Photos: Fotos China by Jorge Santiago

“Do you consider yourself Chinese or American?” the Chinese man sitting across from me on the plane asked in Mandarin.

“American,” I answered after a short pause. Having been born and raised in the United States, I believed it to be the only appropriate response.

He groaned. “You should say you’re Chinese,” he replied. “And it seems like you don’t speak Chinese very well, either.” He sighed. “That’s what always happens to our people when they go abroad. They become foreigners.”

The man’s words stung me as I was heading to China for the very first time. Growing up, I had always been aware of my dual identity. I spoke English at school and Cantonese at home, and attended Chinese school to develop my reading and writing skills.

I loved shrimp dumplings and rice noodles as much as mac and cheese and pizza. And although my family did not speak Mandarin, the official language of the People’s Republic of China, my parents signed me up for classes, adding to the Spanish instruction I received in my regular school.

Yet it was clear from this encounter that because I grew up across the ocean from the motherland, in an environment that was predominantly non-Chinese, the cultural influences that had shaped me were largely American, a fact that this man did not appreciate. I soon realized that despite sharing the heritage of the inhabitants of this country, I was an outsider.

No Homecoming

I was extremely disconcerted to get such reception from a native Chinese. Having spent my entire life as a racial minority in the United States, I had looked forward to being in a country in which I could blend in. I’d figured that my ethnic ties, as well as a familiarity with the language, would give me an advantage over tourists without that connection to the country.

But throughout the trip, I still found myself struggling to communicate in Mandarin, which I’d studied as a foreign language just as I had with Spanish. My family and I were sometimes charged foreigner prices because we were overseas Chinese. And each of the locales we visited were thousands of miles from the home villages of our ancestors, making them seem as exotic as Malawi or India. What I had envisioned as a heritage trip felt like anything but a homecoming.

Motherland travel can sometimes be more challenging than visiting a country in which you are an obvious foreigner. You’re expected to speak the language with the same command as a native and possess the same cultural proclivities, as if you have spent your entire life in that country.

But when your foreignness is obvious, the locals are often sensitive to your foreign ways, respecting any cultural differences and linguistic shortcomings. This seemed to be the case when I studied abroad in Spain and France, where I did not have any clear ancestral ties. My Spanish senora and her husband were patient with my roommates and me as we developed our Spanish skills, and understood that we were not accustomed to eating dinner after 8 pm. There was a mutual awareness of the cultural gaps that existed between us, and on each side, we did our best to accommodate for them.

My situation in China was not unique. A friend of mine who has spent extensive time in Mexico recalled that Mexicans would sometimes look down upon her Mexican-American friends for their imperfect Spanish and for having forgotten their culture, but were appreciative of the fact that she, a pale-skinned American, spoke their language at all and showed interest in their country.

Matador Trips editor Hal Amen also recalled that when lived in South Korea, Koreans would often become upset that his Korean-American friends, who were often assumed to be natives, did not speak the language fluently and were not familiar with the culture.

In contrast, Hal found that the locals were “thrilled” when he could dig into his basic Korean vocabulary, and that they would make an effort to start conversations in English and make foreigners like himself feel welcome in the country. He attributed this reception to the fact that South Korea does not receive many foreign travelers and to the Koreans’ fascination with the West, with the English language in particular.

Thinking more about my experience, I realized a few things about China. When I first visited in 1998, its society was still fairly insular, having emerged only in the 1970s from a decades-long isolation from international engagement. It still would have been difficult for many people to understand why someone who was supposedly Chinese did not speak their language fluently and thought of herself to be of a nationality other than their own.

They probably found it an insult that I rejected their country and culture, in which they had such fierce pride, and adopted that of a foreign nation. A similar logic can be applied to countries like Mexico and South Korea. My situation was further complicated by the fact that my parents grew up in Hong Kong when it was still a colony of the United Kingdom, and where Mandarin, China’s national language, was not spoken.

