Curiosity spans generations, though the ways it expresses itself changes.
Tonight I sat in a subway car, reading a Chinese book. Normally this is not something that would cause a scene, but seeing a foreigner reading in Chinese was unusual enough that the man next to me couldn’t hold back. He was older, perhaps in his late fifties; his extended family sat aside and across from him. For the purpose of our curiosity experiment, this is “Old China.”
“Where are you from?” the man asked me in Chinese.
“Guess,” I said, in an attempt to deviate from the script of half a dozen rote questions that form the first five minutes of meeting any Chinese person for the first time.
“I don’t know… America?” he said.
“Right!” I said.
“Look,” the man said to his wife across the aisle. “He speaks Chinese!”
He also happens to be sitting next to you while you talk about him in the third person, I thought, annoyed… although I know that for Old China, talking about me understanding Chinese as though I do not understand Chinese is not as great a feat of cognitive dissonance as one might think.
The question parade continued. How old are you? How long have you been in China? A year and a half? How did you learn Chinese?
Foreigners living in China answer these questions multiple times a day, especially if they do not shove earbuds in their ears and talk loudly in English to other foreigners while out on the town. While it seems like it would be a trying ordeal to explain these facts over and over again, the strain is somewhat mitigated by the earnest interest that the questioners have. Old China genuinely wants to know, and genuinely cares. Sure, they might not whether you’re from Canada or America, but they are curious even though it doesn’t really matter where you’re from.
Old China continued to speak about me in the third person (“Look! He can read!”) until the next stop. At that point, he stuck out his hand, grinned, and in English, said, “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome!” I said.
As the man left, another man on the subway said to him, “Speak some more English!” He, along with the rest of the car, had been listening to the conversation, and everyone chuckled. The joke? Of course the man couldn’t say anything more.
Some people got on, some people got off. Another man, about the same age as the first, sat down next to me, and stared at the book. He frowned in confusion. “Where are you from?” he asked me.
The man who talked to me grew up in the communist era of China. His first time hearing the word “America” was likely in the context of “The War to Defeat American Imperialism and Save Korea”, which we shorten to “The Korean War.”
After extreme famine and governmental mismanagement during the Great Leap Forward and a decade lost to the Cultural Revolution, people of this generation emerged into a China that rapidly began to build. I sometimes see old women sitting out on chairs on the side of a busy four-lane highway. Looking at the scene, you wonder why they chose to sit there, at such a busy street. The answer is simple: They have always sat there. Not twenty years ago most of Beijing was vegetable farms. China has changed around them, and now buildings grow where vegetables once did. The people have not changed; amazingly, they are the one constant that ties China back to its past amidst the burgeoning concrete.
They way Old China treats me reminds me of the “favorite grandmother.” She is unconditionally kind to you (though might complain you are being spoiled to others) She always asks how you are doing, but never really wants to know how you are doing. It’s almost impossible to get out of the conversation without being invited over for dinner. But at the same time, you are—and will always be—a child. You don’t know this world, they think, but that’s not a problem. Children don’t need to know the world.
And, as the train emptied and refilled and the exact same conversation started up again, I was left not with a sense of déjà vu, but rather that Chinese society, at this level, has another trait of our “favorite grandmother”: mild dementia.
I explain my existence; it goes in one person’s head, out the subway door, and then in walks another person with the exact same questions.
At the end of my ride, I stood up for the last minute or so of travel and waited by the door. At the door, a young man with a baseball cap noticed me. Let’s call him “New China.”
He saw my book. He smiled and spoke up right away. “Where are you going?” he asked me in English.
“Well, I live at Jishuitan, but I am not going to make the transfer now, it’s too late,” I said in Chinese.
New China grew up in an age of smart phones wifi, and Starbucks. Their first assosciation with America is that of power, wealth, and the best education in the world. Amongst New Chinese, the most broadly used social currency in China is how good your English is. They read Western History, know of Shakespeare and Dante but have never read Marx or Lenin. They watch Friends and the Big Bang Theory in addition to The Voice of China and Chinese Idol. When they see foreigners, they speak to them in English.
Oftentimes New Chinese will speak to you in English for two reasons. One, because it is assumed that you, as a foreigner, know no Chinese, and Two, to practice their own English. Young people without enough confidence in their English to hold a conversation but who still want to practice will still speak to you at first in English, though they will slump their shoulders and speak straight into the ground while doing so. Young Chinese who have completely given up on speaking English will speak to you in Chinese. Almost always the contact is initiated by them. They are looking to make friends.
He was a bit taken aback by the Chinese, I think, and so it fell to me to say the next line. “Are you heading in that direction?”
“No,” he responded in Chinese, “I am going to Beijing University. I go to school there.”
I nodded. I could hear his mind churning. The exact same thing that Old China wanted to know, New China wanted to know too. But the questions were too awkward, too direct, too empty. New China speaks English! New China wants to be more substantive! New China would never want to treat foreigners in the same stilted ways as Old China!
But New China also has very little experience interacting with the outside world. As I got out of the car, he didn’t say anything more, other than “bye!” and waving me cheerily goodbye as I exited the station.
I knew that this person would probably love to grab dinner sometime and chat, and learn about me. I knew I should have smiled, cracked a joke, and invited him to dinner or gone to visit him at Beijing University.
But even with New China, which will understand me more than Old China ever could, it still requires quite a bit of investment to establish a relationship with. If we met, those same questions would still be asked, albeit more tactfully, and it would still be a half an hour before we even knew if we wanted to actually hang out with each other.
Part of the fun of living in a foreign country is to find and make new friends, and I love meeting Chinese people. I don’t begrudge them at all the chance to ask me questions about myself—after all, sharing about cultures is what I do.
But when it comes to friends, there is indeed an investment. Some of my Chinese friends have known me for three years. Some of my Chinese friends perform theatre with me, rehearse with me, laugh with me. These people are people I treasure, and my relationships with them are deep, meaningful, and cherished. The more I live here, and the deeper those relationships become, the harder it gets to answer “Where are you from?” and “How did you learn Chinese?” with a stranger, no matter how interested and eager they are.
But I know I should have done a better job on the subway. The reason is simple. I have the chance to come here, to meet Chinese people. So many Chinese people would love to go to Boston and meet Americans, but can’t. To me, this introduction is tedious, but to them, it opens up a world outside of China. The value to them is great; the cost to me is minimal. And so it is important that we remember that the information we want to share about ourselves is not always the information others are interested in, and that different generations live in different worlds.
Curiosity, after all, spans generations, though the ways it expresses itself changes.
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