蜻蜓點水

There were a few things I really wanted to record this past week, but freegate (the software that I've been using to get past the government firewall) hadn't been working either due to government interference or just because of kinks in the system. The current access may be short-lived, but I've briefly lost my musing mojo. Still, I feel pressed to write something, anything, just because I don't know if I'll have access in the coming week.

I recently started reading a novel that someone here said really captures the spirit of the age in China. How crazed everyone is to own a piece of real estate. How kids are raised. How money is king. How corrupt officials can be. Aside from the annoyance every now and then I have with simplified characters (honestly, it's just so...I have to keep reminding myself not to be so elitist about the history of language. I have to actively quash my linguistic training to stifle my exasperation at such butchery), it's been really eye-opening. And depressing. And illuminating. This novel had been adapted into a nightly drama, which the government has since banned because it casts how the government works in a dubious light.

The same said person (who recommended the above novel) had needed help finding an English class substitute to take over the work of a former teacher. The teacher had skipped town after receiving last month's pay and failed to notify the company until an hour before her class was to begin. At first I had thought she was asking me for help, of which I would gladly give, but it turned out that my husband was the one they wanted. Because he's ethnically Caucasian. They're still looking for a teacher they can hire on a more permanent basis, but I am not an option despite my masters degree and experience teaching rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon because... I am ethnically Chinese. Clearly, only someone who looks white is qualified. On one hand, I've gotten this treatment pretty much all my life. I've gotten used to working doubly hard just to prove I'm equally capable. Still, I'm pretty damned tired of fighting these old prejudices. It's been surprisingly easier for my husband to fit in here (I think). As a white person, he has the "exotic" factor i.e. everyone local wants to hang out with him and be his friend. He is excused for not understanding things. Meanwhile, I am recognized as being Chinese when they want me to do things that they don't want to do themselves. However, when they see me with my white husband and mixed baby, I am often judged (oh yes, I know that look) for marrying a white person in order to, they think wrongly, secure a green card and American citizenship for my child. I am often excluded from things that they consider someone of my background wouldn't understand or know, thereby making me feel like a dumb brute. Things are further complicated by the fact that I am, in fact, not Chinese culturally, but rather Taiwanese. (Or is it Taiwanese-American, as some other people see me?)

Who knows. Does it even matter.

This time has been and continues to be a very humbling time for me. My pride in having lived through the awkward, lonely years as an immigrant away from my parents since I was nine. My pride in picking up jobs to earn my own money. My pride in feeling "in control." My pride is being able to chat with people and have them interested in me for myself and not simply in relation to my white husband.

These things are good to let go, I think. It just sucks to feel like such a nothing. I am getting the smallest of inkling as to what a big deal it was for the creator of the universe to become a poopy, colicky baby and then ordinary, common human wandering around Palestine. To become nothing for us, the world. Wow.