Reclaiming My Identity

After a second family visit to China in 2000, I avoided traveling to China. I studied abroad in London, Madrid, and Paris, where I would be free from misgivings about being out of touch with my cultural identity. In Europe, I could be just another foreigner learning about new cultures and picking up new vocabulary, whose American ways would not be questioned. I admired famous works of art, discovered new foods, took siestas in the middle of the afternoon, and conversed in languages I did not grow up with.

In all my travels, I’ve always identified the United States as my home, but have been forced to acknowledge that my roots are somewhere in Asia. And while I am proud of the fact that I gained proficiency in Spanish and French during my stint in Europe, I do feel guilty for not having put the same effort into mastering Chinese.

I have yet to return to China, in part because I still lack the fluency in Mandarin that would be expected of me and because of fears that I would be derided as a sellout.

I do plan on returning one day, and when that happens, I’ll have to keep in mind that I might come under greater scrutiny than someone of Western stock, and that any cultural gaffes or deficiencies in language won’t be shrugged off the way they were in Poland or Spain.

But I realize now that I at least deserve to give myself a break, even if the locals will not. I did not make a conscious choice to reject the country, culture, and language of my ancestors. Because I grew up in the United States, it was practically inevitable that English would become my primary language, and that I would become integrated into American life.

Mandarin was essentially my third language, and my classes occurred only weekly, which was inadequate if I wanted to
achieve fluency in a difficult language that requires more years of study than Spanish.

I have never thought of myself as purely Chinese or American, but as Chinese-American. I shouldn’t feel ashamed of the fact that I am more savvy with American culture and speak English, and possibly Spanish and French, better than I speak Mandarin. What matters is that I am aware of my identity and am comfortable with it, and can only hope that native Chinese will respect that.

Photo: Justin Beckley Feature Photo: Richard0

Still lives on the ancient speech
Still the ancient songs endure
-John Ceiriog Hughes

Mae hen wlad fy nhadau — the land of my fathers.

Except it’s not, because I’m not Welsh, so why, as people are always asking me, would I want to learn it? Especially when everyone in Wales now speaks English anyway (the days of the odd little old lady in the hills who doesn’t know a word of Saesneg are gone).

I learn it because I love the place, because I’m curious, because the sound of it to me is a song and not the ‘spitting’ that people make fun of. It’s songs and anthems, hills and the black slate cliffs down to the ocean. It’s poetry. It has a cadence which I find irresistible, as well as an earthy, real connection to the land and a utilitarian feel.

I moved to Cardiff to do a degree in English (“Arse-backwards, just like the Welsh,” grumbles my Irish mother), and along with my literature modules I signed up for a module of Wlpan, two lessons a week as an optional extra in the first year. We went from whispering strange words and trying to remember that ll is a letter of the alphabet and w is a vowel to writing a regular ‘What I did on the weekend’ piece, suitably censored.

I got all firsts, the only first grade marks I ever got, and the bilingual road signs and shouting rugby fans began to make a bit of sense.

After four years in cosmopolitan Cardiff, I was back in West Wales and immersed in a bilingual area. A Welsh teacher found me shamrocking Guinness and struggling to understand some farmers. He hired me to work in his traditional Welsh woollen mill — threading spools, winding bobbins and finishing thick rugs made of Welsh wool on hundred-year-old looms that shook the old building.

Photo: Mr. T in DC

“Arswd y byd!“ (the surprise of the world!) he would shout over the clatter of the shuttle whenever I deflected a shot of dour Welsh sarcasm with a perfectly-conjugated reply, all the mutations in the correct places (Welsh slides together, initial consonants blurring to make it run like a cold Preseli mountain stream). After a few weeks he refused to speak any English to me at all.

I remember spinning the bobbins, 30 at once on a machine at least 50 years old, while flipping flashcards and reciting the color and number rhymes taught to primary school kids. I remember reading the Western Mail. I remember tying endless knots in rug fringes, hands soft from the lanolin left in the wool, listening to BBC Radio Cymru, a few words from each sentence penetrating the soft hill fog of the fast, authoritative Welsh.

