love letters to china, part ii

hi again china,

how many foreigners have you seen on your country roads, grin plastered to their face, as they felt the wind while they fly across the dirt on their rented bikes? how many tourists have wandered the bund at night, their smiling eyes lit up by the neon lightbulbs that make it feel like day time? how many travelers have trekked with their backpacks across your paved sidewalks and dirt roads and felt as if they were discovering more of themselves than the foreign land they found themselves in?

Cycling around Yangshuo County.

i know i am not the first, but you made me feel like it. i felt like i was new, as i uttered semi-profound statements at late nights in hostels, my "friends" that i had made (not even 6 hours earlier) nodding and sharing their own profundities. we find love in all that is even semi-familiar because none of it is.

i hang out with the white american male who says stupid things with a confident arrogance that makes me want to break out my middle-school tae kwon do skills. but i stay quiet because the nasal way he pronounces his vowels and his familiarity with the great lakes and american politics remind me of home. i wander yongkang road in shanghai, filled with only expat bars, no intention to enter, but just letting the english roll off me. my ears miss familiar words. even as i sit in a much-too-expensive coffee shop, owned by an american, listening to the french girls next to me, i feel at home because the way they laugh and gesture and joke reminds me of it.

people told me before i left that the first time i would truly feel homesick is when i actually fell ill. perhaps this is true. but even as i learned how to vomit into a squat toilet, i felt that i had actually come home. by making me feel pain, i had felt welcome, because this is how america has taught me to understand home. there is not happiness without a great struggle, and my time here has certainly been a bit of both.

i have wondered almost every day when it is right and when it is okay for me to challenge others when they say something i find upsetting. somehow, in this cross-cultural, worlds away experience, it is no longer black and white. the anti-black jokes and privileged statements and debates about immigration and american politics all take a new spin because i am not in america but i am america now. i am part of the problem.

Biking on the old city wall, Xian.

sometimes i pass as someone from a neighboring land but as soon as i open my mouth my words and accent betray me and if it's not that it's the blue booklet of paper in my purse that gives me a ticket to almost anywhere. here, i am part of the problem. i'm the country that can't give up its love of killing machines enough to see that we're killing ourselves. i'm the country whose police are allowed to decide who lives and dies without trial. and i am the country that thinks any country that isn't white enough isn't good enough. because i am part of the problem, i think i cannot speak against it.

but it is good for me to realize this responsibility. as a woman of color in the u.s., i can often get by without claiming any, simply shouting about the discrimination i face and forgetting the ways i benefit too. your people have challenged me to see that i do have a role in all that goes wrong, because simply disagreeing is not enough. i see it in the way people bargain and how they don't stand in line and the manner in which they live. if something doesn't suit you, if something isn't right, you can't count on anyone to change it but yourself.

the first time i felt content in china—in urban china—was when i was pushing my way through crowds in the hutongs in nanluoguxiang during golden week. yes, the week where literally every single chinese person has holiday and all flock to the most famous parts of the country, like this market in beijing. yet, it was in this crowd, with all these people, smelling the food and the roar of voices and vendors shouting out their prices and goods, and families finding each other, celebrating together, that i finally felt why i had come.

i don't think i've ever fallen in love, but i believe that was the moment, if we were really two people to have a romantic relationship together. that was the one i would recall. in that moment i knew that i had come to see a people who had a history deeper than time itself and a beauty that no quality of camera or photo could capture and a culture that no number of blog posts or love letters or words could convey.

i had come to see this with my own eyes so, for the rest of my life, i could close my eyes each night and see it painted across the blacks of my eyelids for me to remember in my dreams.

yours truly,

harleen

New favorite coffee shop—in between a mountain and a farm in Yangshuo County.

love letters to china, part i

dear china,

i know we just met, but i feel that i owe you an apology.

on my first night in beijing, you rolled out the welcome carpet, no expense spared. your smells, your sounds, your tastes, all unfamiliar, wrapped around me, trying to give me a hug, but i'm afraid it was too much for me. you see, it takes me some time to open up to people. your kindness overwhelmed me, like a brown auntie who tries to feed her guests too much food, or an overenthusiastic supermarket greeter.

i did not know how to respond to your welcome, so, instead, i ran.

i wish i hadn't run.

Communist statue in Peasant Movement Institute.

i kept my head down and eyes closed. i ignored your smiles because i only saw unfriendly stares. i did not hear your sounds as signs of life, but i mistook them as indicators of how you had perhaps not understood the ways in which you were destroying it. i felt that somehow my presence allowed me to pass judgement on who you are and this was wrong.

i tried for a few days in beijing—explored the small hutongs with their lively shops, meandered through the sightseeing spots like summer palace and temple of heaven, visited the historic tiananmen square and saw the flag lowered at the end of the day. but on my third day, i went to the great wall, as all of us do, and i felt something else. i felt fresh air and saw a blue sky and i knew that somewhere in china, there was something that would feel like this every day. i needed to find it for my own good, and perhaps for my own comfort, too. i hope you understand.

i moved onto xi'an, where i explored, but i also hid from you more. i felt somewhat grateful when i fell sick, as it gave me an excuse to watch some tv shows on netflix. i used the rain as an excuse to spend more time in bed or at cafés, only venturing out for a few hours a day. i think, in a silly way, i was intimidated by you. it's always awkward to admit that to someone, isn't it? but i was. i saw something in you that i was afraid of. it seemed familiar but also completely new, and it took me some time to figure it out.

Old Buddhist bell near Small Goose Pagoda, Xi'an.

i understand now, though. for after i realized that i was wasting the time away, that our time was passing quicker than a midwestern summer, i entered your embrace. i walked out into the visible air and let myself feel the stares and shouts and smells and all of it. i looked deep into the eyes of your people and i finally recognized it: strength.

in your shouts and relentless horn honking, you refuse to be unheard. in your smells and dusty air, you refuse to be unseen. in your words and walk and manners, you refuse to let the world forget you exist.

to be frank, i think i fooled myself into thinking that simply coming to see you would allow me to break out of the western mentality that had made me think poorly of you in the first place. seeing you, though, was a reminder of how much america has crafted my brain and how hard i must work to reach outside of her.

you've taught me that an american mentality often means i expect the worst and hope for the best, i search for the bad in people because good is only a rarity, and it is a lucky day if i come back to my hostel alive. you also taught me that this is not the way i want to spend my eight-plus months outside america.

it's okay to trust strangers because most, if not all of the time, they will be good too. it's okay to laugh and smile when people stare because they're only curious and don't mean anything by it and it's okay to try and speak the little chinese i learned from my dictionary app because trying is better than nothing.

i'm thankful for the chance to explore a land with such rich history and people and culture. but i wish that i could have spent more time appreciating what was in front of me rather than misunderstanding it.

Temple of Heaven, Beijing.

although i think half of traveling and seeing new things is recognizing that the glasses through which the world told us we must view it aren't that great, and we can see just fine without them. thank you for challenging me to throw my preconceptions away and start new. perhaps, next time, i can see more clearly from the start.

best regards,

harleen kaur