though I may have been able to eat it, it seemed like a bad idea, as I imagined a customs official in a drafty airport hanger poking through the cake with a rusty metal baton and cigarette dangling from his mouth. If my sister had sent me any contraband, that guy must have gotten it. On the bright side, I did receive birthday cards from my nice and nephew, and two stylish dishtowels that my sister had also packed.

The second package came on Sunday morning. I knew it was coming as my landlord had told me it would. A few days previous, her and I had been messaging over WeChat along with the real estate agent. The rent was due and I needed to send my landlord the money over WeChat. Of course we're not really talking, as I can't write anything beyond a few stock phrases in Chinese and my landlord has zero command of English. WeChat however can translate, and so I write in English, and she writes in Chinese and most of the time we can understand what each other is talking about. At any rate, after paying the rent, my landlord, who refers to me as "little handsome" (she is an elderly woman), said that she would send me a chicken in the mail. Not knowing what else to say, I wrote back, “好的,” or, "Ok." And so on Sunday morning it arrived:

This is the first time I've confronted an entire chicken. I typically don't cook chicken, but when I have in the past it has already been cut up. So I thought, I don't know what to do with this, I don't know how to cook it, I don't have the write tools or a big enough pot, and I wonder if anyone I know wants it. So I messaged a number of my colleagues and waited. The first colleague passed, but the second took it, and then a third wanted it, and then another, my neighbor, suggested we cook it together. So that evening I went over to his apartment and watched as he cut up the chicken: cutting off its head, its' feet, tearing out its guts and then breaking into smaller pieces. We used a pressure cooker to cook it along with potatoes and onions, and then mixed everything with Thai curry. It was delicious, and I have an entire pot of it left over that I'm looking forward to eating over the course of the week.

There is one easy takeaway from this story: don't send cakes to China. My sister said she would try it thinking her chances were 50/50. I think they were much lower than that however. The internet tells me that food must be packaged with a complete ingredients list and have a shelf life of 6 months (or in other words, "non-perishable"). One must follow the rules, especially in China. And so at the same time I receive another message from this destroyed cake, one that is a bit more ominous. Incidents like these are offset by my charming landlord and the wide spread everyday kindness that I routinely experience. And so I didn't get to eat cake, but I did get to eat chicken.

VIII

When I was nineteen I spent a year in Japan living with a Japanese family, attending the international division of Waseda University as part of a study abroad program during my junior year of college. It was a transformative experience in many ways, not so much because I immersed myself in Japan and Japanese, but because of how alienating and difficult the experience was. It was during this time that I rediscovered how much I love English and reading, and spent many hours up in my room when I could of been out there, talking to people and being in the world. Instead I was reading Haruki Murakami novels in translation, smoking cigarettes, listening to American indie music, drawing pictures, and doing just enough homework to get by. I was unskilled at Japanese, but more than that, I was shy, had no social skills and not much motivation to reach out. My host family was very kind but not the most talkative people. They generally let me do my own thing. Tadaima, itarakimasu, Gochisousama deshita , and that was about it. I had friends, two close American friends who were both fairly skilled at Japanese, and we spent our time in the arcades, wandering the streets of Tokyo, or at karaoke singing to each other.

During the ninth month, on a break from school, the program sent us out to families in western Japan, in Shimane province, outside of a small town I don't remember the name of anymore. I got along much better with the new host family, and the host family got along better with me. In the span of a month my language ability improved ten fold, talking with the host mother and father, and the elder daughter who I had an unrealized flirtation with. That's another story. But I liked this family. In part because they required that I hang out with them. They insisted. I would sit around drinking with the father and his neighbor trying to understand their jokes, or go for hikes with the mother and the younger siblings. I don't know if it was a difference between small town people and city people, or that fact that I had been studying Japanese for the previous eight months, or just the change in scenery, but I figured something out about learning a language in Shimane: that for me, connecting with others is essential for my language learning since I don't have strong intrinsic motivations. When I came back to Tokyo, my host family was impressed, but we quickly returned to the silence, my Japanese stagnated, and I came back to the States.