He took me to Rome to watch Wales versus Italy in the Six Nations. I watched the girls from Ponty Yn cael piss in the gutter, the Italians bemused but loving the atmosphere, and I untangled south Walian rhythms while trying to order a Peroni in Italian. I listened to my teacher and his brother, the Minister for Sport and Culture, discuss Welsh politics and Assembly gossip over one of the best Italian meals I’ve ever eaten in a little backstreet restaurant.

I got better. I found the courage to speak in Welsh to people who knew I was English and felt inordinate amounts of pride when they spoke Welsh back. I remember transactions in shops, totally simple, but totally understood, and the person behind the counter not even blinking. They think I really can speak it!

The pub was a great part of thing as it is a great part of rural Welsh life. One of the best breakthroughs was speaking Welsh when drunk and people still understanding me. (I think.) Once I joined in a rousing chorus of Calon Lân (Pure Heart), the most beautiful song in the world, and the Welshies looked at me in surprise (maybe just because I don’t have the Welsh talent for singing!).

Photo: Fotologic

I remember the frustrations of Wenglish — asking someone, “What’s the Welsh for tractor?” and being told, “Ur, tractor”. Is it, though? Wenglish means you can carry on with your conversation, because everyone shoves English words in where there is no Welsh word, or more likely because they just don’t know the Welsh word. But I want to know the right word for tractor. (In this case it is, actually, tractor…)

I remember the utter pain of being totally unable to understand someone. Some Welsh speakers, and not just the ones who speak ‘pro-pur’ Welsh, I can understand just fine, others I have no chance. Their accent, or just something in the way they use the language, loses me. How does that work? Mind you, there are some people I just cannot ‘get’ in any language… Two steps forward, one back.

I began to dream in Welsh, which I think is a mark of fluency. The poet in me loves the words, and starts to play with them more. It’s beautiful to find words that really suit their meaning, sometimes better than they do in English. Cariad is the best example — it means love, and the pronunciation renders it a caress in itself.

Or cwtch, which has no direct translation, but means ‘safe place’. It’s used like ‘cuddle’ — ‘come here and give me a cwtch’, or ‘cwtch up’. The tiniest house in my village is called Y Cwtch.

With Welsh you’re learning mythology, history, folklore, magic, tradition and geography as well as the language. You’re learning the pride of a national identity that was nearly wiped out but is now growing stronger.

There’s never an end to learning a language, so I can’t say I’ve learned Welsh, no, not yet.

Feature Photo: joiseyshowaa Photo: ahron

After the hour-long scooter ride to a scheduled appointment at a research center and a forty minute wait in the lobby, the secretary finally felt it was time to share that the coordinator was not coming in at all—our meeting was canceled.

Almost nine months into being here, I’ve come to find that in Bangladeshi culture people constantly talk, but no one communicates. Words are thrown around in conversation, but they are seldom concise and often add irrelevant information. Meetings that could have been accomplished with a five-minute phone call turn into an hour commute and a two-hour discussion that digresses from women’s empowerment to the freedom of jungle chickens. It takes my roommate ten minutes to tell me a thirty-second story. I’m constantly snapping at her, “Yeah, I get it—then what?”

Photo: ahron

This lack of communication goes beyond the obvious language barrier. I have learned enough Bangla to communicate my needs and am skilled enough in the art of charades to express to a waiter an order of vegetable soup without prawn. Yet he still argues for seven minutes that the taste will change. “Yes sir, I want the taste to change, I’m a vegetarian.” With the inability to express oneself concisely comes the inability to understand anything that is not repeated twenty times.

I believe the real miscommunication stems from this need for incessant repetition. If you don’t reiterate your needs at least three times, you’ll be misunderstood. As an ex-pat from fast-talking New York, it’s infuriating to have to repeat myself. Telling a rickshaw-wallah that I’m going to Karwan Bazar but ending up on Shatash Road made me late for a meeting. When I told my colleagues why I was late, they dismissed me, saying “You have to tell the wallahs four times.”

