Wandering Secrets

My first months in china have been difficult, there’s no other way to say it. Work, food, language and especially people were hard to handle although not impossible. Months later I’m inthe same room as I was when I published 外国人, when I thought I would never survive this place, when I thought China would never be home. Rambling and wondering I found the perfect answer to my worries: the blank page. Today I’m here, ready to post my thoughts about the good sides of being a foreigner in xi’an. Many aspects I thought were normal in daily life are only reserved for us, foreigners. The curiosity of people, their efforts to do whatever it takes to help you, their honesty. Merchants laugh at us and at our habits, an unknown concept here. Foreigners like finding some place nice to eat and go back regularly.

Foreigners like having the same breakfast everyday and well, you know, having our little routine. But Chinese don’t. And they laugh at us for coming back almost everyday. They don’t have this sense of business -yet?- that we find in Europe; in a countryside city like xi’an they do what they can to please you and it’s honest, simple. People will make you try new things, give you extra food, take you where you need to go, negotiate for you.

On another level, there are all the working opportunities craving for foreigners. The problem with this part is that they need your pretty face, your white skin and your big blue eyes. I personally do not support any of this, especially since it is nothing less than racism, but I recognize that if you can take some opportunities, you will find yourself doing things you’ve never thought you’d do. Modelling, shooting commercials, host tvshows, giving speeches to university students, etc. Oh, and teaching. As I said, it makes me angry to see what a pretty face can buy around here, and to see that it is worth more than a professional. With that aside, these are still opportunities to live exciting new adventures.

There, it’s said. As I discovered later, all these  starings are not meant to hurt anyone, they are marks of curiosity,attempts to communicate with someone they think doesn’t speak the language. When this first step is done, their faces will light up and people will group around you asking about your country, your food, your lifestyle… Is Paris romantic? Do you have this in France? Do people like China? Do you like our food? Do you have problems getting used to China? Can you write Chinese?  

And I smile.