Spending nearly a total of 3 months in China and its various territories, you'd have to be pretty anti-social or otherwise lazy not to (gasp) talk to some locals. Luckily, my misanthropic tendencies were no match for the crushing mass of 1.2 billion locals. What's more, the surprising gregariousness of our Chinese counterpart generation did a lot to foster some interesting conversations. This is not to say that conversations including one or more of the phrases "Lookee, lookee", "Best price for you", or "Laowai! [old foreigner]" aren't interesting in their own right, but on the whole I think I most prefer the ones where I am treated as something other than an exotic walking changepurse.
My first meaningful encounter occurred in Beijing one afternoon in July. I had been wandering around the Dongcheng district by myself looking for an internet cafe when, as always happens when I venture out on my own (Nelle was taking a nap), it began to rain. Unlike most occasions of inclement weather, in this instance there was no advance warning and with a sudden crack of lightning I found myself drenched and huddling underneath a sidewalk stand umbrella while cars zipped by, splashing me with dirty water.
Being a particularly far distance away from the hostel, I decided to try waiting out the storm. Not too long thereafter a young Chinese man also caught in the downpour came to share my outpost. After the universally uncomfortable phase of silence while standing 18" apart from one another became too much to bear, we nodded to one another in the univerally understood male gesture of recognition and greeting, as if to excuse our mutual awkwardness. He offered me a cigarette, which I politely declined, and then asked me, in haphazard English, where I was from.
Raising my voice above the din of the weather and passing traffic, I replied, "U-S-A. I am from USA." To my pleasant surprise, the man smiled and appeared to be genuinely interested in what I had to say. Then he asked me how long I had been in Beijing. "Two weeks," I answered. The fellow rounded out the obligatory questions by gesturing grandly with his arm to our wet clothing, the lightning, and the honking diesel trucks. "You like?" he asked. We both laughed and the tension evaporated.
He introduced himself as Wang Ya Dong, a 23 year old law student and Beijing native. I, with the help of a phrasebook, explained my journey to Beijing and that I was waiting for the rain to ease up so I could run back to my hostel. He, in turn, had phoned his father and was waiting to be picked up. We started talking about a number of things, ranging from Beijing's efforts to relieve congested city traffic before the 2008 Olympic Games to our favorite NBA basketball team (his was the San Antonio Spurs). Apparently the NBA has a rather large following in China; especially since Chinese superstar Yao Ming came to the NBA from Shanghai in 2002. However, Dong was quick to note that local affinity to the Chinese national sport, Ping Pong, will never be usurped by basketball.
Interestingly, in the course of discussion he also told me that he planned to use his law degree to practice law abroad. By learning how law is enforced outside of China, Dong said he hoped to return home and effect change for the better. "In China, law is very bad," he said. I tried to get him to explain, but his English did not permit much elaboration. It really wasn't necessary, though, since it's fairly intuitive that a "good" legal system would not permit such activities as curtailing civil liberties and free speech, rampant intellectual property theft, or torture and execution of political prisoners without trial. I asked him where he was considering going, and he mentioned that a place like Australia would be a good place to start. When I asked if he would ever consider practicing in America, he said no- too expensive. Besides, he admitted that his "English no good enough." Good luck with that, btw.
His father, he said, was a local official in the Dongcheng district of the Beijing provincial government. "People come to my father with complaints. He is the man people go to when they are unhappy about something in the city." While it must be an utterly thankless job, it is heartening, I suppose, that there exists a medium through which citizens can raise objections to the communist administration. Soon enough, Dong's phone rang, and he gestured to his father, a man in a raincoat striding toward us on the other side of the street. Dong and I exchanged pleasantries, and he even wrote down his email address and cell number on a scrap of paper and gave it to me. Dong then waved goodbye and crossed to meet his father. As they embraced and began to walk away, the father gave Dong a rain poncho to put on. I watched as Dong immediately stopped, turned and jaywalked back among the speeding vehicles to where I remained, under the umbrella. "You need this more!" he said smiling. With that, he thrust the plastic garment into my hands, said goodbye once more and crossed the street a final time.
I waved to them as they left, put on the poncho, and began to navigate the sidewalk puddles in the opposite direction, astonished and tickled at the kindness of this stranger my own age. Would I have done the same for a lonely Chinese tourist back home?