Alarmingly, what I found myself doing was adapting to another way that Bangladeshis communicate: through force. After I noticed we were heading in the wrong direction for several blocks, I then repeated to the rickshaw-wallah that I wanted to go to Karwan Bazar. He began mumbling under his breath that I made him go in the wrong direction, while I fumed that he didn’t listen in the first place.

At a turn, the wallah accidentally ran the wheel up a pedestrian’s leg. A typical Bangladeshi male stare-down occurred: the death stare with widened eyes, a raised hand, and a spew of curses so fast it sounds like an enraged auctioneer with a jawbreaker in his mouth.

After several seconds of this “masculine” throw-down as I screamed, “Go, uncle, move on,” I raised my own hand and smacked the wallah in the back to snap him out of his red-blooded trance.

I hit another human being. I resorted to violence, the sort of violence I am trying to combat in my work. In all reality, he didn’t even respond to my hand smacking his back. He just pedaled forward, yelling at the man behind him. But was it appropriate? Though it is culturally acceptable, should I have hit him?

Dozens of times in a day I see the standard “hand-raise-in-preparation-to-hit” directed towards children, women, beggars or lower class men. More often than not, the hand comes down on their cheeks, heads and backs. Physical violence becomes a straightforward method of communication—a straightforward method that their verbal expression lacks.

Photo: TMAB2003

It was pointed out by another expat that this is a preliterate society. According to UNICEF, Bangladesh’s literacy rate is 54%. For UNICEF, adult literacy is determined by the percentage of persons over 15 years of age who can read and write. This statistic can be skewed when people who can sign their name are counted as literate, even when they can’t read or write much else.

No matter how illiterate Bangladesh is on paper or in reality, many adults today never learned to practice comprehensive conversation. In societies with higher literacy, schools teach their students to be direct in essay writing and to clearly articulate their questions. A lot of adults didn’t have that opportunity in Bangladesh, and if they did, they were still raised by parents who didn’t. They were raised by parents who smacked them to make a statement.

This violence is still occurring—on the streets, in my friends’ families, even in safe homes for women and children. When a baby is crying, relatives raise their hand to teach them to listen. And I picked up on it. Humans adapt to their surroundings, but I am not proud of this moment of adaptation. This cultural habit and form of communication is something I can’t accept and I don’t want to mimic. I refuse to believe that hitting a baby will help it listen better. Violence perpetuates violence, and it’s a cycle that should end.

It’s a given that communication goes beyond verbal expression. It involves facial expresions, eye contact, charades, sign language and physical contact. Gently patting a child’s head says “Hello, sweetie.” Smacking would fall under physical contact communication—but it is invasive and violent. Violence will ultimately be redirected elsewhere—perhaps back to you.

As my rickshaw drove away, I saw this negative side of Bangladesh culture I was adapting to. I want to assimilate into this culture but I refuse to absorb a negative trait. Cultures are ever changing and pluralistic, and I’ll assert that ending smacking as a communicative expression would be a positive change for this culture.

There are better cultural characteristics that I could pick up on: patience, for example. Luckily I still have three months left for that.

Photo: Fotos China de Jorge Santiago

Dear Abroad Readers,

You, I believe, are language learners. You’re at the very least language curious. You try and wrap your mouths around the tones in Mandarin and fearlessly stake your dignity on the precarious pronunciation of a phrase of Japanese slang. You tackle Arabic, Portuguese, Swahili, Spanish. You have, as I’ve realized reading our fierce and committed comment threads, deeply entrenched and passionate opinions about language learning.

I want to hear your stories about struggling with new languages, stumbling forward and finding your identity, your voice, your comfort zone and finally, ultimately, your fluency in another tongue. You don’t even have to be “fluent” in an academic sense, speaking clearly and smoothly with few errors; you can simply have learned how to navigate another language and how to understand and make yourself understood.