In retrospect, my time in Japan was not very successful from the standpoint of language acquisition. The problem was not my aptitude for learning, or my teachers, or the differences between English and Japanese, but that I was utterly unmotivated. I wanted to speak Japanese, but I had no intrinsic motivation, no vision of who I wanted to be or direction I worked towards. My lack of language learning vision has not really changed. I don't have an idealized version of myself as a multilingual cosmopolitan globe trotter. I don't have an immediate economic need to communicate in Chinese. And though I might appear to have more intrinsic motivation in the form of my job and my broader academic trajectory, I'm not sure this kind of motivation is all that different than having homework to do. Thus if what really works for me is connecting with others, then I need to be patient in terms of sifting though relationships towards lasting ones while steadily improving my basic Chinese such that I can be ready to engage. Little things then, like my desire to read the Chinese names of NBA teams because I find them amusing (e.g. the Philadelphia 76ers are 76人), or joking around with my Chinese tutor are in part what has been pushing my Chinese forward. I do not wish to bask in alienation such as I did in Japan. But then again, I am a much more productive writer when I do. 

VII

Last Friday I went out with a co-worker, her cousin, and a Major in the Republic of Korea Army (ROK) who my co-worker met at semi-random work related event. The Major is attending a government run Chinese language school located near my university, where many other folks from many different countries are also intensively learning Chinese. At any rate, he knew how to drink, and it was my first odd and somewhat out of control evening in China. Not that it was actually out of control, but it was the kind of evening that was hard to come by in Indiana: going to new places and meeting strangers who in all likelihood I will never meet again. The kind of evening that one can only have living in a city, which Kunshan most definitely is at 1.5 million people. We had feast of Korean food, drank soju, beer, and a milky liquid the Major referred to as "mosquito bite." After eating we went to a bar named "Wonderful Too," where there was a band consisting of two people: a woman singer and a guy who played guitar and manned the karaoke like machine on the stage (I was told they were from the Philippines and that they played at that bar every night). They played American songs from the 70's and 80's to a mostly Chinese audience, though I saw more foreigners there than any place I've been to yet in China. We talked loudly over loud music, and opted to leave at eleven (we started at six). Had I stayed out longer, I probably would have drank more and who knows where the evening would have ended up. I'm playing things close to the hip these days though, and by that I mean I'm not comfortable enough here to completely let loose.

Earlier that I day I went out to lunch with a different co-worker and two students. They took us out to a restaurant just off campus and we ate duck with lotus root and a few other side dishes. Fried dumplings too. It was delicious, and after it was all over my students brought out a birthday cake. It was my birthday earlier in the week, and I had told my students through a small writing exercise.. Simply, I tell my students its my birthday and then ask the students to write about what they think they'll be doing when they're thirty-nine years old. Of course, nobody really knows, but I think it's rare that we actually articulate these things to ourselves, much less to each other. As I said to them, and probably wrote about in my other blog at some point, I never really imagined my life past the age of thirty-two or thirty-three. But after getting over the existential hump of feeling like I was no longer young (yes I know reader who is older than me, thirty-nine is young. yeah yeah. yeah yeah yeah. thank you for your wisdom), being older meant that I could be free of the vague visions of my future that I kept when I was younger, though in a strange way I became what I wanted to become, e.g. a writer-teacher/teacher-writer (minus the famous, respected, and comfortably settled part). Meanwhile, while they're writing I'm writing about what I was doing when I was the average age of the class, and then we share. It's fun, and sweet, and I'm always touched by what my students say. Interestingly, most folks, in a very unAmerican kind of way, in addition to their individual plans, mentioned that that would be around the age when they would be taking care of their parents.

On Saturday I worked, but on Sunday I rode my bike out to Yangcheng Lake, about a half hour West of where I live. I explored the little park on pedestrian paths that were inappropriate for a bike, but I had started down them so saw it through. I found a spot by the lake and sat out reading a book. The sun was out and the skies were mostly blue and clear, though occasionally a cloud would pass and it would get a little chilly. Others were sitting by the lake, some on blankets and some with tents, which is new trend for me: bringing tents to public parts to have a semi-private place to lie down. Two couples did this near me, but at some point a security guy came by and told them they couldn't put tents there. I least I assume that's what he said since they put their tents away after that. I continued riding my bike up along the lake, though a large urban farm, and further North for a bit, and then I turned around and came home. On the way I took pictures. Mostly of the trees painted white around their trunks. I don't know why they do this here in China and one day, probably soon, I will find out. I imagine it has to do with pest prevention, or something like that. But they do it everywhere, and very thoroughly. It is getting to be Fall here, but there are still some nice days left.

