Three times, the Italian girl standing at the threshold of my room screamed, throwing her hands in the air, frustrated, uninhibited by my Bulgarian housemate and my presence.
“Are you from China?” She asked. I nodded — thinking to myself: yes, I am Chinese, from Hong Kong, which is now a part of China, so yes, I am from China — though skeptically in anxious anticipation of what’s she going to say about it. I have stayed in a foreign country for a very long time. I have some inkling of what this was about.
“Then I’m sorry,” she said, touching her chest somewhat apologetically (but not really) . “But the Chinese are bastards! They are.”
I don’t know what to say. “Bastards” is a strong word. She didn’t say “THOSE Chinese people”(so that the usage of the noun would be limited to a small group of people she was in contact with) , she said “THE Chinese people” (meaning everyone, including you, me, and yea, my parents and your grandparents). I was dumbfounded. I could only smile nervously, and asked what happened.
This is the first time I’ve met this girl. She trotted into our WG ( abbreviation for shared apartment in German) with a list of soon-to-be-emptied-room of some 16 WG and wanted to see the soon-to-be-emptied-room which happened to be my room. After examining the room to her content, she commented that she really liked it and it was perfect and she started to explain why she wanted to move out of her current room —- the very trigger for the racist comment about Chinese people. She stole a glance at me, and said furiously, “They never clean. When I said ‘Hi.’ to them they never replied….” (elaborate further yourself)
“The Chinese people are bastards!” She screamed again.
Then she looked at me, and said to my Bulgarian housemate: “Here, at least she looks nice. She is smiling.” as if I was goods to be examined, like I was an object, like I didn’t matter because I won’t understand what they were saying.
I don’t know what to say. I am a nice person. To many Germans and international students in Germany, they told me more than once that I broke their stereotype for Chinese. But that’s because I have lived in the US for like ever, and I’m from the super Westernized Hong Kong, plus I really like the people here, Germans or not, and I genuinely wanted to make friends with them. Still, it hurt me to hear someone say something like that about people of my own Nationality.
I have been called many things in my life, esp when I first moved to the US. I cannot begin to tell you how much it hurts. But if I did anything that offended somebody for whatever reason, then may be I really deserve the bad names. I never intentionally did anything bad to anyone, that much I know for sure. But still people will say anything they want.
After she was gone. I spoke to my Bulgarian housemate and my other housemate from Tunis about how shocked I was by what she said. 3 times. Each one felt like a dagger that speared straight through my heart. The worst part of it is that she really believed in it, that she was not afraid of offending me in my presence. Only an hour ago, I was hanging out, drinking beers with some international people from couple floors below me, and we actually talked about the same thing too because they all have less-than-perfect encounters with Chinese people in their dormitory. Ok, I told them, I understand what you mean and I am not offended by it, because when I was in the US, some Americans said to me the same thing. In fact, amongst Hong Kongese ourselves, we do not like to be called Chinese for the same reason. But what exactly it was that WE, the Chinese people have done wrong to invoke such negativity, even among people of our own race?
The truth is, it’s nothing but the shyness, the cultural shock and the language barrier (I mean the HUGE cultural shock, and the HUGE language barrier of coming from the Eastern world to the Western world) It is huge, really. It takes time, effort and courage to breach it. But the gap will be breached. Once I used to only have Chinese friends who speaks only Chinese to me. Then I have Chinese friends that speaks English to me. Then I started to make non-Chinese friends, friends from all over the world. It takes some time. You don’t born into being an ambassador of the Chinese culture, you are born, if you are Chinese, I tell you, into a world of constant self-examination, inhibition, vigorous discipline. Our histories had shaped our national character such that many of us were trained to be money-mongers, we deeply understood the principal the survival of the fittest. There’s a Chinese saying, “Each cleans the snows in front of their own doors”, that we the Chinese think ourselves, as accurate description of our general national sentiment. You can call this selfish (yea, it is) but some people will call this survival of the fittest. It is true to some degree. And it’s universal anywhere in the world. Watch ‘Apprentice’, ‘Real World’, ‘Big Brother’, ‘American Next Top Model’ or even cooking shows ‘Top Chef’, all these TV programs, although made for TVs, represent the essence of the real-world : There are moments, when you have to fight to get ahead. The world is ‘everyone for themselves’. — All these, combined, plus and minus some personal reasons, led to what had happend in the Italian girl’s unhappy experience with the other Chinese guys that shared her flat in the University.
I do not know her. I do not know the Chinese that live with her. She gave off an impression of a very ”out there” person. She speaks what’s on her mind. I can totally imagine the Chinese people ignoring her, with good reasons. But of course, even when you absolutely do not like a person, you still need to be courteous. Is that what’s lacking in this case? The fact that you do not have to like every single person that you come across in life but at least you have to be courteous. Is that what was lacking? How about the Bulgarian guys’ experience with the other Chinese in the university?
My housemate told me not to worry about it. I am sure if anyone asks, she can vouch for my character. And same for many others. And that there are many different types of people from one race, and that it was just the Italian girl’s gross generalization.
Of course I know it was.
But it was nonetheless still upsetting.
“Bastards.”
I tried to elevate myself from this terrible word. — The Queen Elizabth I of England, was always referred to as a ‘Bastard Queen’, and they meant it quite literally, since she was an illegitimate child of King Henry VIII. And they sneered her, ridiculed her. But she grew up to become one of the most pivotal figures of European history. Who’s laughing now?
The Queen of England was not spared from harsh, dirty words herself, why should I?
People with prejudice are everywhere. People who perpetrate the prejudice are also everywhere. — As long as you are not one of them, who cares what people say, right? — At least that’s what I imagined my mom would tell me.