I want the stories of how you went from gaping uncertainty to those intuitive leaps of understanding, those breakthrough conversations (even if it was just, finally!, ordering a beer correctly) and what tricks, strategies, or unconscious tactics you used to get there.

Please try to keep submissions under 1,500 words, and avoid Beginner’s Insert Language Here study tips. I want to hear personal, individual stories about the journey you took to learn a language. Think of it as a linguistic travel narrative, charting your itinerary and your explorations into the foreign conjugations and word orders.

Send submissions to sarah@matadornetwork.com with “How I Learned _______” in the subject line.

Cuidense mucho,

Sarah

Photos: author

This past weekend I took an epic road trip from Oaxaca City to a remote bay near Huatulco for the wedding of two of my best friends. I was their (unofficial) minister; Jorge was their photographer. They invited approximately fifty friends and family members down to a small beach with an open-air restaurant, a rustic bar, and a number of dreamy cabañas scattered around the hillsides.

Three kilometers of unpaved, bumpy, winding, vertiginous road led to the cabañas, the restaurant, and the glassy jade bay giving out onto the Pacific. After tottering in in an enormous, wobbly passenger van, all of us sucking up sharp breaths of air, we didn’t leave for four days. There were Bloody Mary’s, there was phosphorescent plankton, there were quiet mornings with nothing but faint pinks, greens, and oranges, there were bird songs and waves and millions of stars.

Photos: author

I had to think about sea urchins in order not to cry as my friends gave their vows and I pronounced them husband and wife.

Like all road trips, this one came complete with about 8,952 unexpected mini-adventures. Here is a glimpse at Oaxaca’s Pacific Coast by the numbers.

Bottles Of Wine Transported In Ginormous Van: 40

Bottles Of Alcohol Transported In Ginormous Van: 20

Number Of Strange Bathroom Noises Heard During The Night At Pochutla’s “Best” Hotel: 30+

Topless Old Men In Boxers Observing Morning Traffic From Rooftops In Pochutla: 1

Number of Geckos Observed In Hammock Outside Room: 10

Number of Scorpions Inside Room: 1

Bottles Of Scorpion Mezcal Consumed: 1

Fish Tortas Eaten: 4

Number of Family Members Crying During Wedding Ceremony: 3

Number of Teary Post-Vow Wedding Kisses: 3

Beers Consumed In Highly Emotional State: 4

Siestas Taken Inside Mosquito Nets: 3

Bottles Of Wine And Alcohol Loaded Into Van For Return Trip: 0

Smelly Hitchhikers From Albuquerque Picked Up En Route: 1

Miles Traveled With Smelly Hitchhiker: 20

Pesos Required To Fill Gas Tank: 700

Alternative Tiny Mountain Roads Taken To Avoid Protest Roadblocks: 2

Number Of Bulldozers Clearing Narrow Unpaved Curves On Tiny Mountain Roads While Cars Wait To Pass: 1

Times Looked Down Out Driver’s Side Window To See Massive Drop Off Cliff: 5

Number of Military Checkpoints Encountered : 2

Searches Performed : 0

Number Of Soldiers Playing Dice As Our Van Cruised By Unnoticed: 7

Roadblocks Encountered On The One Road To Oaxaca: 3

Number of Cars Driving Aimlessly Through Desert In Hopes of Finding Alternative Routes: 7

Cacti Hit While Maneuvering Van Through Roadless Desert To Avoid Roadblocks: 20+

Cows Narrowly Avoided While Maneuvering Van Through Roadless Desert To Avoid Roadblocks: 3

Topes (speed bumps) Unsuspectingly Slammed Driving Through Tiny Pueblos To Avoid Roadblocks: 5

Random Turns Made Into Blocked Streets In Bumper-To-Bumper Traffic In Oaxaca: 3

Cars Hit While Backing Up In Ginormous Van In Tiny Oaxacan Streets: 0

Charge To Rental Van For Cactus-Tope-Hitting-Offroading-Mountain Adventures, in Pesos: 0

Minutes After Arriving Home That Two Dogs Passed Out In Imperturbable Slumber: 1

Total Hours Driven On National Strike Day: 12

Total Hours Drive Normally Takes: 6

Negra Modelos Consumed In Exhausted Stupor: 4

Minutes It Took To Miss Thrill Of The Road: 5

Photos: Fotos China

Every morning in Beijing we were missing something.