VI

In the States, some of the Chinese students that I worked with would refer to any non-Chinese person as "foreign." Technically this is correct. Or as the dictionary tells it:

for·eign
/ˈfôrən/
adjective 

1. of, from, in, or characteristic of a country or language other than one's own 

Since I am an American who identifies as an American, anyone who is not an American is foreign. Anyone who does not speak English, by this definition, is foreign. And likewise, for a Chinese citizen who identifies as a Chinese citizen, anyone who is not Chinese is foreign. Yet, in practice, in the United States at least, the word might be more likely to be associated with the negative connotations of its second definition:

2. strange and unfamiliar

As a language or writing teacher, I consider my job as to help students become more skilled communicators, thus raising awareness of their rhetorical choices is part of what I try to do. So when a student would use this word, and we were in a tutoring or other one-on-one setting, I would let them know that Americans might take offense, that it tends to mean something bad, "strange," and that they should be aware of this connotation. People are called foreign as a derogatory term, though perhaps in legalese, medicine, other instrumental uses of English, foreign might be more descriptive (foreign governments, foreign bodies, foreign language, etc.).

This potential danger of the term was particularly important to communicate to the graduate Teaching Assistants I was working with, as referring to an American undergraduate as foreign is to risk insulting them by mistake. Of course, we were in Indiana, a rural state where many of the undergraduate students at Purdue came from places where they had little exposure to diverse communities. This coupled with the occasionally present red state rhetorics of the problematic immigrants, underexposure to racial and cultural diversity, and a distrust of "liberal academics," made the teacher/student power dynamics a zone rife with potential conflicts. Not that I heard about an excessive amount of incidents from these TAs, but I've heard enough to know that these problems exist. With the word foreign, I'd point out its potential interpretation under the pretense that I was doing my students a favor. Then again, these kinds of responsibilities could swing the other way, and we could teach the undergraduates to approach their foreign teaching assistants with an open mind, or better yet, expose them to different varieties of English and other kinds of cultural knowledge to meet these TAs half-way (my colleague at work is involved in study doing just that; to see if giving students training in different English varieties makes a difference in teaching evaluations, which tend to be lower for international TAs).

Just as importantly, or despite the rationale of trying to be the conscientious teacher I discuss above, the word foreign has a negative connotation that reverberates through my system, and this is also why I bring it to the attention of students: Because I recoil at being referred to as foreign in my own country. Part of me thinks, who are you to call me foreign? Which of course I don't say, or even articulate fully to myself. I'm too polite to do that. Yet here in China, I don't mind being foreign since it's true: I am foreign, both by definition #1 and #2. And further, unlike in the states, a faint pride emanates from this designation. That I am not of this place or these people entirely, and thus this designation grants me a particular kind of freedom, one where I have the option to engage or not. We could call this "privilege," i.e. "a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group," which in this case I'm defining as an immunity from the trials and tribulations of being a Chinese citizen, whatever that may mean. I am insulated not only from the legal definitions that my nationality provides, or the social responsibilities of not being Chinese, but also of things like the language, which my ignorance and illiteracy allows me to easily disengage with. Of course from another perspective these aspects of foreignness are not privileges, but avenues of alienation. A few nights ago on my way home from work a man on a scooter pulled up to the stop light, and looked at a map on his phone. He seemed a bit lost and turned to ask me something, but I could not understand him. On the one hand I was a foreigner free of any obligation. On the other I was a foreigner of no use to anyone. 

V

From the outside looking in, I suppose the way I look is the most obvious thing about being foreign; that I am most obviously foreign to others here in China. People will stare at me when I walk down the street, ride the bus, walk around a grocery store, and generally, in whatever it is I do. Some folks will stare boldly, non-stop, and when I look back at them they keep starting. I wonder if they are being confrontational, rude, oblivious, amazed, or some combination therein. Some folks look more slyly from the corners of their eyes and when I look back they stop. Once on my way to work I was stopped on my bike at an intersection next to a man on a scooter. He looked at me, and I looked back at him. Usually this prompts the person to stop provided I hold my gaze for a few seconds, but this man would not look away. After a long four seconds I spoke: 你好 (Nǐ hǎo), hello, and he looked away. I don't know what he was thinking or what he wanted. On Friday I went to dinner with a few co-workers, and a few of the folks who worked there took pictures of us. This is not unusual. I like to think it doesn't bother me much, but I am somewhat oblivious to it when walking down the street or riding the bus. It's possible that this obliviousness is a defense mechanism: people may be looking at me but I don't want to look at them. This is some combination of shyness, or willful ignorance. I'd rather look out the window, or read a book, or scroll through my phone.

