Experiencing China

Day 8 - Losing My Privileges
Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

I know of no better way to explore a city than to wander about on foot. Only through these peregrinations do I find I'm actually able to know a place more intuitively, by the senses and by experience. And today was one of the most profound days I've ever spent travelling.

I'm a six-foot-one, bearded white guy with spectacles and little hair atop my angular head. I have a spring in my step and a penchant for wearing flannel. My Chinese language skills are fairly limited to the equivalent of "Hello," "Thank You," "Cheers," and the numbers one through ten. Upon alighting the airplane in Hong Kong a week ago, I had no delusions about my place here in China. Unarguably, I'm a bit odd and out of place. But I never expected to feel quite the freak that I felt today, nor gain such vivid revelation about my own identity.

I rode bus number twenty-eight from Tony's school until it terminated near the Guangzhou Zoo, in the north-central part of town. I walked south for fifteen minutes down Xianlie Zhonglu and then west for a while on Huansh Donglu until I reached Nanafang International Plaza, a series of shopping centers, hotels, and financial institutions, including the five story Guangzhou Friendship Store, an Eastern mirror of Macy's, I think; lots of electronics, refined housewares, overpriced suits, jewelry. After eating lunch across the street from the Friendship Store (they sell bottles of Admiration? vaporizers of Loyalty? cases of Companionship?) I then walked back east several kilometers, visited a massive multi-storied bookstore where I bought a few Chinese novels in English translation. From there I wandered a park, a sports complex, some market areas and, after over seven hours of hiking, I again paid my two yuan for a bus ride back home.

The profundity of my experience can be summarized in this: I acutely felt myself to be a minority, a spectacle, and after seven hours I grew impatient and frustrated with enduring feelings of being alienated, an outsider. As a white male living in America, I'm rarely a minority and rarely am I at a loss for how to get around, function, encounter life without much difficulty or obstacles. I'm highly privileged in this respect. But today, I experienced life from a whole other perspective, a position I too rarely experience.

Heads turned, conversations stopped, children ogled and pointed; and I thought Tony's students fell over themselves ogling, oohing and ahhing upon seeing me. Men my age smirked. Women stared but if we made eye contact, they found sudden interest in passing traffic. One Chinese woman, clacking along in black high heels, diverted her path to the far left side of the sidewalk as I approached from behind her. She also shifted her purse to the far side of her body. After stopping to take a photograph, I found myself behind her again; had the same response when I outpaced her. There's a tall, white hairy man. Must be a thief, I guess.

One man took multiple, quick glances over his right shoulder, then abruptly stopped, allowed me to walk ahead of him, and then proceeded. In at least two stores, customer service folks hung closely over me, at a distance much shorter than what I'd yet witnessed, though maybe they simply wanted to help me.

I'm undecided as to whether I was being mocked or feared by people today. Maybe they were simply intrigued or curious. Still, I couldn't help but feel a little freakish, isolated and alone among throngs of people. This was a taste (and only a taste) of being a minority, not having the privileges of a majority member. Though I tired of seven hours of such feelings (though many live their entire lives like this), today was a good practice in considering my own ethnic identity. I'm not forced to think about it as much as a majority member in the States.

I'm reminded of my truest of identities, about what truly defines me. My identity is most foundationally grounded in my Creator, in Christ, in how God sees me - beloved, broken and sinful but forgiven and restored. This transcends even race and it hinges neither upon fleeting circumstances or others' response to me. Who I am at the core is the same whether I'm home in the States among an ethnically diverse crowd of Americans, or in Guangzhou as a solitary figure among hundreds unlike me. Though my ethnicity is part of who I am, something I must continue to encounter, I am grounded in Christ. Who I am in relation to others or what they say or think of me, for all good purposes, is irrelevant.

I did spend the day doing more than get stared at. I wandered the Guangzhou Friendship Store and was quickly turned off by the opulence. I'm not a big fan of shopping malls in America; not sure what drew me to this one, replete with the same grandeur that plagues the West, many of the same Western name brands leading the way. Not all bad, just fear the materialism. Why do I sense this materialism with more clarity when in a different culture? Is it easier to criticize a culture different than your own? Reebok's "Are you felling it?" display told me that there are similarities in the advertising both Easterners and Westerners respond to; have many similar aspirations and images of self. And Reebok's tagline tells me we're each interested in experience.

I pray today for a right understanding of who I am, as a White male American, as a Westerner, as a follower of Jesus. And I pray for those who spend so much more time than seven hours battling loneliness because of their race. Thank you, Lord, for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

I enjoyed a meal near the shopping center of sticky rice with onions and peanuts and a tea egg. As I strolled downtown I heard many songbirds chirping melodiously. To borrow a phrase from Maya Angelou, I'm glad that caged birds still sing.

Mark

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