“Hey! Did you eat all the eggs?!”

“Shite! No milk?!?”

“Oh, maaaaaannnn. We’re outta coffee.”

“Where did those little cookies go?! Where are those little butter cookies?!?”

Without fail. We’d do a halfhearted doomed search around the kitchen and then there’d be the inevitable battle over whose turn it was to venture out into the frigid hazy morning and try to scrounge up the Chinese vocabulary to get whatever we were lacking.

“You go. C’mon, I’ll make the bed and the coffee and—“

“No, you go! You’re the one that mowed down all the cookies yesterday.”

“Please, nooo, it’s so cold…”

I always lost. Basically because Jorge and his photographer’s attention to detail make a better cup of coffee.

Photos: Fotos China

So I piled on sweater and jacket and scarf and hat and coat and fumbled around for the keys and clunked down the freezing concrete coal-dust covered stairs out into the Chinese morning. Most of the time it was gray — a vague, yellowish gray — and cold.

Making that venture out into the street in China felt nothing like stepping outside anywhere else. Rather, it felt like tentatively emerging from one’s warm wireless-equipped spacecraft onto an alien planet. No matter how many mornings I left the house on some dumb errand it felt equally, strangely the same.

Now, those brief morning walks have become one of those defining rituals that have etched themselves into my brain to be forever associated with China, and the street scene in the morning will still be what pops to mind in 5, 10, 20 years when I think about the surreal year I spent in Beijing.

Moving around so often, I’ve found that what I take with me are symbols that have formed semi-consciously in my mind. The literary term is metonymy—using a small part to represent the whole. This is what ends up happening to me when I leave a place; my mind and my memory resort to metonymy, attaching to certain symbols which come to represent the whole.

The men playing chess under massive trees by the beach in La Réunion symbolize the island and my seven months there. The light afternoon clouds and the salsa blaring out of tiny bars symbolize Oaxaca, and taxi rides past brightly colored boxes of houses and piles of oranges and pineapples will always symbolize Mexico. The morning walk symbolizes Beijing.

Photos: Fotos China

These things aren’t necessarily central to my life in any of these places, but the symbol factory seems to operate on a different level; searching for symbols based on the same subtle, deeply personal criteria that attract one to a particular smell or type of light or smile for reasons she can’t quite grasp.

Thinking of Beijing now, I remember the half-drowsy feeling of turning onto the street and heading to the Muslim cart for sesame bread or the Dia for eggs or the bakery for donuts and cookies.

There are ridiculous amounts of people in the streets even at 7 and 8 a.m. Bicycles are passing and taxis are skirting around them at speeds that make me cringe. Old couples shuffle with bags full of vegetables. A garage of gray brick spills heaps of colorful garbage into the street and stray dogs roam around eating it. People spit. Girls in knee-high boots (if I never see another pair of knee-high boots in my life it won’t be long enough) giggle and link arms and eat puffy steamed dumplings on their way to class. General chaos ensues in it’s calm, inscrutable Chinese form.

And then I climb the stairs (coal-black and prison-esque) again, stamping my feet every few steps to keep the stairwell lights on, and I open the door and the apartment suddenly feels like a warm haven of love and familiarity.

Maybe I remember the morning walk for that reason—for the fact that it made our provisional, “what’s that smell coming from the drain?!?” “home feel like home. For the fact that it formed, ever so briefly, a part of who I was and what I saw and did and thought for a certain period of time, in a certain place.