For now I'm still enjoying the novelty of being novel, and rarely has this attention been hostile or confrontational. On Saturday I went to play basketball at a private gym with one of my co-workers. I don't know if I attract extra attention on the basketball court because I am foreign, or if it is because I am taller and/or heavier than most of the other players. Of course its both, but part of me wants to think that the player guarding me takes special delight in blocking the foreigner's shot or shooting over his outstretched hands. Then again, back in the States, I would think the same thing playing in Indiana, though instead of being foreign it was being older that made me paranoid and alienated. There are a million ways to other each other, and I am certainly capable of making the smallest distinctions in search of injustice. Regardless, the other people at the gym were generally friendly, though for a while there was a group of mid-20 something dudes that were really good and really arrogant. They laughed and chatted while they tore through the competition as well as any group of fraternity brothers I encountered in Indiana. There are bros everywhere in the world, including China. In this instance, maybe a few of them took special joy in showing up the foreigner, but they seemed to enjoy showing up everyone they faced.

One area where it's more problematic being foreign is in language.  The other day at my universities little cafe, I ordered some tea but forgot to pay. As I took my tea and turned away the cashier called me back, saying something I could not completely understand, but understood well enough to know that I had forgotten to pay. The man in line behind me, not a student or faculty or staff at my university, a man who was probably there for a conference being hosted on the campus, said to the cashier that I did not understand. The cashier then said to the man, yes, he doesn't understand. Flustered, I said to them both, "听不懂" (tīng bù dǒng). This was not what I should of said, since 听不懂 means "I do not understand." What I should have said, and what I meant to say was "我明白" (Wǒ míngbái), "I understand." Alas. In that moment I got it wrong. I hope that at least they were confused as to what I meant, since I tried to say it defiantly. Or back at the gym, I asked the clerk at the desk for water in Mandarin, and my co-worker quickly translated for me without giving the clerk the opportunity to make sense of what I had just said. Yes my pronunciation is a work in progress, but what I've noticed is that many attempts to speak Chinese sometimes go unrecognized. My foreign accent, plus my anxiety inducing presence will seemingly, for some, preclude the possibility of generously listening; a presumption that I do not speak the language. 

IV

About a week ago I noted an insect, about the size of a thumbnail, crawling up the curtain in my bedroom. It looked like what in Indiana I would call "stink bugs," though they were about half the size of this bug. Its shell resembled a knight's shield, a grey and black diamond shape at the bottom and squared off at the top. With legs. In my old apartment they would crawl up the curtains, and sometimes fly from one end of the room to the other with a loud, not particularly graceful buzzing sound that ended in a thud when they landed on their target, which was usually the reading lamp behind my couch. Maggie (the cat) and I would look up from what we were doing, and then go back to our business. They were completely innocuous. They never landed on my person, touched my food, or multiplied in gross ways in the nooks and crannies of my apartment (though I would find dead ones in all the corners, on their back with their legs curled in). I mostly let them do what they did because there were never very many of them and they moved so slowly. They were almost cute. One day I asked my entomologist friend about them, where he thought they might be coming from. He said that they probably came from the trees outside, whose foliage was on the same level as my second floor windows.

These associations in mind, I regarded this Chinese stink bug similarly. It looked the same though a little bit bigger. I don't see very many bugs in my apartment, and generally haven't seen many bugs here in China asides from mosquitoes. I'm not sure why. At any rate, I tried to brush him into a cup, and therein, I would proceed to toss him out the window. I reached up to get him with the edge of the cup but he moved up the curtain just a little faster than I anticipated, out of reach. I got a chair and stood on it, but he had already moved to a place where I couldn't see him anymore. I opened the window and thought that maybe he would see himself out. He didn't. The next day when I woke up and walked into my living room he was walking slowly across the interior window ledge, halfway in-between the Pocari Sweat bottle that I'm growing an eggplant in and the window on the far end. The sun was shining. Wary of our last encounter and not wanting to dink around with him, I opened the window he seemed to be heading toward and went off to work. He didn't exit that time either. Over the next few days I saw him daily in my living room. Always in the morning. It felt like we were roommates, like an old friend. He also lived here and had his routines. And there he was again, walking slowly across the white tiled floor in a beam of sunshine. It was comforting and I imagined he was living the life he wanted.

