My posts from here on out won't be like this, and I don't intend to offend anyone with this. Yes, there is a difference between intention and effect, but I'm fed up and want to get this off my chest. Don't get me wrong, I still love China. But some days it just rubs me the wrong way.
Today was one of those days. I was standing in my neighborhood, waiting for a friend to come down from his 6th floor apartment, marveling at the way light diffused through the twilit fog while a bunch of Chinese kids and one of their parents were playing speed badminton in the park across from me. The game wasn't anything worth watching, as I've spent more than a year living in China and it's a common occurrence. But one of the small boys decided to shout out and point with his racket, "看！老外！" "Look! A foreigner!" It happens so often here that I normally ignore the exclamation, sometimes I even joke and describe myself as such, a foreigner. There's nothing wrong with that, right? ...right? This time though, it struck me wrong. Why is that okay?! Before you say, "Sterling, stop being so sensitive, it's just what they do here in China. It's the nice way of saying it. It's not 洋鬼子, (foreign devil,) anymore. Just relax," let me just compare that with America. Would you point out someone's foreignness? Would you treat them as a second class citizen? The answer should be no. That little boy pointing to me and exclaiming with such glee at how I differed from him just because of my looks got me fuming. Why didn't the parent stop him and say, that's rude? Because they don't view me the same way they see themselves. As a foreigner, I'm just a novelty to the average citizen. And if you come to China without being Chinese, you'll be a novelty as well. But novelties aren't quite human. When I first came here, I thought it was so cool, to be so different, to be able to talk with Chinese and get special treatment. But the special treatment doesn't last. Now I just want to be treated as an equal. It's exhausting not to be.
