I don’t know how this happened, but I somehow have made it to the last week here at Princeton in Beijing. Although I love this program (and yes, I have to admit that the last post was just me complaining, I wrote it out of a fit of rage, and this fit of rage happened to take place during a time when I was feeling relatively angry with my progress in Chinese), there are things that aren’t perfect about China itself.

Last week I had to get a new visa, because the one I currently have only allowed for a single-entry, and thus, if I had wanted to come back into China, I would have had a major problem. The building I went into was probably the nicest I had walked into in all of Beijing. It was bustling with (seemingly) important people (I certainly felt set apart from everyone in this building, everyone else was wearing suits and had a “job” to do, I guess…I was just wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and had white skin).

One thing that does bother me about the culture here in China is that people will immediately start talking to you in English if you look white–even before one has even spoken. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I know I’m not in the United States, but if the situation were to be reversed, the same thing would not transpire. For instance, everyone in the U.S. is expected to speak English, regardless of race. There are no exceptions. If I see someone who looks Chinese in the U.S., I’m not going to walk up to him and try to start a conversation in Chinese–this seems too presumptuous of me, and a little rude. However, this sort of thing happens all the time in China. It’s certainly happened to me on numerous occasions. Do Chinese not understand that white skin is not an instant sign that I speak English? On top of that, every time I walk into a restaurant, I feel like I’m being stared at the instant I walk in and all the way through my meal.

I will just flat out say that this is absolutely inappropriate, and yes, I’ll say it, racist. Just because I look different doesn’t mean that you can treat me differently or use different languages when talking with me. If China is ever going to succeed in the new economy, or the world that is increasingly becoming internationalized, its people are going to have to realize that it can’t live in a bubble anymore, and that it is not the center of everything. I feel like this is a problem that has plagued China for time immemorial, and it will undoubtedly take generations to get rid of.

I hate how this is going…my posts are getting increasingly critical. But this isn’t exactly the message I want to send. There are things about China that I absolutely love, and there are a lot of myths that go around in the states that are flat-out not true. For example, there’s a prevalent belief that has been promulgated by various sources that people here don’t wait in lines, that the people here spit everywhere, that there are huge differences in politeness and dealing with people, and that the government is looking over every little thing I do.

Well, despite what our textbook says and what I heard before I came here, I have to say that Americans probably spit on the streets just as much as Chinese do, have about the same rules when it comes to politeness, (…get ready for the big ones) Chinese in fact do wait in lines, and from my eyes the government here is absolutely less intrusive (at least outwardly) than that in the U.S. I don’t know why China is always being made out to be so different. The fact of the matter is that people are just people, and that you just have to be open.

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