Yesterday, Saturday, there he was again. I was washing dishes, making breakfast, and watching basketball. As my dishes were soaking in the sink I leaned against the couch to watch the game, and he seemed to be heading towards me. Unnerved, I got up to do things, and when I came back he was gone. For whatever reason, I wondered what he'd been eating or drinking. I wondered if the white tile floor was a good place to be, or if it was a strange landscape to him, a barren desert with no food or water or other creatures that looked like him. I wondered if he wanted to be here, or just didn't know how to get out. I thought about how he got inside, since my apartment on the 12th floor was too high up for the trees to brush against, it seemed unlikely that he had crawled up the side of the building. I thought that maybe he had hitchhiked, on my bike possibly, which when at school would be parked close to some dense bushes. Maybe he was looking for food, or a mate, on the underside of my bike, and suddenly his whole world began to move. By the time I had these thoughts he had wandered out of my view and I resolved that the next time I saw him I'd put him outside. And so this morning as soon as I opened my bedroom door there he was. I pushed him into a cup, took the elevator down, walked into the bushes, and shook him out onto the ground. Now you are where you belong, I said.

III

The last week we've been concentrating intently on tones. Mandarin Chinese (for those who don't know) has four "tones," which essentially means changes in pitch within the space of one syllable. English, or at least American English, generally doesn't change pitch within a syllable, but from syllable to syllable, going up and down. Of course in Mandarin they are not called syllables. Instead a unit of sound is divided into what's known as initials and finals. Initials resembling what in English are called consonants, and finals resembling what in English is called vowels. As I explain to students when I teach English pronunciation, a vowel is the breath and the consonant is the rudder to steer it (actually I don't use such poetic language when I teach), and so the tones come into play on the final, controlled by the rising and falling of air. As in 西, which in pinyin, the sort of English alphabet version of Chinese, is pronounced "xī," and translated as west, or the West. In pinyin then "x" is pronounced like the /s/ in she, and "i" like the /ē/ in see. Xī then sounds like she, except for the tone, the line over the i that bumps up the pitch a few notches. So instead of she, it's xī, and there is no way to write what it sounds like in English without resorting to metaphor. Meanwhile, the high pitch vibrates the back of my throat, and contrasts with the low vibration of she. I have to stretch my cheeks to get it out.

The tones are tricky to hear. In Mandarin there are four. The first tone I just described. The others involve rising and falling, a / over the letter indicating a tone that that rises like a question, a \/ over the letter indicates a rising and falling, and the \ indicates a falling only, a sharp and quick tone that is easier for me to distinguish than the other two I just mentioned. The first one, the line over the letter described above, is more comfortable to say, like singing a high note. It doesn't bend or drop or demand me to do anything other than raise my voice within the imagined space of a syllable. After three months the child begins to distinguish individual phonemes says the language acquisition scientists. And for the rest of its life it will continue to hone its ability to make finer distinctions of the world around it, from sound to shape to color to faces to voices and then when it gets older, to words to people to things. We get good at specializing and are rewarded for it, each one of us an expert in seeing the things our sense have been tuned to see. When I was a kid my brother liked to fall asleep with the television on, and though I was in another room, and two closed doors away, I could not tune it out, laying awake in rage. Today at the crowded cafe doing class prep for the week I had no problem concentrating. Everyone else was Chinese.

This last week my tutor helped me work on finals. We spent the bulk of two hours repeating the sounds of a - o - e - i - u - ü. Though they may look innocuous on the computer screen, they are quite difficult. Part of their difficulty is that I have to unlearn how I read those letters in addition to learning the sounds. "a" is easy, like "ah," provided I keep my tone up. "o" is like saying "whah" except the top of my jaw is tied to the bottom jaw and I've found that if I take a minute to uncouple them, and only open my lower jaw to make the sound my tutor gives the signal that I've done some thing right. "e" is like "uh" and in the context of the rest of the sounds, when practicing, at first gave me fits but it no longer does. "i" is easy, pronounced like the Japanese video game "Y's," that Aaron, when we were kids, insisted was pronounced /ē/'s, and though I was never really sure, I did it anyway. "u" is like "ooh," but higher in tone and it takes me as second to find the form, my lips rounded and protruding. "ü" is like "eww," gross, except is held longer and vibrates, and doesn't have the e part of eww. My ears then don't work, and instead I rely on my ability to string logical directions together (i.e. thoughts) and the shape of my face; the muscles in my mouth and their memory. If I'm working hard my jaw and lips are sore and my brain is tired. Like and athlete, it seems to me, some soreness is a requisite of progress. Which in this case is a foundation of intelligible and manageable pronunciation upon which I can build the rest of my language skills on. I've been told that this is the way to do Mandarin.

