Friendlies

Being a conspicuous waiguoren in Beijing does have its perks. On Saturday, our assignment was to get to Tiananmen Square - via three different types of public transportation - and try to engage various people in conversation. Because we were just blindly following the instructions on our assignment sheet, Kearney and I brought a map - but we didn't even have to open it. Everybody we asked for directions gave them to us - from where to check our bags (to see Mao) to the hutongs to Wangfujing, it just took a "qing wen?" and we had a helpful Beijingren pointing us in the right direction.

We even got someone to lend us their phone. It felt super sketchy to be sizing people up - should we go for an older person? A young couple, since they probably both have phones? A single young person, cuz they're waiting around anyway?
The first guy didn't agree to lend his phone, and our phone-couple was pretty suspicious of our motives - they seemed scared that we were about to call our American laoshi, and were reassured when they saw the Beijing telephone number on our instruction sheet - but in the end, they did blindly lend us their phone. Thank you, phone-couple. It's odd that it gives you credibility to be white and foreign, but it does. You're so conspicuous enough that people aren't threatened by you.

Luisa, the only ethnically Asian person on our program, definitely noticed the discrepancy between waiguoren and zhongguoren. Since the Olympics, security has seriously cracked down on major tourist areas - luggage is X-rayed in the subway and in the entrances to Tiananmen. The white students kept walking past the checkpoint, but Luisa was yelled at to put her bag through the scanner machine.
It's weird, really, because aren't we all protesters? Pitzer and Whitman and really, any liberal arts school, we all love to protest. And yet the Chinese government isn't threatened by us... because we're so conspicuous, easily picked out, and easily deported, I suppose. Our presence here hangs tenuously on our visas, so nobody is scared of us. They lend us phones and give us directions and entreat us to spend our money, spend our money, you have so much money!

It does have its perks, but there's definitely frustrating downsides. I won't get lost in Beijing, but I'll also never get lost in the crowd. I think that's where most of my culture-shock frustration with China stems from... from the constant otherizing.
I'm good now, but I know that that's why, at the end of my time here, I'll be ready to be part of the greater population - of America, Russia, or whatever country will actually accept me - again.