Any of you who have spent any time at all reading this blog know that, as a lone foreigner in Wuhan I get stared at, pawed at, pictured and pointed at. It is a matter of course and really, I should be used to it by now.
I’m not.
Some days I can handle it; some days it is more difficult to deal with. I mean really: imagine, everywhere you go and everything you do you are gawked at like a circus freak?
So, I’m going to dedicate an entire entry to this topic, and then I hope I will have it out of my system and I won’t need to trouble you with it again.
Admittedly I am no longer outright stared at on campus. The kids are used to seeing me around and they have reduced their curiosity to out-of-the-corner-of-the-eye looks. And actually, most are very friendly and greet me, if not by name then with a cheerful “Hello!” and that is perfectly acceptable. Welcome, even.
Also, along the street and shops just outside of campus things are going rather well. I’ve been here nearly two months now and people are used to seeing me. Shopkeepers are happy that I patronize their stores and children are no longer frightened by my appearance.
In short, to quote Sesame Street: ‘I’m the kind of people you meet in the neighborhood.”
But when I leave the immediate neighborhood and get on a bus… that’s when the circus starts. There is literally no end to the staring and sometimes the jeering. Like when I try to wedge myself into a seat that simply offers no legroom for the likes of me. People have literally leaned over seats to witness the fact that my long legs do not fit in the allotted space. People have stood there and pulled other people over to look, and pointed right at my wedged knees and laughed. Sometimes there is not enough headroom on the bus, like the double-decker buses, and that too is apparently quite the spectacle. I have to walk hunched over until I reach a more open area, or stand in the stairwell to the upper deck. Again, nudges, pointing, comments and outright laughter.
A belligerent ‘Yeah, what of it?’ bubbles on my lips but goes unuttered. I wouldn’t be understood anyway.
And that’s just the bus. Heaven forbid I should go walking around town or worse, eat in a restaurant.
Usually, if I go to a restaurant, there is a lot of staring and invariably, someone (or a few people) will take a picture of me. Without permission, of course. I can imagine what is said when they show that picture off: "Yeah, so I was in my favorite noodle restaurant having a bowl of noodles, and there was this FOREIGNER! And she was BIG! So big she almost didn't fit at the table! And she was eating noodles! Here, just look! She's using chopsticks and everything! And she's LEFT HANDED!" at which point the narrator - lucky individual who actually captured an elusive foreigner on their camera’s memory card, whips out the camera and shows off that one-in-a million shot.
Everyone in the family, from toothless grandfather to diaperless baby reverently stares at the camera and then passes it around. Some of the younger family members cannot wait to behold the sight, so they yank the camera out of some adults’ hand, maybe even knocking a glass of water over in their fervor. Many expressions of awe are pronounced, and some even jealously think: ”If only it could have been me to see the foreigner…”
It just so happened that my friend and I were having lunch when, from somewhere to my right I saw the flash of a camera. Instinctively I knew that my picture had again been taken, and my friend confirmed it. To his horror I whipped out my camera, but instead of pivoting and taking a picture of some random person as he thought I would, I took a picture of him, a Chinese man eating noodles, so I could send it to all of my friends and brag of what I saw. I hope you enjoy looking at it as much as I imagine Chinese families enjoy looking at the pictures they take of me.
Ok, that is a humorous reenactment of what I imagine happens with all of these pictures Chinese people take of me, and an accounting of my one-time rebellion against it. But seriously, folks…
All of the staring and touching and picture taking gets to me. It makes me uncomfortable and to the point where I don’t even want to leave the house. As it is, navigating the city is difficult and stressful enough. Sitting at a restaurant with its undersized tables is embarrassing enough. Do I have to be made to feel like a freak, too?
Have you ever seen The Elephant Man, with Anthony Hopkins as the doctor and the excellent John Hurt in the title role? Do you remember that pivotal scene when, once again an orderly profits from the misfortunate protagonist by charging people money to come gawp and laugh at him and the Elephant Man shouts out: “I’m not an animal! I am a man!”?
I never really understood how he felt until now.
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