II

Language is the first and most noticeable thing about being foreign. At least from the inside looking out. I am illiterate in China, and I have a little knowledge of the spoken language. Over the summer I took a Chinese 101 class but it was on-line and also, I didn't finish it, opting to marshal my resources towards more pressing academic obligations, packing, and trying to catch my breath before coming here. A week into the semester I started taking Chinese courses in my department, the Language and Culture Center, and I meet with one of our Chinese teachers once a week for an hour. Additionally I meet with the intern in our department for three hours a week for additional tutoring, mostly practice and pronunciation. It's a good amount of direct attention I believe, and though I haven't learned much, or then again maybe I've learned a lot. I don't know. I've learned some, and can form simple sentences and answer simple questions.The other day in the elevator a neighbor, I think, asked me where I was from and I answered him. It was the first successful bit of communication in Chinese that didn't involve the exchange of money.

Today I traveled to Suzhou to look for a new bike. Using a mapping program, it was pretty easy to find the right bus. I got on the C1 and rode it for about fifty minutes, where I then transferred to the green subway line, rode it for about five stops, and then got out and walked, following the directions on the map. The software is exactly like google maps. I push the button that looks like a bus, and the map pops up, showing me my different public transportation options. I choose one then I get a list of step-by-step instructions.

I don't need to know the rest of the characters on the map, or at least it seems like I don't. Instead I'm riding the bus, looking out the window at the lake to the north; watching the old man fall asleep in the seat in front of me. Across the aisle there is a little girl sitting in her father's lap, and she squirms for a while before she too falls asleep.

In Suzhou, when I got to where the lines had lead me, I discovered that the bike store I was trying to find was located in a shopping mall. Further, I found that it wasn't a bike store at all, but a cluster of high-end apparel stores that for some reason had about five bikes in glass cases. I double checked the rest of the stores and the mall directory, looking for a hidden bike retailer, and eventually asked the security guard in my simple Chinese where the bike store was. He led me back to the cluster of five bikes. I thanked him, and then left. All said, the trip was not a total loss. I found my way to Suzhou on my own, and was able to navigate both the inter-city bus and the Suzhou subway system. On my way back to Kunshan I thought about what my boss told me, that when I plan to do something in China I should plan on two trips: the first to find out how to do what I need to do, and the second to do it. Tonight when writing this story, I started to write about language but ended up inside my experience. To find out how to do what I need to do, and then to do it.

I

I arrived in China on August 12th, 2017. I'll be here for at least three years, working at Duke Kunshan University as an assistant professor in the Language and Culture Center, teaching academic writing and speaking, along with my other duties as faculty. This blog is about the experience of being foreign in China. Of course this means it is also about China, as much as it is about my experience. It also means that this blog is about being American, and to subdivide further, about being a white male American in China. And even further, about being in Kunshan, a city about 19 minutes via high speed train outside of Shanghai. A "suburb" as it's called, though there are 1.5 million people in the area. Already then I offer a definition of foreignness: that of the solitary figure in a large impersonal landscape hanging somewhere on a panel at the Asian art museum. For now though I will have to start here, as my foreignness is fledgling and indistinct. 

I am a novice when it comes to China. I have not studied its history, asides from a course I took in high school; nor its language asides from the intro to Chinese course that I took over the summer. But I have worked with many Chinese students over the last twelve years of teaching writing and ESL, which is partly why I was qualified for this position. Further, I have been reading about China in the newspapers for many years, its trends and economics and politics, and I have, more generally, always been interested in East Asian culture, literature, and philosophy. I spent a year in Japan when I was an undergraduate student and this had a profound impact by leading me down the path of working with international students, which maybe not so surprisingly, has lead me back to Asia nearly 20 years later. China, as we all know, is a happening place. And so this is another reason why I am here: for the sake of novelty, a vain desire to gain knowledge through experience. 

There are other reasons, and as I write further into this blog, as relevant, I will share them. If motivations are the root of experience, then it seems necessary to explore them further. On that note, I do not want this blog to be about me sitting on my couch and looking out at China from the window of my 12th floor apartment. Which points at another motivation, i.e. that I wanted to try again to live outside of the United States. When I was in Japan I was more interested in tending to my own thoughts and feelings than I was in tending to Japan. Now that I am here, I have an opportunity to experience foreigness again as a semi-competent adult, and so getting out into China is an essential part of why I am here. I am still terrified of the outside world as I was when I was 19, but the difference now is that I have some confidence that no matter what happens, things will be alright. This is a kind of freedom, and it allows me to take the kinds of risks, be it speaking to a stranger or venturing out alone, that I would be reluctant to take when I was younger. And now I am in China.  Welcome.